$14 million worth of Holy Cow! Spend more -- efficiently -- and you get more. More stars, more effects, more scale, more suspense, more crises, more impact, more of that feeling the foyer that you have your ticket's worth and then some.

It is an almost-perfect meshing by ingenious, productive technicians and a finely-attuned acting brigade of a complicated production into a magnificent "epic" in the best C.B. DeMille tradition.

We finally come to the ultimate disaster picture of them all. And, in a word, the best. The Towering Inferno... is not only the best disaster picture crashing around the crowded circuit, but it is also one of the year's best films.

With The Towering Inferno, disaster movies have come of age. It is big. It is immensely engaging. And above everything else, it is terrifying.