Showing posts with label disaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disaster. Show all posts

Friday, March 31, 2023

EARTHQUAKE (1974)

[Note: For this review I watched both the 122-minute Theatrical Cut and the 142-minute Television Cut. Screenshots are from both versions, but mostly the Theatrical Cut.]

At the California Seismological Institute, a lowly graduate assistant comes up with some computations showing that a major earthquake is going to hit Los Angeles...today. He tells his superiors, but they just won't listen. They just won’t listen! Oh god why? Why!? Oh, the humanity! Across town, construction engineer Charlton Heston is rumbling and grumbling about buildings not being built beyond the current codes. He’s also rumbling and grumbling on top a single mom while his old bag wife is at home faking suicide attempts and crying to her father…who’s also Charlton’s boss. Yikes. At the same time, there are multiple other pre-disaster stories going on, including Shaft riding a motorcycle; ex-child preacher Marjoe Gortner as a peeping tom stalking a pre-Dallas Victoria Principal; two nerds in an airplane having a boring conversation; George Kennedy as a LAPD cop getting shitfaced in a bar while Walter Matthau mumbles nearby.

For a mid-1970's disaster flick, EARTHQUAKE is mildly entertaining. I enjoyed the buildup and seeing what was going on in everybody lives. I especially enjoyed seeing Los Angeles in 1974. The earthquake itself looked great, but for whatever reason, the post-earthquake scenes were mostly snoozers. They sound promising on paper (flooding due to a busted dam, psycho soldier gunning down innocent civilians, workers trying to escape a wrecked skyscraper, etc.), but none of them really clicked with me.

Solid acting by a strong cast, good pace that slows as the film moves along, disappointing ending, impressive stunts, truly impressive matte paintings and models, animated blood, tons of vintage cars and fashions, Heston topless, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s hedge, an accidental motorcycle accident and a really weird set decoration where Victoria Principal has a photograph of her brother on her apartment wall…but the picture is a still from a previous scene in the movie! It brought to mind that brain-melting photograph in LADY TERMINATOR.

EARTHQUAKE is totally worth watching for vintage disaster movie fans, but others will probably find it dated and goofy.

Fun fact: you might be asking yourself how is the Theatrical Version 122 minutes and the TV Version 142 minutes long? Good question. EARTHQUAKE was originally released in the theaters in 1974 and then broadcast on NBC in 1976. They wanted to make it into a two-night “event”, but the film wasn’t long enough, so they added a few scenes that were previously deleted and then, in a truly bizarre turn of events, they filmed new scenes and added them into the movie to pad the runtime! Not only does this included new characters, but they even called back some of the original actors to film more scenes!

I’ve also read that in some television markets, the audio to the film was simulcast on a local radio station so you could really crank up the scenes of Ava Gardner and Charlton Heston fighting. And, I guess, the earthquake also.

Monday, February 6, 2023

METEOR (1979)

A pissed off comet punches a large asteroid in the nuts and now that 5-mile-wide sucker (plus various smaller fragments) is going to hit the Earth in 6 days! Ahh, crap. Luckily, the Americans have a top-secret satellite with 14 nuclear missiles on it. Unfortunately, 14 missiles isn’t enough to stop the asteroid from evolving into a…meteor!!!

On paper, METEOR sounds like a promising film: exciting story (anything about shit crashing into the Earth is awesome); a cast full of well-known faces (at least for the time) and a respectable budget of $16 million (remember ALIEN came out the same year and only cost $11 million). But on paper doesn’t guarantee on-screen excellence. Nope. I have no clue what happened in the making of this clunker, but METEOR is a goddamn turd! I haven’t been this disappointed since the last time I walked into a Best Buy.

The story takes off quickly enough with Hercules satellite designer Sean Connery being informed of the asteroid and put in charge of getting Hercules ready to blast that global killing son of a bitch out of the sky. At the same time, US President Henry Fonda gets Russia to admit that they also have a top-secret satellite armed with nuclear missiles. So the Russians send over a scientist and Sean Connery immediately starts trying to bang interpreter Natalie Wood. Motherfucker, ain’t you got better shit to focus on?! Blah, blah, blah, it goes on and on with all kinds of conversations and romance and bickering. Fuck me. I just want to see some sappy ass heroics and shit blowing up. And don’t even get me started on the special effects. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century looked better.

Long story, short: METEOR is mildly entertaining and fun to laugh at, but if you’re looking for an actually good late-1970’s asteroid story then A FIRE IN THE SKY would be a better bet. Or, you could always just say fuck it and watch ARMAGEDDON again for the hundredth time.