Earthquake (1974)

	Directed by: Mark Robson	COUNTRY USA GENRE Disaster NORWEGIAN TITLE Jordskjelvet RUNNING TIME 123 minutes
	Produced by: Mark Robson
	Written by: George Fox Mario Puzo

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Stuart Graff	Charlton Heston	½
Remy Royce-Graff	Ava Gardner
Sgt. Lew Slade	George Kennedy	½
Simon Royce	Lorne Greene	½
Denise Marshall	Geneviéve Bujold	½
Miles Quade	Richard Roundtree
Dr. Willis Stockle	Barry Sullivan
Rosa Amici	Victoria Principal
Drunk	Walter Matthau

Review

This humourless and dramatically flat, but well-intentioned, picture arrived near the peak of the disaster genre boom of the 1970s (a genre that would later see an unnecessary revival in the 1990s with films like Volcano, Dante's Peak, et cetera). Charlton Heston and George Kennedy became recurring faces of this fad, always playing hard-boiled men in impossible situations, but in Earthquake, it’s only Kennedy who escapes relatively unscathed. Heston, on the other hand, suffers from stiff line delivery and a handful of painfully awkward interpersonal scenes, which are symptomatic of one of the core problems with Earthquake: the quality of its dramatic passages. Though the film takes its time establishing its characters and trying to earn our sympathy for them, they remain ordinary and shallow – too marred by typical 1970s action writing to provide any real emotional weight.

And yet Earthquake still works to a degree. Like many thrillers of the decade, it has that unmistakable '70s ability to build and sustain tension, and it carries an earnest, slightly self-important grandeur that ends up being oddly charming. Also, the film’s miniature special effects are impressive, making modern digital effects look inorganic in comparison. The detail and color contrast in Earthquake’s destruction sequences are striking – enough to warrant a look, especially for disaster fans.