Back before the movies became obsessed with superheroes, for about a decade it seemed like audiences couldn’t get enough of things breaking down. Planes (Airport, 1970); cruise liners (The Poseidon Adventure, 1972); condos (The Towering Inferno, 1974). There was a palpable thirst for mass destruction as veteran movie stars and up-and-coming ingenues struggled to make it to the end credits.
In this lighthearted lecture, actor and comedian David C Jones is our guide to the heyday of the disaster movie, an era long-gone but not forgotten… Following the talk, David will be back to introduce a special 50th Anniversary screening of Earthquake, starring Charlton Heston and the ubiquitous George Kennedy, in its full Sensurround glory via our freshly installed sound system.
About Earthquake:
This is the Big One: Who doesn’t want to see Los Angeles burn? There is an awful lot of falling debris in Universal’s contribution to the 70s Disaster Movie craze; much of it directed at Charlton Heston’s noble brow. Mario Puzo cowrote the human interest stuff, but the real selling point here is concrete, crumbling; dams cracking; fly overs collapsing; the city of Angels reduced to rubble. All recorded in glorious Sensurround, a sound system heavy on the bass and meant to put you right in the middle of the action.
Although no one has yet produced the feelies that Aldous Huxley evoked in Brave New World — in which a love scene on a bearskin rug transmitted every hair of the bear, and there were aromas of newmown hay and kidney pudding, while a kiss on the lips or a blow on the skull were felt by everyone in the audience — Mark Robson’s “Earthquake” makes an awesome stab in that direction. The dam breaking, floods rising, bodies falling, towers crashing or burning, the earth heaving, pavements parting and the random explosions are all enhanced by Sensurround: special vibrations on the soundtrack cause your spine and your throat to tingle. (You may also wonder if they curdle the brain cells.)
Nora Sayre, New York Times
High drama, tension, special effects, carnage, camp drama, afro-tastic kidnapping and so much 70s hippy mania – it is a guilty pleasure. This is one of those films that gets better on each watch.
Simon Smith, I Love Disaster Movies!
David C Jones
Mark Robson
Charlton Heston, Genevieve Bujold, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Green, Victoria Pincipal, Richard Roundtree, plus the City of Los Angeles
USA
1974
English
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Credits
Screenwriter
George Fox, Mario Puzo
Cinematography
Philip H. Lathrop
Editor
Dorothy Spencer
Original Music
John Williams
Production Design
Alexander Golitzen
Art Director
E. Preston Ames
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