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By
NICK ZEGARAC
Inheriting the mantel of
disaster thrillers from Ross Hunter's Airport
(1970), Mark Robson's Earthquake (1974) is a
fairly dull and uninspired all-star attempt to
capitalize on the decade's affinity for people in
peril scenarios that made other disaster epics
like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The
Towering Inferno (1974) such colossal hits. The
problem, however, with disaster movies is how best
and how quickly to integrate the natural calamity
with the human melodrama placed at its' forefront.
In Earthquake, this narrative dilemma is not
entirely resolved. For, unlike the close proximity
of a capsized ocean liner or entrapment by flames
inside a skyscraper, bringing together various
threads of the cultural iconography that is
greater Los Angeles to extol a single collective
empathy from its audience is not easily achieved.
The film attempts to loosely string together its
narrative around the central troubled romance
between larger than life construction engineer,
Stuart Graff (Charlton Heston, overplaying to the
max) and his estranged and jealous wife, Remy
Royce (Ava Gardner). In the meantime, Stu is
having relations of a friendly persuasion with
widow, Denise Marshall (Genevieve Bujold). To
spite Stu, Remy attempts to persuade her
curmudgeonly father, Sam (Lorne Greene), to use
subtle on-the-job threats to break up his new
romance.
But this story goes hopelessly awry with the
interruption of an alternative thread about rogue
policeman, Lew Slade (George Kennedy) who has been
suspended from the L.A.P.D. Slovenly, drunk and
angry, Slade contemplates quitting the force
before L.A.'s calamitous natural disaster
convinces him to don the blue and white once more.
Cut to Jody (Marjoe Gortner), a perverted and
bigoted grocery store manager cum Peeping Tom who
is sex crazed for relatively naïve Rosa Amici
(Victoria Principal) sister of staunch Italian,
Sal (Gabriel Dell). Sal is an assistant to Miles
Quade (Richard-Shaft…can you dig it?-Roundtree),
on this occasion miscast as an aspiring motorcycle
daredevil. But before any of these glimpses into
private life can be more fully explored, Los
Angeles experiences a titanic eruption from the
center of the earth, sending skyscrapers tumbling,
streets imploding into pits of fire, and, dams
bursting forth with epic floods…dare I say, the
gnashing of teeth?!? Who will survive? After a few
brief moments of shake, rattle and roll, the more
likely question is who among the paying customers
cares?
The problem with a film solely based around an
earthquake (as opposed to a classic melodrama like
San Francisco 1936 which is essentially a love
story about redemption of the human heart and soul
in which an earthquake just happens to strike) is
that the natural phenomenon (unlike a fire or
sinking liner) is relatively short lived. Outside
of a few violent moments of shifting beneath
everyone's feet, the earthquake in Earthquake
takes little more than seven minutes to unfold;
the aftermath of which are a series of aftershocks
and Jody running amuck with a marauding gang of
motorcyclists who are into pillaging store fronts
and raping some of the sexy -- if slightly bruised
-- locals during the recovery efforts. Overall,
the matte paintings and miniatures effectively
realize the actual quake -- but the results are
too little too late and much too brief to make for
a two hour plus disaster epic. Save a couple of
obvious matte shots with superimposed live action
in the foreground, most of the visual effects hold
up nicely under close scrutiny. The acting however
is pure camp.
The film's tagline bills it as 'an event,' but
actually Earthquake is much more a monumental
mouse than a ferocious lion. The anamorphic DVD
from Universal is fairly impressive with solid
accurate colors, rich blacks and generally
balanced contrast levels. Film grain is present
throughout but not terribly distracting.
Accurately assessing the general unimportance of
this film in the annals of disaster classics,
Universal Home Video offers us nothing but the
film and two alternative audio tracks to enjoy --
the original 3 track stereo mix and a newly minted
5.1. Both are relatively undistinguished. The 5.1
actually plays more like re-channeled 3 track than
an actual full fledged remix. Bottom line:
Earthquake is a film for people who enjoy bad
movies. It's not a disaster classic, and the only
'event' will undoubtedly be in how many people you
invite over to watch this clunker that are still
left awake by the final credit sequence. |
