Movies depicting the ravages of nature have been attempted before but never on the massive scale of Earthquake, which dramatizes the raging fury, the destructive force and the apocalyptic horror of a tremor that strikes Los Angeles and reduces a great part of the city to rubble. Taking precedence over the film's performances and personal stories are the spectacular Academy Award winning special effects: scenes of shaking and crumbling buildings, falling elevators crowded with passengers, twisting freeways and finally the awesome bursting of the Hollywood Dam releasing raging flood waters.