Earthquake (1974)
Directed by Mark Robson

Film Review

With Airport (1970) proving such a phenomenal success Universal Studios were not so slow to follow this up with another film in the disaster line, although production was held up by recurring difficulties with the script.  The screenplay for Earthquake went through no fewer than eleven drafts, with input notably from Mario Puzo, who had recently collaborated on the film adaptation of his novel The Godfather.  Consequently, it is hardly surprising that the resultant narrative is something of a mess, looking as if a dozen or so random story ideas had been thrown together with nothing but the centrepiece disaster to knit them together.  Whilst the film was a box office hit, almost as popular with audiences as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), it was not well received by the critics and currently ranks as one of the weakest in the genre.

The central flaw with Earthquake is that it fails to make us interested in any of its protagonists.  Played by a mix of established film icons (Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner), rising stars (Lorne Greene, Geneviève Bujold) and newcomers (Victoria Principal), with Walter Matthau making an amusing cameo appearance, the characters are just the usual two dimensional disaster fodder, and quite frankly we hardly care what happens to any of them.  The film sticks blithely to the rules of the genre, so that a character's chance of survival is determined not by chance but by (a) the pay grade of the actor playing him and (b) his morality, so a racist, self-loving neo-fascist played by a C-list actor is unlikely to make it past the fourth reel.

Even though Earthquake is formulaic as Hell, and unbearably cheesy and predictable in parts, the quality of the effects work is nothing less than stunning.  No expense appears to have been spared to convey, as realistically as possible, the awesome terror-inducing might of an urban quake.  It is astonishing what the effects team was able to come up with in this pre-CGI era, and in this area alone Earthquake stands out as one of the more impressive of the 1970s disaster movies.  The impact of the film's dramatic quake sequences was heightened by the introduction of a new sound format, Sensurround, which gave cinema audiences a terrifyingly realistic impression of the soundscape of a quake zone.  However, lacking a strong central narrative and anything resembling a likeable character, Earthquake has been somewhat left behind, a tedious drawn-out ordeal whose only redeeming feature is the quality of its effects work.

Film Synopsis

A junior employee at the California Seismological Institute has evidence that a major earthquake will hit Los Angeles within a day or two but his superiors are reluctant to make known his findings, through fear that this might cause widespread panic.  When the disaster does strike the city is virtually decimated and the survivors face a terrifying ordeal as they attempt to reach safety before the quake's aftershock does its worst...