Earthquake (1974)

What kept Hollywood afloat in the early 70s was not the movies of the New American Cinema that critics doted on. It was the disaster movie that got people into movie theatres. Earthquake is one of the classics of the genre.

You cannot judge a 70s disaster movie as if it’s Citizen Kane or an Ingmar Bergman film. The disaster movie genre had its own conventions. Whether it’s a good disaster movie or a bad one depends on how well it conforms to those conventions.

A disaster movie has to have a big cast, with as many real stars as the studio could afford. Stars who were just a little past their use-by date but who were still familiar to audiences were always useful in filling out the cast.

The first 40 minutes or so of Earthquake focuses on introducing those characters. They don’t have to be complex or subtle characters but we have to get to know them well enough to care about their fates. The Poseidon Adventure in 1972 had established another convention of the genre - not all the stars will survive the movie (and not all the stars survive Earthquake). Which makes it even more important that we care about them. 70s disaster movies differed from earlier similar movies (such as the aviation disaster movies in which tragedy was usually averted at the last moment) in that the disaster is going to happen no matter how hard the characters try to avert it, and 70s disaster movies faced the fact that when disaster strikes then real people, people whom we like, get killed.

The biggest star in this movie is Charlton Heston and his character, engineer Stewart Graff, has at least some complexity. He is married to Remy (Ava Gardner) and the marriage has not been a success. Remy’s dad Sam Royce (Lorne Greene) owns the company for which Stewart works. Stewart has been drifting into an affair with pretty young widow and aspiring actress Denise Marshall (Geneviève Bujold).

The other major character is cop Lou Slade (George Kennedy), a decent man but hot-headed and now under suspension for slugging another cop.

There’s also daredevil motorcycle stunt rider Miles Quade (Richard Roundtree), his manager and his manager’s sister Rosa (Victoria Principal). Rosa is supposed to be Quade’s pretty female assistant but she’s being rebellious. There’s a crazy gung-ho National Guardsmen, a dedicated doctor played by Lloyd Nolan, assorted scientists at the Seismological Institute and a bunch of dam inspectors worried that a dam could collapse.

While we’re getting to know these people we get a slow build-up of suspense as scientists start to worry that a major quake might be impending. This is also one of the conventions of the genre - the disaster starts to loom in the background.

The quake itself is a triumph of 1970s special effects. Thankfully this was long before the dark days of CGI so it’s all done with miniatures, matte paintings and other traditional techniques, all of which look better than CGI. It’s a movie that aims to wow us with spectacle and it succeeds.

The second half of the movie focuses on the desperate rescue efforts.

This is a rather merciless movie. Just as it seems that the danger is over the aftershock hits and it’s just as devastating. So just as we’re feeling relieved that our favourite characters survived the main quake we have to start worrying about them all over again.

This is a movie that is not interested in assigning blame for the disaster but there’s quite a bit of 70s cynicism. Some people turn out to be heroes and some turn out to be cowards. Even the brave rescue crews are not always brave.

The one group of people who really come out of this movie badly are the military. The National Guard guys do nothing apart from hampering the rescue efforts and shooting people without any real justification. Some of them turn out to be dangerous murderous killers in uniform. The military was not popular in 1974.

Mark Robson does a pretty solid job as director. Its a two-hour movie but it’s paced well and he builds some real tension during the rescue sequences with some clever race-against-time elements.

The acting is appropriate for this type of movie. The cast members understood what was expected of them. There’s plenty of enjoyable overacting.

Earthquake is pure entertainment and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. And that’s what audiences wanted - it was a huge hit.

Earthquake is easy to find on home video and it’s had a Blu-Ray release. My copy comes from Universal’s Ultimate Disaster Pack DVD set which also includes The Hindenburg (which I watched a week ago), Airport (a movie I have always loved) and Rollercoaster (which I’ve never seen and which I’m looking forward to). The DVD transfer is 16:9 enhanced and looks fine. It’s a great budget DVD set.

I loved Earthquake when I first saw it aeons ago and I still love it. It has everything you want in a disaster movie. Highly recommended.