Now that hurricane season is upon us here, it was suggested that the genre of classic disaster films would be apt. I couldn’t agree more. So if you were taken in by the late 1990s films like Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, and last year’s 2012, I’ve got a few more classic flicks that play on the futility of it all.

The disaster film genre has roots in the beginning of film with 1901’s FIRE!, a silent film from England. It was a staple through the early years of film with films like Noah’s Ark (1928) and John Ford’s The Hurricane (1937), but really came into its golden age in the 1970s.

In this realm, The Towering Inferno reigns supreme. Noted critic Roger Ebert called the film “the best of the mid-1970s wave of disaster films.” Produced in 1974 by Irwin Allen, it has an all-star cast headed up by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. Among the co-stars are William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain, O.J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, and Robert Wagner. Newman plays architect Doug Roberts, the designer of the 138 floor Glass Tower, a combination office building/apartment complex in San Francisco. On the night of the gala opening (naturally), a fire breaks out in a storage room on the 81st floor. We come to find out that the proverbial corners were cut in the electrical wiring as the building slowly becomes engulfed in flames. McQueen is Battalion Fire Chief Mike O’Hallorhan, tasked with trying to save lives and as much of the building as possible. I’ll leave out the ending so as not to spoil it, but many main characters do die, and you never know exactly how the film is going to end.

The Towering Inferno won three Academy Awards (Cinematography, Film Editing, and Best Song), two BAFTAS (Best Supporting Actor for Fred Astaire, Film Music) and two Golden Globes (Best Supporting Actor for Fred Astaire, Most Promising Newcomer for Susan Flannery).

Clocking in at a massive 165 minutes, The Towering Inferno holds up quite well over the last 38 years; not too much 1970s cheese (except the title song “We May Never Love Like This Again”). You can’t help but marvel at the charisma of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen being in the same picture, and it almost didn’t happen. Newman and McQueen received co-top billing, have the exact same number of lines, and made the same amount of money for the film (US$1 Million plus 10 per cent of the gross).

Unique among disaster films is a dedication during the opening credits: “To those who give their lives so that others might live, to the firefighters of the world, this picture is gratefully dedicated”.

Two trivia notes: The Towering Inferno is the first film to be co-production between Twentieth Century-Fox and Warner Bros, the producers built 57 sets for the film, and by the end of shooting, only eight remained.

One film that doesn’t hold up as well as The Towering Inferno is 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure. At the time, however, it was a box office and critical smash. Also produced by Irwin Allen, The Poseidon Adventure features an all-star cast, headed up by Gene Hackman who plays a preacher, and also features Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Jack Albertson, Shelley Winters, and Roddy McDowall.

When an underground earthquake creates a tsunami the aged SS Poseidon, travelling to Athens from New York, flips over somewhat unspectacularly. The film follows a group of survivors as they attempt to escape the sinking ship before it’s too late. Hackman’s Reverend Scott is outspoken and rebellious and spends most of the picture yelling at the other characters to “Hurry up” because “we all have to get out of here before the ship sinks,” or something to that effect. Borgnine’s tough-as-nails-detective-who-married-a-former-hooker yells back frequently, “we’re going as fast as we can!” And the rest of the cast either follows along to salvation or goes the other direction and drowns. Of special note is Albertson and Winters who play an elderly married couple (mostly for comic relief), and a relative throwaway role for the late Leslie Nielsen as The Captain. The film won two Academy Awards (Visual Effects and Best Song).

The Poseidon Adventure was remade twice, once in 2005 as a TV movie and again in 2006 as a full theatrical release directed by current disaster movie fan Wolfgang Peterson (The Perfect Storm, Outbreak) named Poseidon. The remake starred Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, and Richard Dreyfus.

The disaster movie genre was made complete in 1980 with the satirical comedy Airplane! Locking in to the public consciousness (or overload) of the genre, Jim Abrahams along with brothers David and Jerry Zucker wrote and directed what is now the 10th-funniest American comedy according to the American Film Institute and the second greatest comedy film of all time by Channel 4 in the UK.