It’s fundamentally a dum-dum ’90s disaster picture, an action-jeopardy roller coaster ride tailored to compete with the Roland Emmerichs and the Michael Bays … and we liked it. Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton and director Roger Donaldson put it across so well that we don’t mind the silly science or the cute dog; the special effects are excellent too. The 4K encoding shows us that the CGI folk were really getting their act together by this time. So shoot me: I was entertained against my better judgment.

Dante’s Peak
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1997 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 108 min. / Street Date January 13, 2026 / available through Kino Lorber / 44.95
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Renée Smith, Jeremy Foley, Elizabeth Hoffman, Charles Hallahan, Grant Heslov, Kirk Trutner, Arabella Field, Tzi Ma, Brian Reddy, Lee Garlington, Bill Bolender, Carole Androsky.
Cinematography: Andrzej. Bartkowiak
Production Designer: J. Dennis Washington
Art Director: Francis J. Pezza, Tom Targownik Taylor
Costumes: Isis Mussenden
Film Editors: Tina Hirsch, Howard Smith, Conrad Buff
Main Theme: James Newton Howard
Music Composer: John Frizzell
Written by Leslie Bohem
Executive Producer Ilona Herzberg
Produced by Gale Anne Hurd, Joseph Singer
Directed by Roger Donaldson

We loved disaster films about surviving mass calamities — but mostly BIA, ‘Before Irwin Allen.’  After his flip-flopping ocean liner and the burning skyscraper, too many big disaster thrillers just got more lavishly stupid-er with each new movie. Airplanes crashing, volcanos in Hawaii and belligerent bees doled out their threats in manageable increments, keeping stupid plots in motion, while characters went through ‘drah-muh stuff’ worse that what one could see on The Brady Bunch.

That said, 1997’s  Dante’s Peak has all the earmarks of an AIA movie, yet minimizes them by virtue of sheer professionalism. Excellent direction, a sharp production and committed performances keep the movie entertaining. The ‘people’ storyline plays like a Hallmark Holiday romance, only without the holiday and played by really likeable big-star talent.

Seasoned producer Gale Ann Hurd  (Aliens) assembled a complex special effects movie that makes excellent use of Computer Generated Imagery. In 1997 CGI hadn’t worked out every last problem in creating photo-real illusions. Shows like 1995’s Jumanji had animated creatures that looked like temporary place holders, and even the expensive Steve Spielberg  Deep Impact had its share of wince-inducing shots. Dante’s Peak has a great many ambitious, difficult effects scenes, and almost all come off really well. A great many are barely detectable.

Leslie Bohem’s efficient screenplay is straight from the mold marked ‘generic family disaster thriller, PG-13. Handsome, available volcano specialist Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) shows up to check out Washington State’s Dante’s Peak, a dormant volcano experiencing unusual activity. Arriving in the town of the same name, he quickly warms up to mayor / coffee shop proprietress Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton). She’s abundantly available as well. Harry’s previous girlfriend was killed in a volcanic eruption, and Rachel’s husband split years ago leaving her with two kids. Instant family, just add lava.

The first hour alternates menacing scenes with meet ‘n’ greet pleasantries, romantic sparks, and fun time in the local bars and eateries. Then the volcano decides to act up. Instead of a 60-second Everybody Dies apocalypse, the big explosion-eruption kablooie is delayed until the climax. This gives the denizens of Dante’s Peak a full half-hour of quality panic time. Our heroes naturally get themselves into even deeper trouble.

Harry sees signs of imminent disaster, and exceeds his authority by telling the locals that they might have to evacuate. His boss (Charles Hallahan) orders him to go home, but Harry instead hangs out with Rachel. He collects data that proves he was right all along: Dante’s Peak is going to blow its top just like Mt. St. Helens did 17 years before. Sure enough, major seismic & volcanic action kicks in just as Rachel calls another preparedness meeting. Harry and Rachel must drive toward the volcano to collect her children … and find that the kids are now even closer to the danger, at the house of Grandma Ruth (Elizabeth Hoffman), who had refused to leave home. This puts the new sweethearts, her children, the stubborn mother-in-law, and their dog in terrible danger.

Nobody was expecting docu-realism from Dante’s Peak, just something less embarrassing than Irwin Allen’s  When Time Ran Out… from 1980. The actual Mt. St. Helens eruption was too fast to lend itself to a full dramatic presentation … with the only warning some ominous readings on seismic instruments. Caught in the calamity, the brave & dedicated scientist  David Alexander Johnston used his final few seconds to warn the world before he was obliterated by a massive blast. The fictional Dante’s Peak volcano is much kinder. The rains of ash and rivers of molten lava politely give Harry and Rachel time to weigh their options.

Nobody chokes on falling ash; nobody is roasted by clouds of superheated, poisonous gas. The film is at its least realistic when people are in close proximity to great quantities of fiery lava. That stuff can be 2,000 degrees hot, yet people stand just a few feet away. Harry drives his car over a cooling-yet-fresh patch. The tires burn off, but the radiant heat doesn’t ignite the gas tank, melt the engine hoses or barbecue the whole family. Did some expert concede that, ‘well, someone could conceivably survive such a thing,’ and the filmmakers took it as a license to go wild and crazy?

Volcanos don’t get more family-safe than this … or maybe there’s documented evidence that one CAN drive over a lava flow and come out unharmed. If that’s so, I’ll own up to my ignorance.

Director Roger Donaldson made  tough-minded thrillers in New Zealand. He adapted to the realities of American filmmaking with the very good (but low-rated) Robin Williams movie  Cadillac Man. In between his payday pictures  (Species,  The Getaway) he continued with what might have been more personal projects. Dante’s Peak is a popcorn movie unlikely to win awards, but it’s a handsome job of direction. Donaldson minimizes the early conflict that reminds us of  Jaws — the subplot of local business boosters resisting evacuation isn’t given a chance to become annoying.

Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton were both associated with action films; Hamilton had won over audiences playing a tougher-than-tough survivalist in  Terminator 2. In this film her character is standard girlfriend material. Her Rachel is intelligent and quick thinking, and is never asked to scream like a ninny.

We also like that Brosnan’s volcano specialist is not a sharpie with all the answer, like many Tom Cruise character. Harry politely defers to his boss’s somewhat humiliating lectures. We admire both actors for coming across as vulnerable, just-folks people, instead of indestructible cartoon characters. The second half of Dante’s Peak can be called ‘entertainingly prepostrous.’ Considering the new forms of imminent death tossed at Harry and Rachel, in a ‘realistic’ telling we’d expect Arnold Schwarzengger and Sly Stallone to be paralyzed with fear.

The movie is exciting, fast-paced and good-looking — you can’t make those Washington and Idaho locations look bad. We know we’re watching a feel-good light jeopardy thriller, yet we find ourselves smiling at its less credible moments.

The show begins with a violent volcanic prologue, a teaser promising more fire and brimstone later on. The next event is a gruesome tease of teen lovers that get caught in a hot springs that suddenly boils over. It’s so awful to contemplate that we wonder if it set off ‘discussions’ with the MPA ratings watchdogs. It’s a case of ‘show something horrible’ up front to make the audience wary of what comews next. Little that follows is as graphic. It looks as if dozens of Dante Peakers die — in a freeway collapse, swept away by a river, etc. — but never up close.

Boiling two skinny-dipping hanky panky-ers to death harks back to the Disaster Film habit of dishing out somebody’s idea of moral retribution to sinners. The big offender was Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno, in which an adulterous couple suffers the full wrath of the Production Code. For their sins, they’re singled out to become human torches, falling a hundred floors. Dante’s Peak continues to play God with ‘selected victims,’ on a lesser scale.  One character shouldn’t have given Harry Dalton such a bad time, as his reward is to be trapped in the washout of a giant bridge. An older lady suffers a horrible fate, just for being an ordinary bad-tempered nuisance.

Our sweethearts, her kids and sometimes a dog defy all odds crossing a treacherous landscape of crumbling roads, falling trees and downpours of liquid ash. The ready-to-pop volcano threatens them with fire and a boiling lake … was the title ‘Dante’s Inferno’ ever considered?  We have to credit everybody concerned that the constant escapes don’t become too silly. Caught on that boiling lake, the whole family finds itself in a sinking rowboat minus an oar. They’re literally ‘up fondue creek without a paddle,’ yet 4 out of 5 boaters reach the shore without as much as scalded toes.

That’s just one instance of forty in which Dante’s Peak subscribes to the ethos of That New Miracle of the Screen,  Nickotime!™  Nothing stops Harry’s beefed-up SUV, neither downed trees nor driving off-trail down steep forest hills in the dark of the night. Harry’s ride even has a snorkel for the carburetor, so it can traverse a raging river. They manage to escape the traffic jams without ever having to stop, too.

Every time that a car has to get through mud, lava, or a collapsing bridge, Nickotime™ is in full force. The filmmakers can’t resist the artificial suspense of tires spinning and spinning without finding traction … until the very last microsecond before they’re burned up or washed away.

Your average Irwin Allen movie was starved for convincing visuals. The upside-down ship Poseidon sparked the imagination, but Allen’s fire scenes never seemed to generate much smoke, dispensing false and potentially dangerous information. We’re impressed when Dante’s Peak appears to bury acres of real estate in convincing ash. Could those scenes be fooling me?  Abandoned cars covered in ash look like model toys under gray shaving cream … until we realize that it might not be a miniature, but full scale. We’ll consult the special effects featurette on this. This show is no corner-cutting cheapie.

Producer Gale Ann Hurd invested heavily in the best CGI available in 1997. Although other companies are listed, Digital Domain seems to taken on the bulk of the work. Before the big eruption kicks in, we’re treated to some good digital mattes, that insert the fictional volcano into real foregrounds. We get a good idea of its proximity to the town of Dante’s Peak. A number of composite shots incorporate camera moves and foreground action. Some of the matte illusions are so good, the only giveaway is the optimization of elements within the shot.

The later pyrotechnics and assorted mayhem are aided by excellent physical footage of trees falling, ash mud clogging car windshields, etc.. The only barrier to believability is the unliklihood of survival in several situations. We armchair Douglas Trumbulls saw only one fake-looking matte line, and we were too entertained to look for more.

One very successful sequence is the breaking of a dam, which required the construction of a truly gigantic dam set. The resulting mass flood was filmed on an enormous landscape set with thousands of miniature trees. It’s truly spectacular. Fans of old movies may regard the scene as a lavish enlargement of an impressive flood sequence in the 1949 movie  Green Dolphin Street, which took home an Oscar for special effects.

Most of these calamities are accompanied by ‘radio’ dialogue that tends to dumb down the miracles on screen. Instead of letting us soak up the evidence before our eyes, characters declare the obvious: “We’re lost!”   “We’re trapped”  “It’s hot here!”  It’s not exactly a dealbreaker. In other words, Dante’s Peak comes off as a corny but exciting disaster epic, that compensates for strained credibility with super-spectacular illusions.

The KL Studio Classics 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Dante’s Peak is a good-looking thriller that goes for the E-Ticket roller coaster ride. It promises and delivers a surfeit of PG-13 jeopardy and mayhem. It might be a good break-in film for younger kids that can handle some extreme situations. Well, if you don’t mind showing them those cute skinny dippers that boil like lobsters. As in most disaster films, the happy survivors (and their dog!) hug and high five, even if 300 of their friends and neighbors didn’t make it.

Director Roger Donaldson approved the new 4K master, scanned from the original camera negative. Color values are excellent throughout; we like the clarity in the night-for-night scenes. Digital travelling mattes were all but perfected by this time, if the elements were a reasonable match. In 1997 fantastic fantasy visuals still had a kick of excitement.

The full extras are listed below. The video extras are on the second Blu-ray disc only. Roger Donaldson’s commentary is shared with his production designer. The hour-long making-of show is fascinating. Obviously, no real volcanoes were harmed in the filming. We have to admire the enormous craft and expertise used to get all those impressive shots.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Dante’s Peak
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good, for simple thrills Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent 4K: Dolby Atmos / 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0 DTS / Blu-ray: 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0
Supplements both:
Audio commentary by Roger Donaldson and production designer Dennis Washington
Theatrical Trailer
4K only:
Isolated Music (John Frizzell) & Effects track
Blu-ray only:
Making-of docu Getting Close to the Show (62:16).
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: January 29, 2026
(7465peak)

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