Earthquake (1974)
Directed by Mark Robson
Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.
8 connections found
View:
8 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Earthquake to
At least Earthquake -- a clear inspiration for this film, even if its release date of 1974 makes it seem as long ago as the Dead Sea Scrolls -- jumped between characters and showed a real L.A. populated by cowards and heroes, daredevils and madmen, Charlton Heston and Richard Roundtree.
It’s essentially a remake/ripoff of the 1974 disaster movie nadir “Earthquake,” only there’s only a handful of characters, not the usual three or four dozen.
Earthquakes haven't been exploited at the movies as much as one would think (most prominently in 1974's Earthquake, which brought us the Sensurround gimmick), but those with long-memories can cross-reference 1997's Dante's Peak and Volcano, which are more or less the same movie as (each other and) San Andreas, except with geysers of lava.
And as we all know, sound technology has come a long way since the 1974 Charlton Heston “Earthquake” movie introduced audiences to something called SenSurround.
Of course, San Andreas is really about destruction, and the orgy of cracking earth, collapsing dams, tumbling buildings, and rushing tsunamis is all expertly rendered, missing only the theater-shaking gimmick of Sensurround, which shook audiences watching Irwin Allen’s infamous Earthquake (1974).
Even 1974’s Earthquake at least had sensurround and seats that shook.
It’s there in the short-lived SensurroundTM technology designed to make whole theaters playing the 1974 disaster movie Earthquake rumble in time with the action onscreen; in Harry Smith’s never-realized dream of showing his alchemical cut-out-animation epic Heaven and Earth Magic to audiences seated in chairs modeled after objects featured in the film, including watermelons and eggs; in Abel Gance’s triple-screen Napoleon .
El filme, dirigido por el bastante pasable Jon Amiel (La Emboscada, Sommersby), cumple perfectamente con los parámetros de las películas de desastres que tanto auge tuvieron a mediados de los 50 (como representaciones simbólicas del miedo estadounidense al comunismo y las consecuencias de la Guerra Fría) y a finales de los 90 (con el miedo inherente al mentado cambio de milenio que, supuestamente, traería una serie de calamidades para la humanidad), de las cuales algunos ejemplos van desde El Dïa Que Paralizaron La Tierra (The Day The Earth Stood Still, 1951) hasta Terremoto (Earthquake, 1974), Día de la Independencia (Independence Day, 1996), Tornado (Twister, 1997) o Armageddon (1998).
The genre features natural disasters like Charlton Heston avoiding a cracking earth in 1974’s “Earthquake,” or Steve McQueen and Paul Newman fighting for top billing as they try to put out a skyscraper fire in the human-made disaster epic “The Towering Inferno.”
Advertisement
The only thing missing from "Everest" would be a movie poster with stars' photos accompanied by the slogan from 1974's "Earthquake" -- "Who will survive?"
Of course, in the tradition of such ensemble-rich Hollywood disaster flicks as The Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake (1978), 2012 offers up a lot of talented actors getting paid obscene amounts of money to ham it up in support roles in front of a green screen – Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Stephen McHattie, Jimi Mistri and George Segal all get to ask 'What was that?", roll their eyes a lot and die or fall in love.
And the makers of Earthquake even possessed the ingenuity to cast 52-year-old Ava Gardner as 59-year-old Lorne Greene's daughter.
This is 1974's "Earthquake" redux only without Chuck Heston, Marjoe Gortner and Victoria Principal.