Earthquake
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Movie Reviews of Earthquake
Movie Review: GOOD DISASTER FILM OK DVD EDITION!
Summary: 3 Stars
By the time Earthquake came out the "Epic Disaster" films were starting to slide a little. This is a good one but, not as good as Poseidon or Towering. Lets face the facts.....these movies are not great classic movies in the traditional sense, but they are highly entertaining soap operas with tons of stars that look like a TV movie with a bigger budget. The FX range from great to laughable and the acting is about the same! I enjoy these movies, but only the ones I mentioned above and this one.....OK Airport is another good one! Did I leave any out? The DVD edition has a very good transfer,but nothing extra.....bummer! It deserved some attention...oh well........Movie Review: STILL SHAKIN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Summary: 3 Stars
The 70s had our favorite disaster movies: POSEIDON ADVENTURE, TOWERING INFERNO and this little classic fluff. Considering how far we've come in special effects in these 30 years, the sound and visuals for EARTHQUAKE are pretty impressive. As in all the disaster flicks, plot is secondary to the big event, and writer Mario Puzo gives us the standard assortment of characters who we know will be involved in personal danger when the big one hits. Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, Lorne Greene, George Kennedy, a barely recognizable Victoria Principal, and other familiar faces go through the motions, and even though it's all pretty hokey, it still manages to shake!!!!Movie Review: The best special effect was Eva Gardner's wig
Summary: 3 Stars
What better way for Eva Gardner to return to films after retirement by uttering the words "God Dammit!!!" as if she were in a traveling theater company of "Virginia Wolf". Say what you like, at least we're pleased to see them all washed away through the sewer system at the end - sort of cleans the bad taste from your mouth.
Man, without the sound system this movie is hateful. It was a blast with the HUGE speakers though. Saw in Cincinnati at an old theater - shook so hard plaster fell... or mabye that was a chunk of Ms. Gardner's makeup.... hard to tell in a dark theater.
Movie Review: Nothing Earth-Shattering Here
Summary: 2 Stars
"Earthquake" is more than just a disaster movie - it's a disaster of a movie! I remember seeing it in the theatre when it first came out in 1974. I was barely in my teens, but even at that age I thought that this over-baked, overlong saga of "The Big One" hitting Los Angeles was simply awful in terms of plot, dialogue, casting, and special effects. The only thing that impressed me at the time was Sensurround, the innovative Special Sound Effect that approximated the rumbling of shifting earth and was awarded an Oscar.
Cut to almost 40 years later. I find a copy of the DVD in a bargain bin for a couple of dollars, and begin to wonder, "Was it really as bad as I thought?" Well, in a word, yes! In fact, "Earthquake" surely qualifies as one of the worst unintentionally funny movies in Hollywood history. Consider the casting of Lorne Greene and Ava Gardner - he plays her father despite the fact that she is clearly close to his own age! (He was born in 1915, she in 1922.) As if this isn't bad enough, they - along with the rest of the cast - are given abominable material to work with. Miss Gardner, for example, plays a one-dimensional shrew with no redeeming qualities whatsoever; she cusses and fusses in every scene she's in. No one else in the all-star cast is given material that's any better; every character is strictly a cardboard stereotype, including those played by Charlton Heston (the principled, steel-spined hero), George Kennedy (the tough, can-do police officer), Genevieve Bujold (the perky young love interest), Marjoe Gortner (the psychotic National Guardsman), or even the unbilled Walter Matthau (the drunk who doesn't notice the walls falling in around him).
One might think that the special effects would makeup for any inadequacies in the script and performances, but one would be wrong! See if you can spot the hilariously awful shot in which an entire brick wall (obviously made out of Styrofoam or some other lightweight material) crashes down in one piece, without the mortar or bricks breaking apart on impact. (The editor cuts away quickly, but not quickly enough.) It goes without saying that the effects in "Earthquake" are rudimentary compared to the digital effects we have in this day and age, but in fact, even movies made 40 years *before* "Earthquake" had more believable scenes of destruction (I'm thinking of the earthquake in the 1936 MGM film "San Francisco" in particular).
There's really not much in this movie to recommend; today, even the once revolutionary Sensurround effects are mundane. It may be worth a single viewing if your curiosity gets the best of you, but consider a rental rather than a purchase. Once is definitely enough.
Movie Review: Shake, Rattle, And Roll
Summary: 2 Stars
From aircraft crashes to volcanic erruptions, disaster movies have been popular since the days of silent film--but they were particularly so in 1970s, when films like THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and THE TOWERING INFERNO broke box office records right and left. And then there was EARTHQUAKE, a 1974 release that tried to ride the tide of popularity and pretty much went bust.
The basic problem with EARTHQUAKE is the plot. There isn't any. Oh, sure, there's some stuff about Charleton Heston, who is cheating on shrewish wife Ava Gardner with youthful and very wimpy Genevieve Bujold, not to mention sundry subplots (the tough but honest cop, the stunt cyclist, and so on), but the cast is indifferent at best, the dialogue is tiresome, and it is ultimately just a very lame and very silly build up to the disaster itself.
EARTHQUAKE's big trick was a gimmicky thing that might have been dreamed up by schlock-master William Castle: "Sensurround." It was essentially a bass-heavy sound system that blasted out sub-bass frequencies serious enough to make the audience shake, rattle, and roll. Unfortunately, the system actually proved a little too successful for it's own good, causing bits of the ceiling to flake off upon unsuspecting audiences in older cinemas, and after one or two unsavory incidents a great many theatres refused to install it.
Shorn of Sensurround, EARTHQUAKE is left with a very mixed back of special effects that range from the spectacular to the ludicrously bad. In any case, it is all too little and too late, and the best thing that can be said for it is that all the characters you least like get popped before it comes to an end. The DVD release offers a sharp, clear print, but there are no extras of any kind... And as for the famed Sensurround, well, you're free to do whatever you want with your speaker system as long as you don't annoy the neighbors, and good luck to you.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer