DEATH SHIP (1980)

Fuck this old turd of a movie. I remember getting burned by this piece of shit back in the 1980’s, when your mom would only let you pick one (maybe two) movies to rent to last you the entire weekend…and that cover looked so goddamn wicked with the crusty old ship with the ghost face, so you get the movie home and it fucking blows! Like, literally nothing happens for the entire movie! A cruise ship is hit in the middle of the night by a haunted ship; a few boring survivors climb off a raft onto the death ship and that’s it. They just walk around looking at spider webs and empty hallways for the rest if the movie. It was Hell. And your entire weekend was ruined! Why didn’t I just rent HALLOWEEN II or TIME BANDITS again instead?! I was so stupid when I was a little kid. Idiot. I hate young me.

Fast-forward however many hundred years it’s been since 1983 and I rent the fucking movie again! Surely, it's better now that I'm a handsome adult with a girthy, veiny, pulsating brain to think with. Annnd...I swear to Satan, it’s even worse now that it was back then! How did this movie even get made? There’s three writers listed in the credits, but there isn’t a story.  Is there an actual script for this movie somewhere or did they just film some actors walking around a ship and then cobble it into a movie?

Watch it if you want. I don't give a fuck what you do. I'm ashamed to admit that I've watched this movie twice in my life. How embarrassing. That cover art is dope though. Maybe I should watch it again just to make sure.

Side note: while the movie is a complete turd, it was interesting to see George Kennedy and Richard Crenna in action. I think a lot of my anger for this movie still comes from it pissing me off so bad (with its boredom) as a kid.

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.