BOX-ART
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The cover, much like the film itself, is very action packed! A render of the tower with people on the top, while helicopters attempt to rescue them. The angle used does a great job of showing how gigantic the tower is, with the vast cityscape below all while the center of the tower is engulfed in flames. Even the colors reflect the film well, with lots of reds, oranges, yellows and black. The logo is in the center, with texts at the top and bottom.
The back has pictures of most of the cast, with the actors names and what type of character they play, "Paul Newman - The Architect, " Faye Dunaway - The Girlfriend, " etc. A blue box has a list of extras, with a short description of the film to the left. Various texts, as well as the Fox's usual tech. specs. grid at the bottom. (I'd like to note that even thought the box says there's a stereo Spanish track, it is encoded as a 2.0 dual mono mix.)
MENUS
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A small intro of an elevator door opening to reveal a 3D recreation of the view from the glass elevator. Various animations play, such as a helicopter flaying around outside, fire, explosions, etc. Options are overlaid below, and can also be accessed during playback.
The menu reeks of cheap and lazy, even the font looks stock. The cityscape looks very flat and poorly made, but It get's the job done I guess.
AUDIO
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This film was made in that era, from about the 50's to the 90's, where Mono seemed outdated but there was no multichannel standard and stereo didn't seem different enough. So, most films used Dolby Stereo. It's a format where the center and rear surrounds are folded into the left and right: basically it's an enhanced stereo, really, with a mono center and surround. The 5.1 remix featured is basically the discrete 4.0, but with an artificial bass track, and dual mono surrounds.
Also included are a Spanish dual mono dub and an English Dolby Surround 2.0 mix, both at 224 Kb/s.
Something all the mixes have in common is that they all sound quite dated at times. A little muffled and echo-y, I wasn't super impressed with how it sounded.
VIDEO
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The video, much like the audio, also isn't super impressive. Film grain is present most of the time yet some scenes look quite waxy, meaning some noise reduction may have been applied. It looks like sharpening was also used, giving it some haloing. Colors seem a bit dull at times, but this is more a product of the times, mixed with an artistic choice to make the film seem more gritty. Contrast, at times, seems a tiny bit off, with slight white clipping, and blacks that seem a touch too...dark grey-ish. Overall, it's just a rather processed looking presentation.
The main issue with the film is that it has this smear-y look around the edges of the frame though the entire film. Image someone smearing Vaseline around the edge of the lens, and failing to clean it off properly before filming...that's sort of how it looks. To be fair, a lot of Irwin Allen films have this look though. I'm note sure if it's intentional, or just how it was filmed.
EXTRAS
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Loads of extras, from commentaries, to promo videos, deleted & extended scenes, etc. Everything is 480i, and is the same as the special edition DVD version though. When the film premiered on TV some of these scenes were restored, so it nice to have them as extras along with the theatrical version here. Though, a real extended cut would be nice, maybe these scene only exist in low quality standard definition.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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N/A
TECH. SPECS.
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ASPECT RATIO: 2.35:1 (Original Widescreen)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
VIDEO CODEC: AVC (24.8 Mb/s)
AUDIO: English: 24 Bit DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Remix (5 Mb/s)
English 4.0 (Original) (448 Kb/s)
English 2.0 Dolby Surround (224 Kb/s)
Spanish 2.0 (Dual Mono) (224 Kb/s)
SUBTITLES: English, French, Spanish
RUN-TIME: 2 Hours 45 Minutes
