Dante's Peak is a 1997 American disaster film directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Leslie Bohem, and starring Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, and Charles Hallahan.

The film is set in the fictional town of Dante's Peak where the inhabitants fight to survive the eruption of a long dormant stratovolcano that has suddenly become active again.

The release came just weeks prior to the similarly themed film, Volcano, starring Tommy Lee Jones, which came out in April of the same year.

Harry instructs Paul to bring a USGS team to monitor the volcano, but their initial survey finds no indications of volcanic activity.

One day, Harry examines the summit's crater until a rock slide traps his co-worker Terry, causing him to suffer a broken leg.

Convinced that the volcano will erupt and with the National Guard unavailable until the next day, Paul gives Harry permission to put the town on alert.

Harry and the Wandos take a four-wheel-drive Forest Service ranger's truck to continue down the mountain and save Ruth's dog Roughy while crossing a lava flow.

[2] Exterior shots of the Point Dume Post Office in Malibu, California, were used as the USGS's David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory headquarters in Vancouver, Washington.

The facility was named in honor of David A. Johnston, a young scientist who had precisely predicted the volatility of the May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens eruption and perished during the event.

Extensive special effects surrounding certain aspects of the film, such as the lava and pyroclastic flows, were created by Digital Domain, Banned from the Ranch Entertainment, and CIS Hollywood.

[4] The computer-generated imagery was mostly coordinated and supervised by Patrick McClung, Roy Arbogast, Lori J. Nelson, Richard Stutsman, and Dean Miller.

During this time, Frizzell was a fairly new film composer, as he had recently produced the scores for a few movies such as Alien Resurrection and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.

Gene Siskel gave it two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "It takes a full hour for the volcano to blow in Dante's Peak, and when it does, the movie really starts to cook.

"[14] Roger Ebert also gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "Dante's Peak is constructed about as skillfully as a disaster movie can be, and there were times when I found it working for me, sort of.

"[15] The film attracted geologists to create dedicated "information page" to reach out to students interested in science, including the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)[16] and the University of Maryland.

[17] The fact-checking on USGS's information page concluded "in many but not all respects, the movie's depiction of eruptive hazards hits close to the mark".