Earthquake, April 7

Super Sensurround Simulation by Meyer Sound!

Are you ready to rumble? With Earthquake, Hollywood really hit bottom—bottom end, that is. This is the first and still greatest of the Sensurround spectacles, special prints aided by a gizmo that filled the theater with waves of bodacious bass. In this box-office toppler, a massive temblor devastates the City of Angels, interrupting the soap-like suffering of several Angelenos. They include Charlton Heston as an adulterous engineer who chooses the well-constructed Geneviève Bujold over the metal fatigue of Ava Gardner, and George Kennedy, a rogue cop hunting down the evangelical likes of Marjoe Gortner, a store manager bent on wholesale lunacy. Nothing is safe from Sensurround, not the disc-like Capitol Records building that shakes, rattles, and rolls, nor the executive-filled tower at Universal Studios that warps like a cheap mirror trick. An unproduced sequel to Earthquake had the survivors of this L.A. Basin bash relocating to San Francisco. On a Richter scale of bad decisions, that one was a 7.4.

—Steve Seid

• Written by George Fox, Mario Puzo. Photographed by Philip Lathrop. With Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Geneviève Bujold. (123 mins, Sensurround, Color, 35mm, From Universal Pictures.) Special thanks to Helen and John Meyer and Brian Long of Meyer Sound.