Earthquake - Movie Review

After the success of such movies as Airport ( 1970 ) and The Poseidon Adventure ( 1972 ) Hollywood went on a binge of releasing disaster movies. The formula was simple. Get an all-star ensemble cast, have something horrible happen to them that causes them to die one by one, then at the last minute have Charlton Heston or some other A-list Hollywood leading man rescue the survivors. 1974's Earthquake was no exception. Universal Pictures decided they wanted to film the ultimate disaster movie. No passengers stuck on a sinking boat or party guests trapped in a burning building. Universal was going to outdo Irwin Allen by trashing an entire city. Mario Puzo was brought in to write the first draft script and a brand new revolutionary sound system called Sensurround allowed those in specially equipped theaters to feel like the floors were actually shaking.

The movie stars Charlton Heston as Architect Stewart Graff who is unhappily married to his bitch of a wife played by Ava Gardner. The only reason why he even stays with her is that he is still working for her father played by Lorne Green. Meanwhile Graff is having an affair with beauty Genevieve Buljold, a single mom raising a kid on the outskirts of town. George Kennedy plays police officer Lew Slade who has just been kicked off the force for chasing a suspect's car through Zsa Zsa Gabor's hedges. Richard Roundtree plays motorcycle stuntman Miles Quade who has set up a ramp, loop-the-loop, figure 8, and flaming loop that he hopes to impress a show scout from Las Vegas. Victoria Principal is his friend's sexy big breasted sister Rosa who has an afro-style hairdo. And then there are the scientists at the earthquake institute who predict that the big one is going to hit that afternoon but decide with the mayor not to warn anyone because if they are wrong they will look like laughing stocks, and the workmen at the dam who are worried that the recent smaller trimmers are causing it to crack.

The fun starts when the quake hits causing buildings to collapse and kill hundreds of film extras. Idiots on the top floor of a skyscraper run into an elevator which drops to the ground floor after the cable snaps causing cartoon blood to splatter the screen. A homeowner learns the hard way that it was a bad decision to buy a stilt house on the side of a cliff. A man driving a truck full of cattle drives off the side of an interstate overpass and flips his vehicle over without spilling a single cow. Roundtree's motorcycle ramp contraption turns into a pile of splinters seconds before he was about to demonstrate it to the Las Vegas rep. Buljold's kid rides his bike over a wooden bridge that collapses into the concrete spillway along with a dozen electric wires. Bells of an old Spanish church ring wildly just before the ancient structure collapses. Walter Matthau who plays a drunk throughout the movie completely ignores the death and destruction going on around him and continues drinking. Several landmark buildings crumble like cheap models from a Godzilla movie. And to cap off the mayhem someone tells a man with a lit cigarette to run back into his house and turn off the gas followed by the predictable explosion.

This now leaves the principal cast members still alive in the freshly destroyed city to gradually drop like flies. Heston who spent the quake hiding under his truck completely ignores the victims buried under debris in the street and climbing over them rushes into a building to rescue father-in-law Lorne Green. Lorne is busy helping his co-workers climb down past a collapsed stairwell using a fire hose. The combination of the stress of lowering all his co-workers down, the smoke from the roof fire, and the stress from watching the occasional extra slip and fall to their death in front of him finally causes Lorne to have a heart attack. Heston brings Lorne out of the building where he learns that since the hospital was destroyed the mayor has set up a medical station in the sub basement parking lot of one of the few standing buildings. Also heading to the underground parking lot is Buljold and her injured kid. Because he was kicked off the force Kennedy was not in the police station when it collapsed and is one of the few remaining cops still alive. He and Heston team up to round up victims to bring back to the underground parking garage.

Kennedy winds up rescuing Victoria Principal from a crazed Marjoe Gortner who plays a national guardsman who has snapped. The city his hit by a massive aftershock and the entrance to the sub-basement parking garage collapses trapping everyone but Heston and Kennedy below ground. To make matters worse the dam bursts flooding half the city and sending the other half of the water into the sewers. This gives those trapped underground less than an hour before the flood waters reach them. Since Heston is an architect he figures out how to reach the trapped people by sledgehammering a hole through the sewer wall into the garage. Awkward moment when both his wife and mistress are down there. As the survivors are quickly lead up the ladder and out of the sewer the flood waters finally arrive sweeping many extras away to their deaths. The principals manage to make it to safety on the ladder, but Kennedy backs down a step crushing Gardner's hand with his foot causing her to fall down into the flood. Heston is given the option of watching his bitch wife die then climbing up to his mistress. But of course this is a formula Hollywood movie, so Heston jumps into the flood to save his wife and they both presumably drown.

Earthquake is exactly what you would expect from a '70s disaster movie. Most of Mario Puzo's script was rewritten into something far less intelligent by George Fox for the final draft. This leads to some very contrived formula scenes, such as the nasty Virginia Woolf style argument between Heston and Gardner in the beginning of the movie to establish that their marriage is in deep trouble. This makes Heston's sudden decision to sacrifice his life trying to save his wife at the end of the movie all the more unbelievable. While the on set effects are impressive the model effects look like model effects. Buildings collapse to reveal that they have no interior. while flames and water give away the model's actual scale. I suppose these special effects were acceptable in the 1970's but look ridiculous today. At one point in the movie Roundtree's character attempts to try out his ramp contraption and has a frightening accident while trying to go through the loop-the-loop, sailing off the side and onto the ground instead of completing the loop. There is no doubt that this was footage of a stunt gone wrong and perhaps a stunt person injuring himself, but was kept in the movie. Fox's rewritten script looks for any cheap cliche way to hold the audiences attention in the scenes prior to the earthquake. There is a police chase, Richard Roundtree's motorcycle stunt which probably sounded good on paper but looked cheap and ridiculous when actually performed, comedy relief by a drunken Walter Matthau and Victoria Principal showing off her chest in a tight t-shirt for no other reason but to kill more time. Fox had guessed, and rightly so, that the audience would get bored waiting for the quake to happen. Of course the same holds true for any disaster movie including The Titanic. You get a half hour of sub plots before the actual disaster happens which, at home, you would probably fast forward past. Fortunately the movie picks up after the initial quake as the survivors have to dig their way out of the rubble. Much of Earthquake does offer the cheap fun you would expect from a disaster movie.