Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I really enjoyed the practical effects before CGI took over the film industry. This is the time when making disaster films was a huge challenge. This is decent film making at its best. The visual effects are incredible and is still good by today's standard. This must have been amazing at the time of release. Charlton Heston is a likable hero as usual. I enjoyed how the characters interacted with one another and how their characters developed during and after the disaster. The film did end rather abruptly, but it was an enjoyable action drama.

In the Golden era of Disaster movies, this film makes you care about the characters because of the excellent acting performances of the characters. Especially Charlton Heston and Genevieve Bujold.In 1974 the era of dazzling special effects were about to make their mark. This film for 1974 had some great special effects. I really connected with some of the characters in the movie. Especially the characters of Charlton Heston, Genevieve Bujold and her son, Ava Gardner,Lorne Green, George Kennedy and Richard Roundtree. One thing we see of movies from this era is the very realistic and engaging acting performances of actors and actresses of this era. You really feel the pain shock and grief at the end of Genevieve Bujold. After Heston survives all that. and then **** Contains Spoler **** When Heston decides to rather die with his wife than climb up to a new life and a new family with Genevive Bujold and his son.That ending is what makes this movie so special and moving. It showed the true tragedy of this film. The tremendous loss and what could have been. If the Earthquake didn't intervene. This movie also gives a glimpse of Los Angeles in 1974. Like at the end as the Dr said to George Kennedy if not for the damn earthquake. Los Angeles might actually be a very exciting and quite a nice place to live in. With its high standard of living,nice affluent suburbs for families (Charlton Heston and his wife were resident of in the movie) and very nice sunny California weather all swept away one day by one terrible earthquake as shown in the film.This movie also does what excellent disaster movies do. It questions is your life as stable and safe as you think it is when some disaster could strike at any moment and take it all away including your loved ones life and your life. I think the message we need to take away from Earthquake is that don't take your life however mundane for granted. Cherish every moment you have with your loved ones. We saw the meaning of that in Genevieve Bujold's face at the end. Top film with top acting performances albeit dealing with grim subject matter as is the case in the disaster movie genre. They certainly don't make movies like this anymore.

Earthquake is directed by Mark Robson, written by George Fox and Mario Puzo and stars Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Genevieve Bujold and Lorne Greene.Following the success of films like The Poseidon Adventure, Airport and The Towering Inferno along came Earthquake. Unlike many other films in this genre Earthquake is just terrible, it's characters are for the most part shallow and even unlikable and too much time is spent focusing on their lives and problems and not enough on the disaster itself.For the time the special effects were good and the film was released in cinemas with Sense Surround.There is a stellar cast in this film but sadly even they cannot save this one. Stuart(Charlton Heston) and Remy Graff(Ava Gardner) are a bickering married couple who can't stand each other. Graff is having an affair with single mother Denise(Genevieve Bujold) and she thinks he will leave his wife for her. The other characters we encounter include a stunt motor bike rider(Richard Roundtree), an embittered cop(George Kennedy)who befriends a young woman called Rosa(Victoria Principle)and Remy's rich dad(Lorne Greene). There's also a bizarre cameo from Walter Matthau playing a drunk.Apart from a couple of earthquake sequences that do look impressive and scary most of the effects look dated today and the film drags on much longer than it should do. One for disaster fans who want to see as many films from the genre as they can, for the rest of us this is one to avoid.

For a brief time within the 1970s, so-called "disaster films" became something of a genre all their own, and the heroic Charlton Heston was often featured in most of them. This one is Heston's first, as he plays a middle-aged architect in L.A. who realizes that the types of buildings he's helped erect should have been an obvious mistake for an area plagued by regular earthquakes. He's stuck in a dead pseudo marriage with a real bitch of a wife who you'd just love to slap (the aged but once-gorgeous Ava Gardner). Her dad (BONANZA's Lorne Greene) is Heston's boss and father-in-law (hold on a second... Greene and daughter Gardner are only a few years off in age ... what, did Lorne father her when he was seven??). Anyway, Heston's character is smart enough to be openly cheating on his old battle-ax with a younger chickie pooh (Genevieve Bujold).Of course the bizarre castings are always part of the charm of these "jeopardy pictures". So we've also got side plots with Richard Roundtree as an Evel Kenieval type of motorcycle daredevil, whose partner is played by Gabriel Dell (of the old Bowery Boys comedies). George Kennedy is a lot of fun as a hot-tempered cop who gets suspended from the police force for anger management issues. Marjoe Gotner plays a nerdy supermarket cashier who becomes a crazed gun-happy National Guardsman when pressed into public crisis mode -- and he's got the hots for a young and bosomy Victoria Principal (sporting a terrible afro). Walter Matthau provides intermittent comic relief as a drunk at a bar who remains oblivious to anything that's occurring around him in this disaster.There are a few earthquakes, with the Big Rumble being one occurring mid-movie that lasts several minutes, and levels all of Los Angeles. Chuck Heston joins Lorne Greene and George Kennedy in trying to save everybody else. The special effects still are mostly impressive and deliver the goods, except for an occasional misfire (like the spattered blood in a falling elevator). The main draw of a movie such as this is the catastrophic tragedy of it all, and this is well realized even if the sub stories going on around it are mainly fodder. When EARTHQUAKE was released in theaters in 1974, a special audio trick called "Sensurround" was developed to give the effect of the movie seats rumbling as if during an actual earthquake. **1/2 out of ****