The best monster movie of the early nineties was Backdraft. Don’t be surprised and don’t be confused. Fire was put across as a character, almost equivalent to a creature in the movie. The way it crawled across the floors, sprang up from nowhere on Kurt Russell and William Baldwin, consumed everything in its path, all these elements would feel at home in a creature feature. The writers could have done away with the dialogue on it being a living thing though.Ron Howard’s action drama on Chicago’s firefighters did attract criticism from both sides. But it still is a classic inferno movie with the most spectacular explosions and fire sequences. Pyromaniacs swear by it and they can’t be blamed. Backdraft was probably the last of the movies in which special effects were not used to replicate fire. So all that destruction that you see in it was shot in the middle of controlled incineration in sets. Controlled is not the right word, if you ask the crew.
Warner Brothers Studios has a popular theme park ride inspired by a major blaze in the movie and the ride is still on top of the crowd-pullers list.
Backdraft raised the status of a fire fighter to that of a knight who fought a dragon which didn’t just breathe fire. It was fire itself.
Oh, and it starred Robert De Niro in an extended cameo.
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