Dante's Peak

''Dante's Peak'' is a 1997 American disaster film directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Leslie Bohem, and starring Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, and Charles Hallahan. The film is set in the fictional town of Dante's Peak where the inhabitants fight to survive the eruption of a long dormant stratovolcano that has suddenly become active again. The film was released on February 7, 1997, under the production of Universal Pictures and Pacific Western Productions. The release came just weeks prior to the similarly themed film, ''Volcano'', starring Tommy Lee Jones, which came out in April of the same year.

It is the third film collaboration between Gale Anne Hurd and Hamilton, who both previously worked in the first two '' Terminator'' films.

Plot

In 1993, USGS volcanologist Harry Dalton and his partner-turned-fiancée Marianne attempt to escape an ongoing eruption in Colombia. As they venture out, a lava bomb smashes through the roof of the truck, killing Marianne.

Four years later, despite the trauma he suffered in the course of his employment, Harry is assigned by his superior, Dr. Paul Dreyfus, to investigate seismic activity near the town of Dante's Peak, Washington, which borders a stratovolcano. Harry meets Mayor Rachel Wando with her children, Graham and Lauren. Rachel offers to take Harry with them as they see her former mother-in-law Ruth, an elderly hermit who lives near the lake at the base of the volcano.

While exploring, they find dead trees, dead squirrels, and two people boiled to death in a hot spring. Harry stops Graham from jumping into the spring upon seeing the bodies. Harry instructs Paul to bring a USGS team to monitor the volcano, but their initial survey finds no indications of volcanic activity. Paul advises against Harry putting the town on alert. Still, Harry tries to convince Rachel to prepare for a disaster.

One day, Harry examines the summit's crater until a rock slide traps his co-worker Terry, causing him to suffer a broken leg. Both men are rescued by a helicopter. Days go by showing no signs of any threat or activity. Paul decides that no danger is imminent, and the USGS team prepares to leave. When Harry says goodbye to Rachel, they discover that the town's water supply has been contaminated with sulfur dioxide. The following day, seismic readings and sulfur levels rise dramatically. Convinced that the volcano will erupt and with the National Guard unavailable until the next day, Paul permits Harry to put the town on alert.

As a town meeting occurs at the high school, an earthquake strikes, and the eruption begins. Harry and Rachel retrieve the children, but they discover that they have gone to get Ruth, who refused to leave her home. Just as they reach the children and Ruth, a lava flow engulfs her cabin and destroys the vehicles both parties used to get there. The five flee across the lake in a motorboat. Still, the boat stops metres from the shore due to sulfur-containing volcanic gases reacting with the lake to make sulfuric acid, which destroys the motor and corrodes the boat's steel hull, sinking it. Ruth jumps out of the boat to help it to shore, suffering chemical burns that eventually prove fatal. Harry and the Wandos take a four-wheel-drive Forest Service ranger's truck to continue down the mountain and save Ruth's dog Roughy while crossing a lava flow.

Meanwhile, the National Guard helps the remaining townspeople and the USGS team evacuate. As they leave, a lahar created by the melting ice breaks the upstream dam. While the rest of the team gets across, Paul and his van fail to clear the bridge before it is washed away by the flood, throwing Paul overboard to his death.

Harry and the Wandos arrive at the remains of the town. Harry retrieves a distress radiobeacon from the USGS workshop and learns that the volcano is due for one last eruption. The volcano then undergoes a cataclysmic lateral blast, triggering a pyroclastic flow which obliterates everything in its path. With no way out of town, Harry and the Wandos reach an abandoned mine where Graham likes to hang out. The USGS team, watching the eruption from afar, presumes Harry to be dead. While inside the mine, Harry realizes he left the beacon in the truck. When he goes back for it, aftershocks cause rocks to fall. Harry suffers a broken arm and is trapped in the truck, but manages to activate the beacon.

Days later, Terry notices that the beacon has been activated, and the USGS dispatches search and rescue teams. Harry and the Wandos are freed from the mine, reunited with Harry's team, and airlifted out by helicopter. The volcano's upper half has been reduced to a Mount St. Helens–like volcanic crater.

Cast

* Pierce Brosnan as Harry Dalton, a volcanologist for the USGS.
* Linda Hamilton as Rachel Wando, the Mayor of Dante's Peak who also runs a coffeeshop.
* Charles Hallahan as Paul Dreyfus, Harry's superior.
* Grant Heslov as Greg, a member of the USGS.
* Kirk Trutner as Terry, a member of the USGS.
* Elizabeth Hoffman as Ruth, the former mother-in-law of Rachel.
* Jeremy Foley as Graham Wando, the son of Rachel.
* Jamie Renée Smith as Lauren Wando, the daughter of Rachel and the sister of Graham.
* Arabella Field as Nancy, a member of the USGS.
* Tzi Ma as Stan, a member of the USGS.
* Lee Garlington as Dr. Jane Fox
* Bill Bolender as Sheriff Turner, the sheriff of Dante's Peak.
* Peter Jason as Norman Gates
* Hansford Rowe as Warren Cluster, the manager and proprietor of the motel "Cluster's Last Stand".
* Christopher Murray as a pricey helicopter pilot that the USGS enlist.
* Walker Brandt as Marianne

Production

Principal photography began on May 6, 1996. The film was shot on location in Wallace, Idaho.

Exterior shots of the Point Dume Post Office in Malibu, California, were used as the USGS's David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory headquarters in Vancouver, Washington. The facility was named in honor of David A. Johnston, a young scientist who had precisely predicted the volatility of the May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens eruption and perished during the event.

The scene involving the geological robot and the trapped scientist was shot inside the crater of Mount St. Helens, as evinced by a brief appearance of Mount Adams, a dormant peak east of Mount St. Helens, as the film focuses on the scientists. The scene itself was actually filmed on the tarmac of Van Nuys Airport, while the Mount Adams image was composited in later. Production was completed on August 31, 1996.

Extensive special effects surrounding certain aspects of the film, such as the lava and pyroclastic flows, were created by Digital Domain, Banned from the Ranch Entertainment, and CIS Hollywood. The computer-generated imagery was mostly coordinated and supervised by Patrick McClung, Roy Arbogast, Lori J. Nelson, Richard Stutsman, and Dean Miller. Although the film uses considerable amounts of CGI, the volcanic ash in the film was created using cellulose insulation manufactured by Regal Industries in Crothersville, Indiana. Between visuals, miniatures, and animation, over 300 technicians were directly involved in the production aspects of the special effects.

Locations

* Wallace, Idaho (the fictional town)
*Old Coeur d'Alene River Road by Albert's Landing, Kingston, Idaho (the bridge)
* Mirror Lake, southeast of Sagle, Idaho (Grandma Ruth's lakeside house)
* Baker Hot Springs, Mount Baker National Forest, Washington
* Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, Washington (establishing shots)
* Agua Dulce, California
* Point Dume Post Office, Malibu, California (USGS's David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory headquarters)

Music

The original score was co-composed by two different composers, John Frizzell and James Newton Howard. Howard wrote the main theme (heard during the opening titles) and a number of cues, while Frizzell wrote the bulk of the score.

Initially, Howard was set to compose the film by himself, but due to time constraints, he hired Frizzell to pick up where he left off and finish the rest of the score.

During this time, Frizzell was a fairly new film composer, as he had recently produced the scores for a few movies such as '' Alien Resurrection'' and ''Beavis and Butt-Head Do America''.

Thirty minutes of the score was released by Varèse Sarabande; the short album length being due to high orchestra fees at the time of release. An expanded bootleg exists that contains almost the entire score. In 2021 Varèse Sarabande released a deluxe edition that contains the entire complete score and some alternates.

The contents of the CD release can also be found on the region 1 DVD, and Blu-ray on an alternate audio track during the 'Creating a Volcano' documentary.

The "Main Titles" cue is also featured on Varèse's ''The Towering Inferno and Other Disaster Classics'' compilation album.

Release

Home media

''Dante's Peak'' was released on VHS and LaserDisc on August 19, 1997.

Reception

Box office

The film was released on February 7, 1997 in 2,657 theatres. It debuted at #2 at the box office behind the special edition re-release of ''Star Wars''; it took in $18 million in its opening weekend. After eight weeks in theatres, it had grossed $67.1 million in the United States and $111.0 million overseas, for a total of $178 million worldwide and was a box-office bomb.

In South Korea, the film earned $776,000 from 30 locations during its opening, marking an improvement over ''Twister''. It ranked in second place behind '' 101 Dalmatians'' in France, making an opening gross $2 million.

Critical reception

''Dante's Peak'' received mostly negative reviews compared to the generally mixed reviews of its rival.

Both Siskel and Ebert had mixed feelings about the film. Gene Siskel gave it two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "It takes a full hour for the volcano to blow in ''Dante's Peak'', and when it does, the movie really starts to cook. The special effects of rivers of lava, snowstorms of volcanic ash and a river of acid water are top-notch. Can I recommend half of a movie?" Roger Ebert also gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "''Dante's Peak'' is constructed about as skillfully as a disaster movie can be, and there were times when I found it working for me, sort of. But hasn't this genre pretty much been played out to the point of exhaustion?"

Caroline Westbrook of ''Empire'' said, "This is yet another one of those mindlessly enjoyable outings which eschews such unimportant details as plot or characterisation in favour of the biggest, flashiest special effects money can buy. ''Twister'' with lava, if you will."

Geologists' reception and educational purpose

The film attracted geologists to create dedicated "information pages" to reach out to students interested in science, including the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Maryland. The fact-checking on USGS's information page concluded "in many but not all respects, the movie's depiction of eruptive hazards hits close to the mark". On the other hand, two professors at the Lewis-Clark State College panned the movie for understating the negative effects of a possible false alarm.

The film is also a popular film viewing and discussion in science classes in the United States.

See also

* 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens
* 2018 lower Puna eruption
* Mount Pinatubo
* Galeras tragedy
* Survival film
* ''Volcano'' - another volcano-based film released in 1997

References

External links

*
*
*
*
*

''Volcanoes in Historical and Popular Culture "In The Movies"'' - Dante's Peak
at U.S. Geological Survey website

{{Roger Donaldson

1997 films
1997 drama films
1990s adventure films
1990s disaster films
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
American adventure drama films
American disaster films
English-language adventure films
Films about families
Films about volcanoes
Disaster thriller films
Films set in 1993
Films set in 1997
Films set in Washington (state)
Films set in Colombia
Films shot in California
Films shot in Malibu, California
Films shot in Idaho
Films shot in Washington (state)
Films directed by Roger Donaldson
Films scored by James Newton Howard
Films scored by John Frizzell (composer)
Films produced by Gale Anne Hurd
Universal Pictures films