Dantes Peak

Dante's Peak
Theatrical Release Poster
Directed by	Roger Donaldson
Produced by	Gale Anne Hurd Joseph Singer
Written by	Leslie Bohem
Starring	Pierce Brosnan Linda Hamilton Charles Hallahan
Music by	James Newton Howard John Frizzell
Cinematography	Andrzej Bartkowiak
Edited by	Conrad Buff IV Tina Hirsch Howard E. Smith
Production company	Pacific Western Productions
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	February 7, 1997 (1997-02-07)
Running time	109 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$116 million
Box office	$178.1 million

Dante's Peak is a 1997 American dramatic disaster thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Charles Hallahan, Elizabeth Hoffman, Jamie Renée Smith, Jeremy Foley and Grant Heslov, the film was set in the fictional town of Dante's Peak where the inhabitants must survive the volcano's eruption and its dangers. It was released on February 7, 1997 under the production of Sony, Universal Pictures and Pacific Western.

In 1993, United States Geological Survey (USGS) volcanologist Dr. Harry Dalton and his partner Marianne attempt to escape a sudden eruption of a Colombian volcano. While driving through the eruption, a large piece of cooled lava flies through the roof of Harry's car, striking Marianne and killing her instantly.

Four years later, Harry is assigned to investigate seismic activity near the fictional town of Dante's Peak in Washington that borders a dormant stratovolcano. Harry arrives as the town celebrates both its founding anniversary and being declared the 2nd most desirable place to live with under 20,000 residents, and meets the mayor, Rachel Wando and her children Graham and Lauren.

Rachel offers to take Harry with them as they see her former mother-in-law, Ruth, who lives in a lodge at the base of the volcano. While there, they find dead trees and wildlife and two people boiled to death by a hot springs. Harry fears the heat came from volcanic activity and convinces his superior, Dr. Paul Dreyfus, to bring a team to study it further. While Harry is discussing the possibility of an evacuation with the town's executives, Paul arrives. He explains to them that years ago, he feared Mammoth Mountain was going to erupt, and alerted a few towns around the mountain. However, it didn't erupt, but word had got out to the public and caused tourists to stay away, resulting in one of the towns nearly becoming bankrupt. He then tells them that the USGS team will be there to study and observe the volcano to see if it is going to erupt, as signs of an eruption could also be a false alarm. Harry tries to convince Rachel to prepare the town for a possible disaster, while falling into a budding romance with her. During a dinner date with Rachel, Harry warns her that if the volcano erupts violently the explosion would hit the town within a minute. A few days later, Harry and a geologist, Terry, go up the mountain and send a robot down into the crater to take the volcano's temperature, but it gets stuck so Terry goes down into the crater to try and fix it. As he does this, an earthquake shakes the mountain, causing Terry to be buried in an avalanche; the team, which was watching the event happen through the robot's camera, sends a helicopter up to rescue them. Harry climbs inside the crater and pulls the rocks off Terry and the helicopter arrives. Harry attaches himself and Terry to the helicopter and they are flown out of the volcano's crater. When they get back to the town, as they take Terry to the hospital, Harry argues with Paul, saying that the earthquake was caused by a harmonic tremor and to put the town on alert. But Paul dismisses this, claiming instead that the earthquake was merely tectonic and tells Harry that unless he has evidence before they leave in a few days he should calm down. Harry tries to explain to his team his belief about the threat posed by the volcano, but they also don't believe him. After another week, the team find no evidence of any activity.