Goofs for
Earthquake (1974) More at IMDb Pro »

• Continuity: The glass is visible in the woman's head before she gets hit by it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Graff starts out of the garage, the tailgate is down; when he comes out onto the street, the tailgate is up.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the earthquake, a truck full of cattle turns upside down; however, the cattle remain in the truck, glued in place on the miniature.
  
  

• Continuity: When the "Hollywood Reservoir Dam" collapses at the end of the film, the water level is much higher than the water level in the actual Hollywood Reservoir shown in the rest of the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: Most, if not all, passenger elevators have mechanical gravity brakes that are automatically activated in the event an elevator plunges uncontrollably.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Debris falling from a building in one sequence passes behind part of a matte painting, temporarily disappearing, only to reappear after it falls further into the scene.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the stairway has fallen away in the skyscraper sequence, an office worker manages to hold on to a girder before falling to his death. As he falls through a giant pane of glass, the airbag is clearly visible under it and actually shoots out of the top of the frame.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the quake, Bill Cameron looks out the window of the skyscraper he is in to see two men fall out out of a neighboring window. As they fall, they both disappear behind the matte separating the building facade and the minuature of downtown Hollywood.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In one shot of the exterior of a building, a large piece of debris lands on a woman's head, but she keeps running as if nothing has happened.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Denise Marshall returns to her destroyed house to look for her son, as she wanders through the rubble, the top of the living room set walls in the soundstage are visible.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: As the farmer drives his tractor towards the scientists in the trench, a shadow of the camera crew can be seen.
  
  
• Continuity: The airliner tells the control tower it is "VFR on top" meaning it is flying in clear weather above the clouds. A moment later a shot is show of the airliner in clear skies; no clouds above or below.
  
  
• Continuity: Also the airliner is cleared to land on runway 25, it actually lands on runway 13.
  
  
• Continuity: The man on the plane that is soon to arrive at LAX is seen putting the hi-liter down on the arm rest. The next shot has him X-ing next to a paragraph in a magazine article with the yellow hi-liter. The shot changes back again and the hi-liter is back on the arm rest between him and his wife.
  
  
• Continuity: When the airliner is on its way to Los Angeles, the pilot tells the passengers that they are flying over the Grand Canyon, and that he will turn the plane to the right to allow them a better view. In the view from the cockpit, the plane is turning to the left.
  
  
• Continuity: In the television version, the aircraft on which the newlywedsare flying changes repeatedly from a Boeing 707 to a Convair 880 and back again, each time with airline different markings. Nighttime shots of the plane are borrowed from the film Airport (1970)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the final scene, a looped-in background dialog track repeats itself before fading out.
  
  
• Continuity: Rosa takes out her billfold twice at the market.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: There is no furniture in the collapsing buildings during the big earthquake scene.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When Remy chases Stewart out of the elevator into the lobby, there isn't any separation of the lobby floor and the elevator floor.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the aftershock sequence in the underground parking garage, you can see columns of brick that are obvious props fall, but stay completely intact without falling apart.
  
  
• Continuity: When Miles try to perform his stunt on the track after the first went wrong, you can clearly see him riding out of the loop again, since the footage used to show the beginning of his new attempt is the same of the first one.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the earthquake, Denise Marshall hangs on a tree and there's only a clear setting behind her shoulders without any grass or street visible in the background.
  
  
• Continuity: During the chase scene, the branch of a tree suddenly changes position before the county police's car passes the crossroads to join the other two.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: When the dam elevator opens, the water floods out carrying the drowned maintenance worker. You can see the actor forcibly blow out air from his mouth as he hits the floor with all the water around him.
  
  

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