‘Code Red’ producer shocked by N.Z. report

Press, 26 October 1982, Page 26

‘Code Red’ producer shocked by N.Z. report

NZPA staff correspondent - Washington The television series, "Code Red" has saved lives in the United States, its producer Mr Irwin Allen, has said. Mr Allen, speaking from Burbank. California, said that he was "horrified" that two New Zealand children had used an episode as a lesson in how to vandalise a school. The episode was shown on television in New Zealand last month. Mr Allen, who also produced "Towering Inferno." a film he said resulted in changes in fire laws in the United States said of the New Zealand report: "I am appalled. I am shocked. I am terribly sorry that any films I may have made would cause distress to anyone. That was obviously not the intention of the film." Every episode . not onlytaught a lesson in safety but gave a specific suggestion on safety with fires, he said. "We bent over backwards not to teach the opposite lesson.” It had not occurred to him while he was making the film that this could happpen. Mr Allen said. The 18-episode series was shown coast to coast in the United States — and repeated — over the last year, he said.

After “Towering Inferno" was shown in cinemas here. Mr Allen said, he visited 27 states to lobby for changes in fire regulations. As a result, virtually every state now displayed a’ notice beside lifts warning people not to use them in the event of fire because “when there is a fire most ,elevators respond to the heat and go direct to the floor on which there are fires." Since that time, he said, "there has been a fantastic change in the number- of deaths; people have stopped using elevators — they use the staircase." From the Los Angeles Fire

Department. which, co-oper-ated in making the series. Captain Tony de Domenico said that school fires in the United States were "a nation-wide epidemic." “We are not cavalier about the fact, but it is a shocking fact of life." he said. Captain de Domenico said: “The point of that film episode was to show children that a school fire is terribly dangerous. We viewed it as a positive thing in that it shows the child setting the fire in anger and frustration meaning to just set a fire and then the fire gets away from him."

Captain de Domenico said that he could not recall a fire in a television programme ever being reenacted by a viewer, but that every police agency had tales' of "copycat" crimes — particularly crimes of violence — where viewers were inspired to commit the same crime "down the road a bit." “This is quite common." he said. "That is why you have such a strong movement in this country not to depict crimes of violence in such a visual way. "Programming has taken quite a turn away from violence." .