Such a frustrating disappointment

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles.This movie is notable for the use of an innovative sound effect called Sensurround which created the sense of actually experiencing an earthquake in theaters. Due in part to this technology, the film won an Academy Award for Best Sound (Ronald Pierce, Melvin M. Metcalfe Sr.). Well done! Although relatively little happens for the first half, that does not seem to matter. We still enjoy getting to meet this motley cast of characters. There is some name-dropping (e.g. Zsa Zsa Gabor) to remind us we are in Los Angeles, and the action is well paced. I especially enjoyed seeing people fall off the tall buildings.

LA is rocked by a series of quakes, leading to the city collapsing into rubble, fire, and damaged structural integrity. The population endures danger and death as a result. To make matters worse: the nearby dam is on the verge of bursting!Get this out of the way: critique this based on plot and characterizations, besides how people suffer at the aftermath of quakes, and Earthquake is a rather unimpressive enterprise. Marjoe Gortner is a supermarket checkout in the National Guard who turns out to be an unstable psycho sexually obsessed with Victoria Principal (rocking a fro), who herself is the sister of a tag-along of stuntman Richard Roundtree (who had made his name in the Shaft films). There's Ava Gardner starring as Charlton Heston's shrill, noisy wife (sadly a far cry from that curvy seductress who made heads turn, showing up in her first scene bitching Heston out!) and Lorne Green's "daughter" (ha!). Pretty Bujold is the "other woman" who Heston eyes as a future squeeze. George Kennedy comes off best as a suspended cop who punches out a county officer for challenging his pursuit of a dirtbag in a convertible leading an incredible high speed chase that nearly claims innocent victims along the way.The money was well spent on the effects. The major city quake and subsequent dam break are knockouts. While the supporting subplots generate less enthusiasm, I couldn't say I wasn't entertained. There's a good sense of humor (the bar fight, Matthau taking shots at the bar as the city collapses around him!), well developed suspense (Bujold braving loose electrical wires to rescue her injured son, Greene lowering down his employees on a chair using a fire hose as the stairs on his floor were gone), and decent foreshadowing (seismologists Barry Sullivan and Kip Niven discussing recent evidentiary findings that support scary quakes ahead, the folks at the dam realizing the structure could disrupt at any moment) really deliver where it counts.The plot is busy with moving parts but it is the effects and heroism that this disaster film hangs it's hat on. Looking for intricate plot development and strong performance art wasn't on the agenda. This was aimed for butts in seats and an audience looking for shock and awe. Heston's former football star, now a rising architectural exec getting promotions by papa-in-law Greene to appease constantly- griping Ava isn't exactly a subplot that leaps off the screen pleasantly. But Kennedy organizing a rescue operation on the outset of catastrophe is. Jesse Vint and his homophobic goons haranguing Gortner, later machine-gunned by him is a stunning scene. Bujold is lost on a film such as this, but her beauty is tapped instead of her talent. The falling bodies and debris as the city crash and burns is incredible. One gripe: the cartoon blood during an elevator collapse!

Disaster movies were all the rage during the 1970's and one of the biggest hits of the genre was 1974's Earthquake, whose self-explanatory title lets you know what you're in for, but unlike similar fare like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, only about a third of the film really works.As with most films of the genre, the film opens with silly exposition scenes introducing a group of disparate characters that have no connection to each other and provide no reason for us to care about them. The primary players include an architect named Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston) trapped in a marriage to a grasping and desperate woman named Remy (Ava Gardner), who is the daughter of Stewart's boss (Lorne Greene). We also learn that Graff is having an affair with a struggling actress named Denise (Genvieve Bujold) who has a young son. We also meet a motorcycle daredevil (Richard Roundtree), his assistant (Victoria Principal) and an ex-marine turned sex deviate who works in a grocery store (Marjoe Gortner), not to mention a recently fired police officer played by George Kennedy, who I think, by law, appeared in all disaster films made in the 70's. The scenes when the earthquake actually hits and destroys Los Angeles are pretty effective, but the final third of the film involving the actual rescue efforts is dull and extremely hard to get through. The performances range from shrill to annoying and some of the casting is really hard to swallow (Ava Gardner as Lorne Greene's daughter? Seriously?), but I guess if you're really, really, bored, there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours. BTW, Walter Matthau makes a cameo appearance as a drunk in a bar and is billed under his real name, Walter Matuschanskayasky.

For a brief time within the 1970s, so-called "disaster films" became something of a genre all their own, and the heroic Charlton Heston was often featured in most of them. This one is Heston's first, as he plays a middle-aged architect in L.A. who realizes that the types of buildings he's helped erect should have been an obvious mistake for an area plagued by regular earthquakes. He's stuck in a dead pseudo marriage with a real bitch of a wife who you'd just love to slap (the aged but once-gorgeous Ava Gardner). Her dad (BONANZA's Lorne Greene) is Heston's boss and father-in-law (hold on a second... Greene and daughter Gardner are only a few years off in age ... what, did Lorne father her when he was seven??). Anyway, Heston's character is smart enough to be openly cheating on his old battle-ax with a younger chickie pooh (Genevieve Bujold).Of course the bizarre castings are always part of the charm of these "jeopardy pictures". So we've also got side plots with Richard Roundtree as an Evel Kenieval type of motorcycle daredevil, whose partner is played by Gabriel Dell (of the old Bowery Boys comedies). George Kennedy is a lot of fun as a hot-tempered cop who gets suspended from the police force for anger management issues. Marjoe Gotner plays a nerdy supermarket cashier who becomes a crazed gun-happy National Guardsman when pressed into public crisis mode -- and he's got the hots for a young and bosomy Victoria Principal (sporting a terrible afro). Walter Matthau provides intermittent comic relief as a drunk at a bar who remains oblivious to anything that's occurring around him in this disaster.There are a few earthquakes, with the Big Rumble being one occurring mid-movie that lasts several minutes, and levels all of Los Angeles. Chuck Heston joins Lorne Greene and George Kennedy in trying to save everybody else. The special effects still are mostly impressive and deliver the goods, except for an occasional misfire (like the spattered blood in a falling elevator). The main draw of a movie such as this is the catastrophic tragedy of it all, and this is well realized even if the sub stories going on around it are mainly fodder. When EARTHQUAKE was released in theaters in 1974, a special audio trick called "Sensurround" was developed to give the effect of the movie seats rumbling as if during an actual earthquake. **1/2 out of ****