There must have been something in the air in Hollywood in 1997. That year saw the release of not one, but two big budget disaster films. Okay, that’s not incredible. But both of the films about volcanoes erupting along the U.S. Pacific coast? And both featuring a bankable leading man and a younger female in a supporting role? Hell, they’re practically the same movie.
VOLCANO was the lesser of the two films. Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche race against time when a volcano, wait for it, erupts on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. It’s a pretty stupid film.
DANTE’S PEAK was the marginally better film. Pierce Brosnan stars as a vulcanologist who is convinced a volcano is going to erupt outside the small Idaho town of Dante’s Peak (I kid you not). There’s no visible evidence to support his premonition but of course, he has to be right about his warning. He partners with the mayor of the small town, played by Linda Hamilton, in an effort to warn the townspeople and begin evacuation procedures.
Too late. The volcano erupts and Brosnan spends the third act of the film using various rugged wheeled vehicles and an aluminum fishing boat to stay one step ahead of the destruction and save Hamilton, her two kids, their dog and her cantankerous ex-mother-in-law. Oh, and remember the abandoned mine in the middle of the town that we briefly see in in the first act? Yep. It comes into play as a refuge for our cast in the third act.
DANTE’S PEAK isn’t a bad movie it’s just completely by-the-numbers. CGI was making tremendous strides in 1997 and the effects here are pretty solid.
If you have to watch one of the two dueling volcano movies from 1997, go with DANTE’S PEAK. And surprisingly enough, the same situation occurred int 1998 when there were two asteroid based disaster films released. One was the dreadful ARMAGEDDON, a truly awful film. The other was DEEP IMPACT which, despite having a decidedly down beat ending is far and away the better of the two.
And I find it somehow appropriate that DANTE’S PEAK was a Universal film. That studio started the whole disaster movie craze of the 1970s with the release of AIRPORT in 1970 and EARTHQUAKE in 1974.
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