Shot on video for Canadian television by the catchpenny production company known as Emmeritus, The Tower has nearly as many establishing shots of the building in question as its home country has provinces. According to those shots, the titular site varies in size between “skyscraper” to “office complex,” with only one thing for certain: It’s a building, eh.

Written and directed by Ghostkeeper’s Jim Makichuk, the movie opens with two men discussing possible problems with the tower’s safety, considering three people have vanished inexplicably from its floors of late. One of the guys declaratively states twice, “There is nothing wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building.” You know what that means: There is totally something wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building! And you, the viewer, stands to benefit.

Touted for its energy efficiency, the place is run by a $30 million computer system named LOLA (disembodily voiced by Monique Verlaan), developed by the blinky-eyed, mumble-mouthed boy genius Watson (Alfred Topes, punchable). What Watson somehow fails to notice is that LOLA has discovered sweet, sweet sentience, acquiring increasingly higher reserves of power via murder. After scanning various workers for potential heat gain, she absorbs them whole when they flip an electrical switch, press an elevator button, fuck against a copier, what have you.

On this particular Friday night, a soap opera’s worth of characters are trapped and in danger of LOLA vaporizing them for their BTUs, including:
• the dorky nightwatchman (George West) and his incredibly sexy girlfriend (Zuzana Struss, sexy) who sexily drops by for a sexy dip in the top floor’s pool;
• a past-his-prime ad man (Ray Paisley, Cold Creek Manor) and the sassy new copywriter (Kenner Ames, Canadian Bacon) working overtime on a Magic Marker posterboard campaign for something called Sparkle;
• the secretary (Jackie Wray) whose single-mom status will not surprise you when you see her hair;
• lovers (Jennifer Cornish and Paul Miklas) who plot to kidnap Old Man Sandawn (George T. Cunningham, Emmeritus’ Shock Chamber), who dips his ink in the company well because he’s married to a frowny crone (Dorothy Clifton, Emmeritus’ The Hijacking of Studio 4).

There’s also a black stripper/video vixen (Charlene Richards, Emmeritus’ Mark of the Beast) who legitimately wants to bed Watson, but we don’t have time to get into that.

Not to be confused with 2012’s Korean Towering Inferno rip-off or the 1993 Paul Reiser vehicle (although that Fox prime-time pic bears a plot similar enough to raise eyebrows) or any of many, many films bearing the same name, The Tower stands tall on its own. What other movie would show you computer graphics continually drawn and re-drawn, as if Makichuk were squeezing every penny out of the license for some AutoCAD shareware knock-off? Would have the balls to lure an elderly woman to her grave with the promise of a feather boa? Would dare present the same shot three times of two ladies climbing down a flight of stairs? Would stop itself to have a character literally look up the definition of “snake” … and then share the results?

As terribly dated as it is terribly acted, this Tower harnesses the power of pure entertainment — often accidental, but thoroughly genial. These days, that’s enough. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.