Dante's Peak
Pierce Brosnan versus a volcano, Linda Hamilton as the mayor of the town in its path — and Grandma Ruth in the acid lake, scarring a generation. The winner of 1997's bizarre dueling-volcano-movie race, and somehow also a science-class staple.
Dante's Peak erupted into theaters February 7, 1997, Roger Donaldson directing Pierce Brosnan as a USGS volcanologist who suspects the picture-perfect town of Dante's Peak is sitting on a bomb, with Linda Hamilton as the small-town mayor who has to decide whether to believe him. It was the year Hollywood inexplicably made two volcano movies at once — and Dante's Peak beat the rival Volcano to theaters and won the showdown, grossing $178.2 million worldwide on a budget around $115 million.
The scene nobody who saw it as a kid ever forgot isn't the eruption — it's Grandma Ruth. With the family's boat dissolving in the acidified lake, she goes over the side and drags it to shore, dying of the burns. A genuine, upsetting sacrifice in the middle of a popcorn disaster movie; ask anyone who rented it in 1997 and this is the scene they describe first.
The strangest part of its legacy is that it was kind of… accurate? The actual United States Geological Survey produced educational material about the film, concluding it depicted volcanic hazards correctly "in many but not all respects" — a passing grade no other disaster movie of the era earned — and teachers ran with it, making Dante's Peak a science-class staple for years. Critics were rough (34% on Rotten Tomatoes), audiences graded it A−, and it holds its place in the Twister-to-Armageddon disaster-movie arms race as the one that actually taught you what a pyroclastic flow was.
Similar items
GoldenEye 007
The Nintendo 64 first-person shooter that redefined console multiplayer: four players split-screen deathmatch, and an iron-clad house rule banning Oddjob because his short stature slipped under auto-aim. Rare's landmark game sold over 8 million copies and owned living rooms until Halo arrived.
Tremors
A monster-comedy film about the residents of a tiny Nevada desert town fighting giant subterranean worm creatures called Graboids. Starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward alongside country star Reba McEntire, Tremors balanced scares with humor to become a beloved cult classic that spawned numerous sequels.
Independence Day
The White House explodes. Will Smith punches an alien and delivers the one-liner. Jeff Goldblum uploads a virus from a PowerBook. The movie that made July 4th weekend a permanent blockbuster holiday — and the biggest film of 1996 by a mile.
Twister
Two storm-chasing exes and an experimental sensor pod named Dorothy, racing a corporate rival — and the sky itself — across the Plains. It gave the world a CGI flying cow, "We got cows," a near-$500 million gross, and, quietly, one of the first movies ever released on DVD in America.