Who payed the critics

A lot of fun.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Perhaps I was just in a sentimental mood but I found this movie, a melange of disaster flick, supernatural nonsense and romance, most appealing. The writing was much better than I might have expected and the ending was constructed with simple charming good heartedness. The cast, unfamiliar to me at least, is competent and the location refreshingly unusual. Clichés are present, if not abounding, but do not intrude too preposterously. Being a fan of neither volcanoes nor volcano movies I should not comment on the special effects but, given a modicum of "willing suspension of disbelief", there is little of which to complain. All in all a bit of a surprise, a triumph of character over special effects, of acting over action and of sentiment over science; all as it should be in a motion picture.

Well... uh... oh. The first half is very boring, the second half is... just absurd. It looks like "The Exorcist vs. Eruption of St Helens". Or something like action version of German love movies. Or something like that. Unbelievable characters, poor effects... I have been especially shocked by something that looked like very bad science mixed with mysticism or devil possession or whatever it has been. I just don't get this, I think you shall not mix something real (like volcano) with something like possession. Well, there may be some warnings, but this... this has been just pathetic. What a waste of time, what a waste of my recorder's HDD space (just joking, I have erased this mess already).

To Hell with seismological studies, & geothermal surveys. If you're looking for a way to find out about an impending volcanic disaster, then what you need to do is get your recently deceased wife to commune with a supernaturally possessed, mute, Italian teenage girl. That's what our hero, Russell Woods was smart enough to do, & not a minute too soon, as the town's clerics were likely going to burn her at the stake, as a demon infested witch.Luckily, she paints fairly surrealistic depictions of lunar cycles or some such hogwash, & sets volcano photographer Russell, the sole voice of reason, on the path to saving the entire population of the small Italian village where his late wife was raised.Soooo... as of late, I've become a veritable connoisseur of crappy "Straight to video" disaster flicks, as I have a friend who works for Blockbuster, & he often gives me stacks of dvds that would otherwise have been destroyed, & turned into packaging materials, or shipped straight to a landfill.Sadly, I now fear that I was too haste in interfering with this movie's final destiny, of rotting in a vast heap of trash. Now, far be it for me to be completely negative, so I'll offer something on a positive note. It is a small victory that I, a man of much patience, was able to sit through the entire 90 minutes of this film, which is more than I can say for the aforementioned Xander Berkley vehicle "Magma: Volcanic Disaster", which was so bloody dull & awful, I had to shut if off after an hour.As for this slightly better volcano disaster flick, I'd recommend only watching it, if someone gives you a free copy, & you have 90 minutes to flush down the crapper. The up side is you'll have much more respect for Pierce Brosnan's "Dante's Peak", & Tommy Lee Jones' "Volcano" It'll make you laugh, & try, unsuccessfully, to make you cry, & you'll likely pause it, at least once, & forget you were watching it, & then go back & finish it, & then wonder why you just didn't forget it completely, in lieu of getting on with your life

In short, some American guy goes to a small Italian town to carve his name on a tree where his late wife grew up.Enter a crazy girl who lives in the house that the guy's wife grew up in. She talks to the dead! And not just any dead, but the American guy's dead wife! And the dead wife tells the crazy girl the Volcano is about to erupt! Of course nobody believes them... Not even the Catholic Priest who tries to perform an exorcism on the girl.This tripe is the worst thing I have seen in a LONG time. Bad acting, horrible story, even the Lava looked like strawberry jam. Steer FAR away from this preposterous movie, and rent Dante's Peak instead!