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I saw this movie at the Strand when it first came out-we didnt have the 'Sensurround' in the ancient movie house in Paw Paw.
This movie has ok F/X-the shakey cam thing was kinda lame-but ok  for the time -but dam-it's stupid.
Lotsa good actors wasted over emoting...the only selling point is seeing famous people in an earthquake.Its an overblown Movie of the Week.
Walter Matthau as a drunk in hippie clothes is inane.Ava Gardner as the daughter of Lorne Greene? And all the TV style drama is predictable.
I did like Marjoe Gortner as the perv National Guardsman,though.
This was the 70's-AIRPORT (197o) set off a slew of disaster films-the POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1971),the TOWERING INFERNO (1974),all the f**king AIRPLANE sequels-which prompted the great AIRPLANE! (1980)-all with all star casts getting killed. Of course crap like this still sells-look at INTO THE STORM (2014)-same cheezy stuff-no all star cast-GAWD-now thats an AWFUL movie!

Of course I seen most of them at the Strand in the 70's.Hey-I seen lotsa s**t at the Strand-where else could you catch a double bill of RACE WITH THE DEVIL and PSYCHIC KILLER?

http://youtu.be/yV88FanNJlU (http://youtu.be/yV88FanNJlU)

Written by Mario Puzo? Was he asleep when he wrote this?

I was going to make a thread about this and how bad this actually is - I saw it twice in the last two months on AMC / MGM - but I agree. It really is an overblown Movie Of The Week. The acting is blah, the action OK and the FX are great but the whole thing is just..... meh.  :tongueout:


Very likely.  :buggedout: :wink:

Why is Victoria Principal the main thing I remember about that movie?

(http://i702.photobucket.com/albums/ww28/jackc8/740-3_zps53c0a284.jpg)

No clue, brother, I have no clue.  :teddyr: :teddyr:

I love that Gabriel Dell is not looking at her in this scene.  :teddyr: :teddyr:

 :lookingup:   :cheers:

What can I say, SisterN: I love bad movies.  :teddyr:

Riffing while L.A. collapses about it's self...that just seem SO right.  :teddyr:

I won't dispute the movie of the week feel, still I remember really enjoying this one but then I also have practically all the 1970s disaster flicks in my collection and many from the 90s/2000s too.

I just watched THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE this week on TCM... I think that is kind of a good movie, even if it is absurd and implausible. 

Now EARTHQUAKE (which I saw when it was new in SENSURROUND = snicker) and enjoyed it as a kid.  BUT, it does kind of STINK.   :teddyr:

I remember seeing this in Sensurround (which was basically the same as listening a big, loud subwoofer).  If you want to enjoy MAXIMUM BADNESS, try to see the pasted-together TV version.  They basically took the theatrical version and added new scenes to make the movie longer.  I believe they showed it in two nights like a mini-series.  All I remember about the added TV scenes was something about a plane and the runway cracking . . . and the bad acting.

Many people have forgotten the very bad Paul Newman volcano movie WHEN TIME RAN OUT.  It's basically a cross between THE TOWERING INFERNO (no one will listen to Paul Newman until it's too late) and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (Newman leads a rag-tag group of survivors across the island to avoid the flowing lava).  In fact, some of the Towering Inferno (Newman and William Holden) and Poseidon Adventure (Ernest Borgnine and Red Buttons) actors are in it.  And if that isn't enough, Pat Morita and Alex Karras are in it . . . as well as Burgess Meredith who plays a tightrope walker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWx2mp3uJGA

I have only the vaguest memories of "Earthquake," cuz I was probably 9 or 10 at the most when I last saw it on TV in the late 70s. At the time the biggest deal for me was that Lorne Greene, who I knew as Commander Adama from "Battlestar Galactica," was in it. :D

I seem to remember reading somewhere that even tho Ava Gardner was playing Lorne Greene's daughter, in reality there was only an eight or ten year age difference between them.

I loved "Poseidon Adventure" though, I've seen that one a bunch of times and it still holds up fairly well, better than most of the 70s disaster flicks.

I remember loving "The Towering Inferno" when I was a kid too, but I revisited it a couple of years ago and found it dreadfully boring... it took forever for anything to happen in that movie... though I did get a chuckle at seeing O.J. Simpson (in what I believe was his acting debut) as the building security guard, who spent most of the movie kicking down apartment doors and gazing into smoky rooms saying "Hello? (cough) Is anyone in there (cough)?"

Another one I always liked (in spite of the heavy layer of cheez) is 1979's "Meteor" with Sean Connery and Natalie Wood, which came in on the ass end of the disaster movie cycle. Michael Bay's "Armageddon" was essentially a remake of this flick, with 100 times the budget and a million times the stupid. It kinda signaled the end of the disaster movie trend, tho, cuz it tanked at the box office and pretty much put Samuel Z. Arkoff's American International Pictures out of business....

The most startling thing about METEOR  (1979)  is this-

(http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah192/mydoginky/tumblr_nh4ueiRuQs1spnykgo1_1280_zpsfe1c5bd1.jpg) (http://s1380.photobucket.com/user/mydoginky/media/tumblr_nh4ueiRuQs1spnykgo1_1280_zpsfe1c5bd1.jpg.html)

Weird crazy.
 f**ked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIwF60gHa_4

Yep, if memory serves one of the Twin Towers is hit by the meteor, which tips it over into the other building and they both go down.

That scene was noticeably absent the last time I saw the movie on SyFy channel five or six years ago.

EARTHQUAKE (1974) on TCM 10pm est TONIGHT! 

actually i like this one and though it's not a favorite film of mine by any means i still enjoy it and i have seen it a few times through the years. it's a guilty pleasure of mine

Dont get me wrong! Id watch it again today! Ill take EARTHQUAKE over s**t like Dance Moms or American Idol any day!
I LOVE bad movies-this one is very enjoyable in a weird 70s way-its like the tv show The Love Boat with mass destruction!

http://youtu.be/ZmUlKPthrag (http://youtu.be/ZmUlKPthrag)

Now...sweet f**king Satan-this was the WORST TV show EVER-and the song made me sick-still does-jebus f**king christ onna cross-I almost had a little puke come up in my mouth by gagging-I drank a lot last night-ughhhh...

EARTHQUAKE is way better than "The Love Boat".  I've recently watched one or two episodes (sux). 

when i was a kid i'm 36 by the way, i loved the show and i don't remember watching it 1st run at all. but in when it was in reruns i did watch it all the time. now would i watch it today i have no idea what i would think about it. another thing i used to call it is the love orange. if you are curious why as a kid i picked that i have no idea i think the idea of just making fun of the theme song and being a kid where that was something clean compared to what i'd prolly think of now at my age. he he. is what made is so funny and yes so stupid at the same time as well.

wasn't Earthquake a big hit back than as well? in the 70's they did do some great movies like this, the as it's been said the P.I. adventure i think is a great film. now if you watch the (1979) sequel that movie is simply awful and should be riffed ASAP! by MSTK3000

And then there was "San Andreas." Every time I see the trailer for that, I get flashbacks to "Earthquake."

"San Andreas" and most of the other films being released between now and the end of the year, are going to make a ton of money, but . . .?! Are any of them "good?" Normally, outside of this board, I don't pay attention to the reviews, but . . .?! Because I am going to see so few of them, I think I will pay attention to the reviews, if only to see how "good" many of them are.

LOVE BOAT movie I'd watch? The ship gets torpedoed by a 'mystery sub', runs aground on the shores of an uncharted desert isle, and suddenly the crew and passengers have to fight off Dr. Moreau's 'manimals' and a herd of mutant pirates.
And only Gilligan and the castaways can save them from the evil Mr. Howl...

1stly that sounds like a film that Charles band would make he he. and that does sound like it'd be a fun movie too

Earthquake isn't all that far removed seems to me to more modern era disaster films...