Volcano (1997)
January 6, 2025 6:17 PM - Subscribe

A volcano erupts in downtown Los Angeles and a city official and a seismologist try to stop its inevitable flow through the city.
posted by phunniemee (20 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I watched A LOT of disaster movies over the holidays and this was one of them. I remember seeing this in theaters as a child, and the scene I recall the most is the one where John Carroll Lynch gets eaten by lava while throwing people off a subway train. Incredible to think that just a few months before this his mallard got selected for the 3¢ stamp. What an inspiring man.
posted by phunniemee at 6:21 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]


There wasn't anything in it as memorable as the scene in its "twin" release Dante's Peak where the old woman sacrifices herself by carrying someone on her back as she wades through lava.

After that I updated my definition of love from "Would you jump in front of a bus to save them?" to "Would you wade through lava to save them?"
posted by Lemkin at 6:37 PM on January 6 [2 favorites]


Movie titles run the spectrum from "don't make sense even after you've seen the movie" - i.e. Vanilla Sky - to "can't be bothered to do anything but announce the selling point" - i.e. Gladiator.

I liked how Rodney Dangerfield movies stuck to the far end of the scale. You can imagine the preview announcer going...

Rodney Dangerfield is coming into... EASY MONEY

Rodney Dangerfield is going... BACK TO SCHOOL
posted by Lemkin at 6:45 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]


The way that they folded in the LAPD racial healing subplot was an... aspirational choice for a disaster movie.
posted by subocoyne at 7:43 PM on January 6 [2 favorites]


racial healing subplot

This has become a disaster movie trope in the last 20ish years. Cf. The Day After Tomorrow where not-Dick-Cheney thanks the third world for taking all the white folks in; 2012 where the only continent to survive the end of the world is Africa, completely untouched.
posted by phunniemee at 7:50 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]


the old woman... wades through lava

Sorry, no, not lava. In Dante's Peak, the lake water had turned to acid and corroded the boat until it started sinking. The woman waded through acid water to push the boat to shore and save the kid.
posted by SPrintF at 7:52 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]


I would like to thank phunniemee for her service on these wonderful terrible films.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:59 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]


My friend Iridic brought me the 4 Films Epic Disaster Movies Collector's Set as a housewarming gift a few months ago, so please trust me when I tell you this can get worse.
posted by phunniemee at 8:04 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]


Have you watched the 70's disaster movies: Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Poseidon Adventure?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:18 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]


No Not yet

My disaster movie knowledge is obsessionally deep, but not vast.
posted by phunniemee at 8:22 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]


I watched A LOT of disaster movies over the holidays and this was one of them. I remember seeing this in theaters as a child, and the scene I recall the most is the one where John Carroll Lynch gets eaten by lava while throwing people off a subway train. Incredible to think that just a few months before this his mallard got selected for the 3¢ stamp. What an inspiring man.

That scene really stands out and I suppose touches on something that a lot of us want to believe, that inside some of the most pedantic annoying people is a basic sense of decency and self-sacrifice. I suppose, overall, in disaster films, we have people who sacrifice themselves for others, sometimes because of familial devotion, but often times just for random strangers and we accept it as a natural, memorable part of the film. Is it a hope that this is true or something that strikes something internally?

I do appreciate how this movie kind of opened up the beginner's guide to volcanoes and went to town. This was also how I learned there was a subway in Los Angeles. Educational film all around!

I'd also watch Tommy Lee Jones dealing with any type of disaster, volcanic or kitten pandemic.
posted by Atreides at 7:02 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]


Volcano : Dante's Peak :: Armageddon : Deep Impact
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:15 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]


I honestly cannot recommend The Poseidon Adventure enough in this subgenre, as it's the perfect combination of kinda plausible scenario handled in an exaggerated melodramatic way but with elements of realism; a star-studded cast of terrific actors delivering fine ham like they work for the Smithfield Corporation; and terrific studio writers delivering a tight script that presents seriously but also seems to be written entirely in purple prose.

If you like disaster movies for better and for worse, it's basically Citizen Kane.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:28 AM on January 7 [7 favorites]


It has the perfect mixture of ups and downs and joins The Black Stallion as Exhibit B on why I will never take a cruise.
posted by Atreides at 9:27 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]


Volcano : Dante's Peak :: Armageddon : Deep Impact

Hollywood just loves to greenlight similar stories that get released at the same time:

White House Down (2013) v Olympus has Fallen (2013)

A Bug's Life (1998) vs Antz (1998)

Mission to Mars (2000) vs Red Planet (2000)

etc....etc..
posted by Atreides at 9:33 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]


I agree with DOT's assessment completely. The Poseidon Adventure is also the first movie I remember seeing (I was five, my parents went to see it in a drive-in theater -- I'll telly y'all about those one of these days -- and I got to stay up to watch the ship capsize. Which is like 20 minutes into the movie, so there you are).

Fun fact: The author of the source novel was on the Queen Mary as a troopship during WWII when it was almost capsized by a rogue wave. The ocean liner that played the Poseidon in the movie was the Queen Mary
posted by Gelatin at 9:33 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]


the first movie I remember seeing

Total Recall for me. My grandpa took me to the movies alone and let me choose whichever movie I wanted based on the posters. I was 4.

Actually technically I think it was David Lynch's Dune. I had a distinct memory all through my childhood of seeing a sandworm in a movie and could never piece it together. I started to believe I had imagined it. Then I watched Dune "for the first time" in college and saw my sandworm, and the spice eyes were familiar, and the music was familiar, and I was certain I had seen Dune before. Traced it back with some family research and we're pretty sure the only place I could have possibly watched it was on VHS at the neighbor's house in Indiana (they had nerdy teen boys, you see) where we hadn't lived since I was 18 months old. But Total Recall is definitely the first movie I have a clear memory of seeing in theaters.
posted by phunniemee at 9:44 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]


Hollywood just loves to greenlight similar stories that get released at the same time:

Face/Off (1997) v The Parent Trap (1998)
posted by solotoro at 10:47 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]


She's Having Three Men and a Baby Boom

1984's Farms in Trouble trilogy: Country, Places in the Heart, and The River.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:44 AM on January 8


Look, sometimes what I want is an hour and 45 minutes or so of Tommy Lee Jones being competent. This was a movie that was pretty much exactly what I wanted from it. Plus this interchange as they're rescuing art from the museum:
- Scott: Man, this Hieronymus Bosch is heavy!
- Museum Guard: That's because he deals with man's inclination towards sin, in defiance of God's will.
- Scott: I didn't mean it like that.


I recall that at one point Scarecrow Video in Seattle had this and Dante's Peak and other similar movies in a category named something like "vengeful acts of a wrathful god," which, yes, accurate.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:56 AM on January 9 [4 favorites]


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