Earthquake (1974)

Earthquake (1974)

Dir. Mark Robson

A collective of Los Angeles residents have their personal dramas thrown into perspective when a huge quake hits the city, causing chaos on the streets and prompting office workers to fall out of skyscraper windows. Among the affected are hydroelectric dam technicians, a successful businessman, a cop, a stunt bike driver, and a part-time actress with a young son.

It tries hard to make its mini-dramas relatable to its audience, but the highlight of the whole affair is the execution and inventiveness of the destruction within and around the sets and models. The matte paintings are great, too.

Of the ensemble cast, Charlton Heston was probably the bigger star at the time, but it's George Kennedy as the aforementioned cop that I'll remember most. (Coincidently, both men were in the movie that I watched the night before, made and released in the same year: Airport 1975. It wasn't very good, though.)

Earthquake was hugely successful at the box office, but it didn't stay on top for long. Just one month later The Towering Inferno (1974) hit screens and took the Disaster genre's crown.

Meteor (1979)

Meteor (1979)

Dir. Ronald Neame

A disaster movie that doesn't have just an ocean liner or skyscraper under threat, it has the entire world! Even so, it's mostly standard fare, except for an unexpected edge that I won't reveal. It doesn't prevent the script from being predictable, but it does provide a viewer with an interesting angle from which to examine certain events.

Sean Connery is the practical, opinionated and steadfast Scot saving the world from a natural disaster in an ever-decreasing time frame. A solution may exist, but dare they use it? Ooh.

In the process, Sean even manages to build a cultural bridge between the American/Russian divide using his renowned sex-appeal. If he could bottle that he could make enough money to buy all of England and cast it off into the sea.

The Towering Inferno (1974)

The Towering Inferno (1974)

Dir. John Guillermin + Irwin Allen (action scenes). 

Previously it was a watery death at sea that producer Irwin Allen had an ensemble cast try to escape from, now it's a fiery one on land. They're opposing elements, but the end result is a similar kind of Disaster movie.

With a story adapted from two different novels (The Tower by R.M. Stern; The Glass Inferno by T.N. Scortia and F.M. Robinson), neither of which I've read, the script doesn't rush to the big event, but nor does it dally.

An epic establishing shot gets us to where the (hot) shit goes down. Thereafter the two male leads, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, are cleverly kept apart for the longest time but are dependent on each other's skills at crucial moments throughout.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Dirs. Ronald Neame / Irwin Allen (uncredited)

Revellers on board the luxury cruise liner Poseidon enjoy their New Year's Eve party oblivious to the giant party-pooping wave that's thundering toward them... until it hits!

Produced by master of disaster flicks Irwin Allen, Poseidon is a thoroughly enjoyable but admittedly pretty awful journey from the bowels of hell to the light of day for a small and varied collection of individuals who realise that they must band together if they're to have any hope of escape.

With plenty of rationalising and moralising along the way the ensemble cast do their best with the material, and by the end we know exactly why each character was included and what basic emotion they were required to appeal to, a task that most of them do rather well, I'm happy to say.

I know that it's basically trash given the big screen treatment, but I love it. Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters and Roddy McDowall all together on a sinking ship? Hell, yes.