Earthquake
A few things have always baffled me about Earthquake.
1. Why does nobody in authority believed anyone who says that an earthquake is imminent even when they are very well aware that they live in a part of the world which is particularly prone to such a disaster.
2. Why is Ava Gardner, still beautiful in the mid-1970s, made to look like a bad female impersonator?
3. Where did Victoria Principal get that extraordinary wig from?
Quite apart from this, the film has a number of obvious shortcomings. It’s one of the ugliest major films I’ve ever seen, looking like a very cheap TV movie - indeed, I’ve seen episodes of “Columbo” which looked better than this. This is a problem not only because its unattractive but because it doesn’t serve the special effects well at all. The latter are still halfway impressive but the matte paintings, good as they are, still look stubbornly like matte paintings.
It’s also undercast with a host of faces who are imported from television, often unconvincingly - Lorne Green looks uncomfortable without his horse and George Kennedy never even begins to look like a cop, tough or otherwise. Compared to “The Towering Inferno”, this is weak stuff indeed.
Worst, it’s not very entertaining. The opening hour is grimly slow, establishing characters who are never more than cardboard, and the second hour has about two set-pieces and a lot of tiresome running around. It’s not even unintentionally funny.