Dante's Peak (1997) - 25 mistakes

Continuity: When Rachel and Harry are crossing the river in the truck, they get obviously very wet. By the time they get to Ruth's lodge, they seem quite dried out.

Continuity: When they are driving up the mountain to get to her kids, they cross a river and they get hit on the passenger side of the truck shattering the window, but later when they show them going up the mountain there is a new window there.

Factual error: In the scene where Pierce Brosnan hot wires the pickup truck, it is clear the truck has a locking steering wheel and gearshift. Even if he connected the correct wires to start the truck, he wouldn't be able to move or steer it.

Other: The first time Rachel brings the team coffee, she has six coffees on a tray. There's five cappuccinos and one regular coffee for Harry. On the tray there is five coffees on one side and one coffee at the other side, obviously being Harry's regular coffee, so that Rachel would be able to tell the them apart. But when she gives Harry a coffee, she gives him one of the five standing together, so he obviously got one of the cappuccinos.

Revealing: After Dante's Peak explodes for the final time, the pyroclastic cloud rolls down the mountain toward the town. Harry shouts "Don't look back, kids, don't look back." and then we are shown a wide shot of the truck zooming down the ash-choked streets. Unfortunately, it's painfully obvious that this is either a miniature or CGI shot, because the truck isn't leaving any tracks behind it or trailing any clouds of ash despite its high speed.

Continuity: Just after the helicopter crashes, check out the two full-view shots of the vehicle that show the top running lights. Of the three that are left, the middle one has been knocked crooked. After these two shots, the lights are all perfectly aligned again.

Deliberate "mistake": Geologically, the type of volcano in the movie shouldn't erupt so much low-viscous magma; but due to make the volcano exciting to the audience, the movie makers probably deliberately ignored this mistake.

Revealing: In the scene where the van is about to be flipped over on the washed out bridge, wires can be seen on the hood of the miniature that pulled it across.

Plot hole: Afterward the pyroclastic explosion Rachel, Harry and the kids get into the mine. There are a lot of things of Rachel’s son in there: Sodas, chips, tapes and a tape player/recorder among them. There is a shot in which we can see a pile of tapes on the player, in almost perfect order. But if we consider that the whole town collapsed because of the earthquake occurred before the eruption, then those tapes must have fallen down, surely?

Visible crew/equipment: When Pierce is wrapping up his equipment at the lake (after just having taken a PH test to find the level of assiduousness of the water) you can see lens flare in the shot.

Continuity: Near the start of the movie, during the violent eruption when the major characters have quickly loaded their gear into the truck and are trying to escape, the shot changes back and forth from looking into the cabin of the truck from the front and then looking forward out through the windscreen. The windscreen wipers are running at very different speeds. From inside, they run very fast (probably so you can see out through the mud) and very slowly from outside (probably to accentuate the mud etc).

Other: When the volcano begins to erupt, cars are seem driving out of the city. When the motorway collapses, and the cars go with it, in the close up shots, there are no drivers inside them.

Continuity: Mr. Custer has an on and off problem with his glasses when registering Harry Dalton. When seen full face, his glasses are in his shirt pocket--yet, when seen from the back, he has his glasses on!

Plot hole: After the volcanic eruption, there's a scene where wee see our heroes going across a lake, which has been turned to acid by the lava. If this acid is strong enough to corrode the propeller, then surely the fumes would be destroying their lungs, in which case they should be dead, or close to it.

Revealing: When the lava comes through Ruth's house you can see that it's done with CG. The reddish "streaks" look like from a sci-fi movie. The shapes of the lights and streaks are unnatural.

Revealing: During the pyroclastic flow scene, the flow sweeps a tractor trailer off an overpass, which blows off some of the side panels in the back. Watch the back of the truck before the flow hits it, the panels that come out are already popped out and ready to blow off.

Continuity: When Harry and Rachel are making their way back to Rachel's house after the volcano's initial explosion we see them go down an alley to avoid all the traffic. As they move down the alley we see a pile of bricks fall from a roof and hit the front of the truck and window which causes large cracks in the glass on the passenger side. However, immediately after this we see the car and in all shots from the outside of the vehicle the cracks are no longer visible.

Deliberate "mistake": In the shot right after Harry successfully maneuvers out of the river, the truck he's driving should still have water pouring out of it. When he was initially pulling out, the water in the truck was still up to the bottom of the steering wheel, and we can see it draining out, but it would take much longer than a second or two for the water to fully drain out- the truck's completely dry and not leaking at all.

Factual error: The scene in which the main characters are in the ranger station truck and are driving across the lava flow, you see the tire getting absolutely covered in lava, flinging it inside the wheel well, plus the bottom of the truck is basically only an inch or two above it. How did the gas tank and the fuel lines survive that miraculously without melting or bursting? The heat would literally boil the fuel inside the lines and the truck would no longer be able to run.

Plot hole: Rachel calls a town meeting for 6 p.m. to discuss evacuation, about 8 hours after the danger became apparent. Wouldn't it have been more responsible to call the meeting earlier in the day, to keep the town on alert to get the hell out of there?