After Nearly A Year Delay, Kino Lorber Has Finally Released Dante’s Peak On 4K!
‘90s action cinephiles; our long, long wait is finally over. Dante’s Peak has finally, finally arrived! After about a year of delays, Kino Lorber has released the 1997 tale of a small town that has to deal with both the threat of long dormant volcano coming back to fiery life, as well as the upheaval that comes with Pierce Brosnan at his sexiest rolling into your town, on 4K!
Dante’s Peak follows volcanologist Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan), scarred after the loss of his partner in a volcano eruption a few years back, as he investigates Dante’s Peak, a long dormant volcano that has begun to show signs of life. While there, he falls for the town’s mayor, Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton), and begins to feel at home in the small little hamlet. But, all that bliss is not to be, as Harry continues to find mounting evidence that Dante’s Peak is ready to blow. Now, he must race against the clock, and even the advice of his superiors, to try and stop an all out catastrophic tragedy.
Dante’s Peak has long been a favorite of mine. The clear winner of the Volcano Wars (suck it, Volcano!), Dante’s Peak is both a peak (ba-dum-tsk) disaster film as well as a ticking clock thriller, as the inevitable disaster slowly builds under a small, unsuspecting town. Director Roger Donaldson, at this point in the peak (got like 30 more of these, folks) of his ‘90s programmer era, crafts a disaster movie that feels more in line with the ‘70s styled disaster films, focused more on character development, before massive destruction and chaos wipes them all out.
But, the real meat of Dante’s Peak is the special effects. Once Dante’s blown her top, it is absolute mayhem, as the city begins to crumble around them, giant lava flows begin to eat away at the surrounding areas, and a massive tidal wave of broken trees and ash begin to destroy everything along the river.
Dante’s Peak was made at a very special time in movie special effects. Computer generated imagery, CGI, was just beginning to enter the wider market. It was revolutionary for the industry, but it was still very young, and incredibly expensive. Thus, teams that had the funds to use CGI had to get creative with their work to keep costs down, melding both CGI with practical effects. This led to, in Dante’s Peak case, a smorgasbord of different special effects techniques to bring to life the destruction of a volcanic eruption.
The most impressive of those special effects, in my opinion, being the miniature work. Miniatures have been a staple of disaster movies since the beginning of film (one of the most intense miniature destruction scenes is actually from the 1933 film Deluge). With Dante’s Peak, at the sunset of the widespread usage of the special effect technique, we see not only great miniature enhanced scenes throughout, but easily one of the best miniature effects ever put to screen; The Bridge Collapse. A scene so perfectly put together, mixing miniature, full sized practical, and CGI, that I did not realize the majority of it was a miniature until recently.
Specs:
Dante’s Peak has never looked better! I really can’t emphasize how excited I was for this release, finally being able to see the film in the best home presentation possible, and Kino Lorber did not disappoint with their presentation here, with the film being restored with a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision Master, which comes from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative.
For special features, fans of Dante’s Peak can expect an audio commentary from director Roger Donaldson and production designer Dennis Washington, an isolated score from composer John Frizzell, a BTS featurette entitled “Getting Close to the Show: The Making of Dante’s Peak”, and a theatrical trailer.
Dante’s Peak is pure ‘90s disaster goodness. Filled with gorgeous locations, gorgeous people, and insane destructive set pieces, Dante’s Peak is the exact type of movie you used to stumble upon on TNT or USA Network back in the day, and be immediately hooked. Now, you can get that same sort of midday-catch-it-halfway-through energy in 4K presentation!
