The secret origin of the worst special effect in blockbuster history

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Use the elevator crash scene in the 1974 disaster film Earthquake, moving blood to avoid the film’s R rating.

Compared to the beginning of the sixties, the film industry at the beginning of the seventies was like night and day. A number of major box office failures and an outdated production system combined with the proliferation of high-quality TV shows put the film industry on the brink of extinction. As a testament to how bad things got, the venerable Warner Bros movie studio was sold twice between 1966 and the end of the decade, and those weren’t huge transactions either, with the company being bought in 1967 by Canadian film production company, Seven Arts Productions, for $32 million. Only, then the combined company was sold back to the Kinney National Company in 1969 for $64 million (Kinney, a thriving conglomerate that started as a parking lot company, bought DC Comics in 1967).

However, a freer art form that began in the late 1960s soon gave rise to a number of blockbuster and popular films in the 1970s (of the five most popular films of 1970, three were filmed for less than $3 million, including Love Story, The highest-grossing film of the year, as well as M*A*S*H and the documentary, Woodstock). However, 1970 also marked the beginning of a new trend in big studio disaster films when the $10 million disaster movie, Airport, earned $44 million in 1970 alone for Universal Studios.

Buoyed by the airport’s success, Universal hired producer Jennings Lang to direct another disaster film. Lang was inspired by the 1971 San Fernando earthquake to make a movie about the earthquake disaster. In early 1972, Lang hired from The Godfather, Mario Puzo to write a script for the project. Puzo submitted his first script that summer, but soon had to abandon the project as Paramount wanted to work on Godfather Part Two right away and Paramount had its first dibs in Puzo’s services. The project was put on the back burner at first, but then 20th Century Fox had a massive disaster movie of their own, The Poseidon Adventure, in the Christmas season of 1972. Universal made the Earthquake project a top priority for 1974. They’re also quick to direct a movie. His own disasters before The Towering Inferno, a rare joint venture between Fox and Warner Bros. (This may have been the first time that two major film studios had jointly produced a film.) Since The Towering Inferno was budgeted at twice that of Earthquake ($14 million vs. $7 million), Universal really wanted their movie to come out first, so it wouldn’t compare much with the bigger budget movie.

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The special effects of the earthquake were everywhere. A sound effect called “Sensurround” was invented for the movie, which uses these really powerful sound waves that would literally rock the stage. That was great and the miniature action of the movie was great, with some of the movie’s disaster scenes being used in other films (especially TV shows) for decades after the movie’s release. The film also won a Special Academy Award for Visual Effects.

Other effects were less impressive, like a strange camera effect designed to make it look like the iconic buildings on the Los Angeles skyline were looming back and forth from the earthquake. It didn’t work very well. The movie’s most famous special effect, though, was the absurdly funny elevator scene (in how bad that is).

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After the earthquake, a group of people in an architecture movie where the movie’s hero, Charlton Heston, works with his father-in-law, played by Lorne Green, trying to get to safety by riding an elevator.

This, of course, is stupid, but maybe in 1974, few people knew how bad the idea was? Anyway, the elevator naturally collapses to the torment of all the people on it. However, when it lands, the film just freezes and moving blood spots appear on the screen.

He’s mad.

Over the years, a myth has surfaced that the original version, which featured an explosion of blood as people all fell to the ground, was too bloody for observers, and thus the movie would have been rated R rather than PG that it was looking forward (this was before it was rated PG -13 something).

However, this appears to be a mistake. Laura Cremonini’s latest book, Horror Disasters Movies, notes that the film’s script supervisor’s notes simply indicated that the shot was never finished, and so they would have to fix it in editing, and it so happened that the “fix” was the horrible animated blood idea (when the movie was broadcast on TV blood scene removed).

You see, the scene was shot three times on March 26, March 27 and April 4, 1974. The big time gap was because the scene couldn’t be done. On that last day, a number of acrobats were injured, including Gary Eber and Stephanie Eber.

In the last scene you can already see some blood on the clothes from previous attempts to film the scene…

So it really looks like they simply couldn’t get the scene to be the way they wanted and because it was taking three attempts for a movie that was in a hurry to get to a specific deadline, then when you add on set hits during the scene plus the supervisor’s notes on the script, it looks like they’ve given up Just got the scene, so the scene can’t be cut because of the rating, because they’ve never started the scene!

The movie (which DID came out a month before The Towering Inferno. It could actually have been an October release, but focus groups caused the studio to cut half an hour of footage from the movie, including fairly important details about Heston’s character background) no It’s still a huge box office hit, despite grossing nearly $80 million (The Towering Inferno was a much more successful hit, though).

I’m going with the legend as…

Status: Error

Be sure to check out my archive of Unearthed Movie Legends for more urban legends about the movie world.

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write with your suggestions for future installments! My email address is [email protected].

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About the Author Brian Cronin (14,911 articles published)

CBR Senior Writer Brian Cronin has written professionally for comic books for over a dozen years now at CBR (primarily through his Comics Should Be Good column series, including Comic Book Legends Revealed) . He’s written two books on the Penguin-Random House comics – Was Superman a Spy? Other comic book legends revealed and why does Batman carry a shark repellent? And other amazing comic book trivia! And one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, from the Triumph books. His writing has been featured in ESPN.com, Los Angeles Times, About.com, Huffington Post, and Gizmodo. He presents myths about entertainment and sports on his website, Uncover Myths. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to email him suggestions for comic book stories you’d like to see featured at [email protected]!

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