1970s in film was far less successful. "The Towering Inferno" teamed Steve McQueen and Paul Newman against a fire in a San Francisco skyscraper. The film cost a whopping $14 million to produce (expensive for its time), and won Academy Awards for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Best Original Song. The same year, the epic "Earthquake" featured questionable effects (camera shake and models) to achieve a destructive 9.9 earthquake in Los Angeles. Despite this, the film was one of the most successful of its time, earning $80 million at box office. By the late 1970s, the novelty had worn off and the disasters had
Earthquake (1974 film) "The Towering Inferno" ranking 8th, "Airport" 14th, "The Poseidon Adventure" 16th and "Earthquake" 20th. These successes ensured the flood of similar films throughout the decade. Earthquake eventually grossed nearly $80,000,000 ($349,858,800 adjusted for inflation in 2015 dollars). At its release, critics generally acknowledged the special effects in "Earthquake" while discounting other aspects. Without either panning or praising the film, Nora Sayre of the "New York Times" wrote that it was an improvement on "Airport '75" and observed, "The impulse to shout advice to the screen—get out! go away! don't enter that building—is quite powerful, so this does rank as a