Showing posts with label George Kennedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Kennedy. 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.

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

CREEPSHOW 2 (1987)

Remember that scene in SILVER BULLET where the drunk dad was watching wrasslin’ on TV and the one wrestler kicked the other one in the nuts and the drunk dad yelled out “Ow!  That's it.  Oh, that hurt my parts!”? Well, that’s how I felt watching this dick-kickin' collection of short stories.

Old Chief Wood’nhead

Why not start out the movie with easily the worst story?  That's always a good idea. An older couple live in an small desert town that has dried up and blown away. They run a dilapidated general store with an old wooden Indian standing outside. One evening, three local low-life’s come in and rob the place. Killing the couple in the process. This pisses off the wooden Indian (not enough to stop the crime obviously) and he says “Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it.” and kills the criminals in boring ways.  Skip it.

The Raft

The highlight of this turd fest.  Four boring, twenty-something year-old teenagers drive out to a remote watering hole to smoke weed and swim. Once there, they swim out to a stationary raft in the middle of the lake and before you can say "They should make a sequel to THE HORSE WHISPERER called THE HORSE WHISPERER 2: THE SHIT-TALKER where all the horse whisperer does is saunter up to the horse and talk hella shit right in its ear 'Listen here, you carrot-chewing motherfucker...' and '...you know that glue factory down the road?'  Stuff like that." they discover the lake is also home to a floating garbage bag.  It swims around the raft at about the speed on a one-legged duck (0.5 duck knots) and somehow manages to pick off these idiots one at a time.  Yawn.  THE BLOB it's not.

The Hitch-hiker

A cheating wife is rushing home from the filming of Boner Jams 87' in order to beat her husband who’s been away at work, when she runs over a hitchhiker. She ain’t got time for that shit and leaves him to bleed out on the side of the road. Next thing you know, the hitchhiker (or his ghost or whatever) is hanging all over her car yelling out "Thanks for the ride, lady!" over and over and over. His body getting more and more mutilated as she smashes him into a tree and even shoots him a few times. I remember thinking this was extremely funny when I was teenager, but I must have been drinking mushroom Kool-Aid or high because I didn’t find it funny at all now as a handsome adult. Then again, I’m grumpy as fuck. Grrr!

In conclusion, CREEPSHOW 2 is underwhelming and boring. I’m sure the filmmakers intentions were in the right place and they didn’t mean to relentlessly turbo shit mad dookie diarrhea poo-poo (with just a squirt of pee-pee) all over the audiences eyeballs, but they did and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Skip it. Unless you're drinking mushroom Kool-Aid, because then apparently it's hilarious. "Thanks for the ride, lady!"

Part 1 - Creepshow (1982)
Part 3 - Creepshow 3 (2006)