This was in my queue for like 3 years till one day it crept down. It's a cross betwen a dumb disaster movie and Roberta Findley's "tenement" which if you haven't seen it is about a tenement where a gang comes in and wreaks havoc on the residents who couldn't leave for some reason I can't remember why.
Jim Mitchum is Robert Mitchums son and looks kind of like him and is not remotely as talented or cool. He plays a cop in New York City and is the the first of many we meet in the "get to know the doomed people " part of the movie. Most of them are pretty forgettable I must say, even the boozy Greek wedding party on top floor is relatively colorless.
What really separates this movie from the plethora of other disaster movies is the band of escaped lunatics, led by a diabolical Robert Carradine (he was the main nerd in Revenge of the Nerds), who terrorize all these boring people throughout the long night. He and his gang are almost too awesome. The other people are so drab and they are so hilarious and insane you really start to root for them and they don't dissapoint, rampaging from room to room destroying people and property with no one bit of conscience. Theres no Joker type monologues about good vs evil or stand up comedy, Carradine is just a normal psychopath happily going about his terrifying way. I think he is also some kind of activist or somehting but that gets lost.
It's a B Movie and it doesn't have the nuance and depth or the great locations of other NYC centric films like Serpico or something but it's no so far from those either in terms of it's feel and brutality and audacity. nice
4.5 /5
also weird coincidence: I dvred the movie "Trackdown" from thistv the other day and watched some of it before I watched this and it also starred Jim Mitchum (and Erik Estrada!)
