10 Defining 1970s Disaster Movies

This week sees the opening of a humble little film called "San Andreas," in which Dwayne Johnson causes a tectonic event by flexing a bicep, cocking an eyebrow and roaring his mighty, demigod laugh. Or something (I haven't seen it, but obviously our reviewer has). Featuring many, many, many shots of structural collapse, by all accounts the Brad Peyton film distinctly recalls previous disaster movies in its gleeful dismantling of the height of civilization's civic achievements (symbolized as always by the Golden Gate Bridge) in less than the time it takes to think "ah, the hubris of humanity in the face of Nature's unknowable wrath!"

Of course, the modern disaster movie has its cracked, unsound foundations in the 1970s, when, although films fitting the bill had been made before, suddenly a glut of identikit pictures flooded theaters. Starring a rotating troupe of movie stars just starting to go a bit brown around the edges, the films saw...