Review of Earthquake (1974) by Stuart K — 06 Feb 2015

Directed by Mark Robson (Von Ryan's Express (1965), Valley of the Dolls (1967) and Avalanche Express (1979)), and written by Mario Puzo (The Godfather (1972) and Superman (1978)), this disaster film was one in many that followed the successes of Airport (1970) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Hollywood wanted more and more disaster films, and while some were dodgy, this was a good one.

In Los Angeles, one worker at the Mulholland Dam drowns after a routine inspection is interrupted by a violent tremor, which is picked up by the Californian Seismological Institute, which is ran by Dr.

Willis Stockle (Barry Sullivan), who calls the National Guard and the Police to be on the safe side. However, that turns out not to be enough, as a massive earthquake, measuring 9.9 on the Richter Scale, destroys much of Los Angeles.

Residents such as Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston), his wife Remy Royce-Graff (Ava Gardner), his boss and father in-law Sam Royce (Lorne Greene), police Sgt. Lou Slade (George Kennedy) and stuntman Miles Quade (Richard Roundtree) all have to survive.

It's you're typical disaster movie fare, but the limited running time doesn't give it much room to breathe, or to develop the characters and their back stories of how they're thrown together in all this.

But it doesn't seem to matter once the earthquake hits, as it looks absolutely brilliant on screen.