Earthquake Movies Thread

M

Mom to Matt & Makayla

New member
Hi
What are your best Earthquake Movies?

I rally like

The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake 1990

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Los-Angeles-Earthquake-VHS/dp/6302296935

Also

Earthquake 1974 is quite good with Charlton Heston

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071455/combined

Others I have seen are including TV are listed here

10.5: Apocalypse
2012 2009 Roland Emmerich
Aftershock: Earthquake in New York
Crack in the World 1965 - Another Favourite
Epicenter 2000
Ground Zero 2000 Syfy film
Nature Unleashed Earthquake

I have left out Volcano's here as I will do another thread for them.

But I have missed any films out that have Earthquakes here please post them.
 
You musn't forget the classic 1936 San Francisco - the earthquake sequence is still an exciting cacophany of editing and special effects today, and the staging of it - with no 'build up' as such, starting off as background noise during a key dramatic scene - is genius too.

There are also some Japanese films from the 70s which are unfortunately very hard to get hold of. Jishin Retto was released on VHS in the early 80s as 'Megaforce 7.9', I have a copy of it. It's the really corny kind of melodrama you expect from an American 70s disaster film, with the added bonus of comical dubbing - until the earthquake kicks in, which is really well done and quite scary even if some of the effects are ropey/stock footage, the sequence also goes on a very long time and is quite gruelling. Obviously a battered old pan and scan VHS gives no indication of what the film must look like in a good clean print in its original aspect ratio.

There's another couple of Japanese entrants, their titles are unprouncable but are basically translated as 'The Sinking Of Japan' (there was a remake a few years ago filled with CGI) and 'The Last Days Of Planet Earth'. The latter was apparently so grim it was banned in Japan for political reasons. Unfortunately, both are very elusive except in awful cut down, dubbed and re-edited American video versions, although bootleg OAR and subtitled full length cuts are apparently available.
 
I love disaster movies!

Earthquake will always stand out for me because we lived in Mexico City when this was released. You may or may not know that Mexico has a lot of earthquakes, there are tremors so often I couldn't sleep if the ornaments on my shelf WEREN'T jiggling together lol

I was 11 at the time and we went to see it in a massive cinema, and they were using Sensurround to give the feeling of tremors actually happening.

I was so terrified, having experienced the real deal, that I ran to the back of the cinema and - after arguing a bit with the usher (it was '74 lol) - I persuaded her to let me stand at the back and watch from there.

Sorry for the story, just brought back a fun memory lol :)
 
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