Aug 16: Dante's peak and other disastrous movies...

Dante's Peak is a film that is notorious amongst geography teachers for its inaccuracies. Despite that it is regularly shown in classrooms.

It is not quite in the same league as 'Fire of Love'.

This article at the time explains that:

Universal hired three retired Geological Survey volcanologists as consultants on the movie and has stated publicly that “the filmmakers insisted on scrupulous realism” regarding the volcanic details.

“We wanted to create an unforgettable experience,” declared executive producer Ilona Herzberg, “but also stick close to scientific fact.”

The scientists, while complimentary in some ways, seemed to feel the film falls short of that.

As with other disaster type movies, they tend to be released in pairs, and there was one called 'Volcano' that came out very close to the release of Dante's Peak - it had a few issues too:

The daily TV schedules are now full of identikit disaster movies, usually with ropy storylines, special effects and acting. The planet is hit by an asteroid, there's a spate of ice tornadoes, all the earth's volcanoes are erupting at the same time etc.