The Backlash Of Camp In The Film Earthquake

Throughout film history camp has been an ever looming presence, filmmakers have to ask themselves will audiences be able to buy into the drama of the characters and story? A genre that has defiantly felt the backlash of camp is the disaster cycle of the 1970’s, but when does a film from this cycle, like Earthquake (1974) go from spectacle to camp? The first component that can lead film in the camp territory is the weak characters generally found in these movies. A film like Earthquake is full of characters like this from the tough leading man (Charlton Heston), to the hardened blue collar cop (George Kennedy), and even to the unnecessary crazy human villain of the film (Marjoe Gortner). Having paper thin characters like these make it hard on an audience to be drawn into the drama and emotion the characters go through on the screen, and when the audience isn’t drawn into the drama they can find themselves laughing at how silly the situations are. A great example comes near the very end of the movie when Heston’s wife, Remi (Ava Gardner) has her fingers stepped on while she is climbing a ladder to safety, which unfortunately causes her to fall to her untimely doom. This is a

The film almost instantly falls into this category of camp before the titular disaster strikes the screen. The filmmakers foreshadow that the earthquake will be coming soon, with the characters at the dam and the laboratory pointing out that something screwy is up. So when Heston’s girlfriend, Denise (Genevieve Bujold) decides that she wants to visit some nameless/unknown friend who lives on a hillside, the audience starts to notice that the filmmakers themselves are pulling the strings and have put Denise in an incredibly contrived situation that is life threatening. Once again the audience starts to laugh, instead of being drawn into the drama and suspense of the situation at