When the big one finally hits L.A.

Starring: Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Ava Gardner, Lorne Greene, Geneviève Bujold, Richard Roundtree, Marjoe Gortner, Victoria Principal

DML Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - great

"I think there are still people alive down there and I want to get them out!" - Stewart Graff

Why watch this? Heston in the middle of a huge disaster... He's the perfect man-of-action I want in charge.

Plot Summary: The people of Los Angeles find their lives disrupted and thrown into chaos by a catastrophic earthquake. Among them are an architect dealing with marital problems and a new romance, a suspended police officer, and a seismologist predicting further disasters. The film follows their struggles for survival amidst the destruction and their interwoven stories as they attempt to cope with the aftermath of the quake.

Dad's Preview: I love well-done disaster films. I'm also a huge Chuck Heston fan, so this epic, filmed in Sensurround (the theater actually shook during the quake sequences), blew me away. As a determined kid, I saw it in theaters over ten times. What the film does well is fully develops its characters. It also realistically depicts a massive quake in a very crowded city. Who will survive the initial disaster and the aftershocks to follow? For its time, the effects were pretty darn good. I still cringe when the truckload of cattle careens off the collapsing overpass bridge. Dang!

The Filmmakers Group; Universal Pictures