10 Movies Everyone Confuses With Other Movies

9. Dante's Peak & Volcano

Olympus Has Fallen White House Down
Universal & Fox

Released less than three months apart in 1997, Dante's Peak and Volcano both attempted to take a bite out of the big-budget disaster movie pie with a similar focus on cataclysmic volcanic eruptions.

To be completely fair to the pair, their settings are at least markedly different.

Dante's Peak takes place in the titular small town as it becomes consumed by a formerly dormant volcano, while Volcano offers up the more patently ridiculous premise of a volcano erupting out of nowhere in downtown Los Angeles.

Yet you'll be hard-pressed to find many people who remember them as anything other than "the volcano films," or can differentiate them beyond a single ridiculous scene each - Dante's Peak's Grandma Ruth (Elizabeth Hoffman) basically getting herself killed mere feet from safety, and Volcano's self-sacrificial foreman (John Carroll Lynch) throwing himself in the lava to save a colleague.

Ultimately each film tanked at the box office amid dubious reviews, and which one vibes with you more is basically a flip of a coin: they're both dumb, amusingly trashy disaster flicks, if not quite as inane as a Roland Emmerich joint.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.