Earthquake 7.9 (1980)

Original title: Jishin Retto

Director: Kenjiro Ohmori

Writer: Kaneto Shindo

Composer: Toshiaki Tsushima

Starring: Hiroshi Katsuno, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Yumi Takigawa, Kayo Matsuo, Hideji Otaki, Eiji Okada, Shin Saburi, Norihei Miki, Tsutomu Yamazaki

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  This Is the Big One.

Plot: A large earthquake hits Tokyo, which was predicted by a seismologist but was ignored.

My rating:  4/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Here's a by the numbers disaster flick from Japan that plays out exactly as you'd expect. There's lots of drama as the lone scientist preaches impending doom, loses his job, disgraces his family, his wife leaves him, he falls for his beautiful young assistant who has been in love with him all along and then the shit hits the fan when the huge quake shows up not wearing a dinner jacket, destroying everything leaving our two lovebirds alive to tell the survivors "I told you so."  The lousy fullscreen VHS print I saw (from the Fortune 5 DVD set Grindhouse Experience - don't waste your time or money on it) was dark which prevented me from really digging the good, disastery parts.  The first hour is all drama and then when the quake hits it's night time and the final half hour is hard to see from this print.  That adds up to me being bored with it.  Maybe a better print would garner a better score but this is all I have to go on.  I'm not big on disaster films to begin with but I was determined to watch everything on this DVD set so I can get it out of my collection to make room for something good.