ATTENTION! This motion picture will be shown in the starling new multi-dimension of SENSURROUND Please be aware that you will feel as well as see and hear realistic effects such as might be experienced in an actual earthquake. The management assures no responsibility for the physical or emotional reactions of the individual viewer. - From the ad for Earthquake

For Vanity Fair, Jim Windolf wrote about Star Wars Revenge of the Sith, as well as the current cover story Indiana Jones 4. In the magazine, he recalled that back in the day before you could rent VHS, let alone DVD or Hi-Def, you went to movies over and over again. Besides seeing Star Wars four times in its original run, he also saw Jaws, Tommy, Young Frankenstein, and Earthquake, “mainly for the ‘Sensurround’ – this special effect that shook the seats.”

It may be laughable in the age of surround sound and THX, but for a brief shining moment, Sensurround did try to push a new innovation in theater soundtracks. The late Jennings Lang was a Hollywood producer who knew the power of showmanship. He was the first to call a film an “event” back in 1974 for Earthquake, which like many disaster films of the day featured an all star cast. It also featured Sensurround, which he created.

“My dad was one of the last true showmen,” says Rocky Lang, his son. “He realized that movies had to be bigger and more event oriented. He was always trying to find a way to make the movie going experience bigger and better.”

Legend has it the idea for Earthquake came to Lang when he was in a theater watching a movie, and out of nowhere a real life earthquake happened. What if he made a movie about a major earthquake hitting Los Angeles, and was able to somehow shake the hell out of the audience as well? By setting up a series of speakers in the theater, and running a soundtrack with very low tones, it could be done (there were cues on the soundtrack when the special speakers were to be triggered).

Sensurround cost $2,000 per theater to set up, and it didn’t require rebuilding the entire sound system like it would with future innovations like THX. Movies didn’t even have Dolby stereo until the late Seventies, and Star Wars was the big movie that theaters had to rebuild their sound systems for.

Reports vary as to how well Sensurround worked, but it proved very effective during one screening on the Universal lot. In the adjacent theater watching another movie was a group from Nicaragua, who had recently endured a devastating earthquake in their homeland. Once the room showing Earthquake started rumbling, everyone in the screening room next door panicked and fled the theater.

Earthquake premiered at the Mann Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Rocky remembers big speakers being loaded off of trucks, like roadies carrying them for a rock concert, that would help shake the theater. “Inside the theater I looked up and they netted the entire arc of the ceiling,” Lang continues. “They didn’t know if the theater shaking would bring anything down!”

The film was a big hit for Universal, grossing $66 million, but Sensurround was only used in three more movies, Midway, Rollercoaster, and Battlestar Galactica, which was the three hour series pilot cut down to two hours and released in theaters in 1979.

Watch for Tom’s look back at the cinema gimmicks of yesteryear, coming soon.