Earthquake

The goings-on of a group of interrelated Angelenos, some ties direct, others more loose, are told on a specific day. Ex-football star Stewart Graff works as an engineer at his father-in-law Sam Royce's major construction company, and while nepotism may have been the reason for him initially getting the job, Stewart has proven himself as a first class engineer. There is strife between Stewart and his wife, Sam's daughter Remy, who will use whatever means, including suicide attempts via overdose of sleeping pills, to get Stewart's attention. Remy rightfully assumes that Stewart is having an affair with struggling actress Denise Marshall, a mother of an adolescent son and the widow of Stewart's colleague who died on the job of a project to which Stewart assigned him. Lew Slade is a beat cop who contemplates quitting in bureaucracy often getting in the way of doing what he knows is the public good. Motorcycle daredevil Miles Quade is testing out a new stunt which he hopes will make him the next Evel Knievel. Miles wants to use his manager Sal Amici's pretty young sister Rosa Amici to help promote the stunt. Rosa has caught the attention of supermarket manager Jody Joad, a bullied loner with a God complex. This day, the city has experienced a series of minor earthquakes which have led to some not yet widely reported deaths. Walter Russell, an assistant on a research project at the California Seismological Institute, believes that a major earthquake is imminent, he needing to convince anyone with authority to do anything about at least providing a warning. When that major earthquake does hit as Walter predicted, the interrelationships between the aforementioned people are heightened in what for many is a matter of life or death, only exacerbated if the dam is breached. The original theatrical showings of this film were in a new special effects process called Sensurround, sound effects meant to mimic the movement in a major earthquake.