Earthquake (1974)

Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.

Director:

Mark Robson

Writers:

George Fox, Mario Puzo

Stars:

Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy

Won 1 Oscar. Another 2 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Charlton Heston	...	Graff
Ava Gardner	...	Remy
George Kennedy	...	Slade
Lorne Greene	...	Royce
Geneviève Bujold	...	Denise (as Genevieve Bujold)
Richard Roundtree	...	Miles
Marjoe Gortner	...	Jody
Barry Sullivan	...	Stockle
Lloyd Nolan	...	Dr. Vance
Victoria Principal	...	Rosa
Walter Matthau	...	Drunk (as Walter Matuschanskayasky)
Monica Lewis	...	Barbara
Gabriel Dell	...	Sal
Pedro Armendáriz Jr.	...	Chavez (as Pedro Armendariz Jr.)
Lloyd Gough	...	Cameron

Storyline

Construction Engineer Stuart Graff is estranged from his jealously possessive wife, Remy, and has an affair with Denise Marshall, the widow of a co-worker. Meanwhile, Remy tries to persuade her father, Sam Royce, who is Stuart's employer, to use his influence to stop Stuart from seeing Denise. Rogue policeman Lew Slade is suspended from the L.A.P.D. for having punched an obtuse officer from another jurisdiction. Embittered, Slade contemplates quitting the police force. Jody, a perverted grocery store manager, lusts after Rosa Amici, sister of Sal, the assistant to Miles Quade, an aspiring daredevil motor cyclist. The lives of all these people are devastated when a major earthquake rips through Los Angeles and reduces the city to ruins.

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Plot Keywords:

earthquake | engineer | melodrama | chaos | destruction | 

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Taglines:

When the big one finally hits L.A.

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Genres:

Action | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

15 November 1974 (USA)

Also Known As:

Terremoto

Filming Locations:

Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$7,000,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$79,700,000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal Pictures,The Filmakers Group

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min 160 min (TV) 121 min (Ontario) 116 min (DVD)

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (35 mm magnetic prints) Sensurround (70 mm and 35 mm magnetic prints) Mono (35 mm optical prints) 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) (Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Color Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Despite Ava Gardner being one year younger than Charlton Heston, many felt that she looked too old to play his wife. Also, it was felt that an actor twenty years or more older than Gardner should have played her father. Lorne Greene was only seven years older, and many felt looked like her husband, rather than her father.

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Goofs

During the quake, Bill Cameron looks out the window of the skyscraper he is in to see two men fall out out of a neighboring window. As they fall, they both disappear behind the matte separating the building facade and the minuature of downtown Hollywood.

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Quotes

Barbara: [hysterically] Mr. Cameron threw me out of the elevator, and then I heard all those people screaming!
Sam Royce: [trying to ease the panic] Probably the first time the old bastard ever did anybody a favor!

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Alternate Versions

The doctor who comes to the Graff house in the deleted scene is Jim Vance, the doctor who later examines people (like Sam Royce) at the Wilson Plaza. It is revealed that he is a friend of the Graff's and Stewart learns that a baby that they were to have a year ago was aborted by Vance at the request of Remy (Stewart was told it was a miscarriage. The dialogue for this scene and many other deleted scenes are available (with pictures) at EarthquakeMovie.com.

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Connections

Edited into Conquest of the Earth (1981)

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Soundtracks

C'est si bon
(uncredited)
Music by Henri Betti
Played by a guitarist

User Reviews

Airplane! - the PREQUEL...

Ludicrous disaster epic about the razing of LA, with Chuck a top brass engineer who's marriage to bibulously bloated bosses' daughter Gardner drives him to make expressively "angry" love to starlet Bujold, until Earth's Final Fury steps in to sort out his conjugal priorities. Chuck's got his shades though, so he's ready for anything. Elsewhere, put-upon cop Kennedy is having a bad day because he's mown down Zsa Zsa Gabor's hedge, and a pre-Dallas Principal has the unfortunate crosses to bear of a 2-storey afro (the only structure undisturbed by the quake) and the unwanted attentions of crackpot SAS commander Gortner.

Par for the genre's course, death-defying rescues amidst the sawdust and tinsel is very much the order of the day, but here connected by much bizarrely incongruous throwaway padding involving everyone castwise from Kennedy downwards. There are faint intimations that this could be self-reflexive parody, but given that facetious rock bottom is hit with an unintelligible Walter Matthau's "cameo" as an inebriated barfly (who's decision to go incommunicado under his real Panavision-necessitating surname must surely have come about after seeing the finished product), I very much doubt it.

Save for Kennedy's derisory aside "Earthquakes bring out the worst in people", the film has absolutely nothing to say about the psychology of societal collapse; or why, post 9/11, we continue to enjoy watching tall things falling down with people still in them. But any movie in which a pantomime Gardner's first line is "Goddammit!" can't be a total lost cause. And after her and Chuck's opening domestic tussle, which would come pretty close to John Waters, had he yet gained mainstream acceptance and managed to persuade Liz Taylor to star for him - "Of course i'll induce vomiting, I know the rules by now!" - the film finally delivers 2 hours of not-so-solid (like it's "40-storey monstrosities") entertainment value. Even if after all is said and done with the laugh-a-minute dialogue, the Incredible Upside Down Cows, the cartoon blood in the liftshaft, Gardner playing Lorne Greene's DAUGHTER which meant he would have had her at 7 years old etc etc etc, the movie ends up nothing but its own 'Airplane!'.

Sole aesthetic virtue is its naturalistic sound editing (which understandably won that year's Oscar) and subterranean bass pitch which, combined with the short-lived cinematic 'wonder' of Sensurround - ie earthquake-simulating theaters - meant that certain moviegoers got to join in the vicarious fun of mass panic and devastation.

If like me, you like this film for precisely the wrong reasons, you will want to seek out its Japanese rival 'Jishin Retto' (1980) for no doubt 'hours' of endlessly fascinating film-studyish comparison...