VIOLENT COUSINS

Disaster master Irwin Allen (“Towering Inferno,” “Swarm,” etc.) is making a sort-of move away from mayhem. “Outrage,” a courtroom drama that he’s produced with Columbia Pictures TV will air on CBS early this year--on the tails of his “Alice in Wonderland” miniseries. Why the switch?

“They ask me that after every movie I make,” said Allen, a bit perturbed. “There really is no switch. The name of the game is entertainment. . . .”

In “Outrage,” a father (Robert Preston) seeks his own justice after the man who brutally raped, robbed and murdered his daughter is freed on a legal loophole. Said Allen: “In disaster movies, people get killed or there’s violence or some kind of peculiarity. . . . All my pictures are first cousins.”