Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘St. Helens’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

The power of Mother Nature has always made for entertaining motion pictures simply because her fury can be properly visualized by way of special effects. But alas, while the fictional version of her wrath has blown us away on-screen time and time again, often times her power is what becomes the focus of these types of films, and sadly… the true impact of natural disasters is lost upon the audience and its characters. But once in a while, you stumble upon a movie that tries to show the human side that comes with disasters, as was the case in the 1981 film, St. Helens.

Now, this movie was simply a re-telling of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in May of 1980, and it just so happened to add in the legendary Art Carney to play the role of Harry Truman, the man who refused to leave the area when the mountain was clearly ready to blow and he subsequently lost his life when the mountain erupted. 

​If anything, this film has always enjoyed a special place in my heart simply because I've always found volcanoes fascinating and this eruption was no exception. Yet as I re-watched this gem for this article, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It had been years since I popped this in the old Blu-Ray player, and it turned out to be better than I remembered.  

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It's not a top-notch film by any means, but the performances are solid, and Carney leads the way when it comes to that. Plus, there's an actual story here. We see how people's lives are disrupted economically and in general when evacuations are ordered because of the danger, and these people exhibit genuine depth, fear and everything in between when it comes to the impending eruption of Mount Saint Helens. Of course, the big payoff arrives when the mountain blows its top, and while the special effects for that are pretty low fi, they are interspersed with news reel footage and real footage from a couple of survivors of the disaster, and well...it's fascinating to watch.  

It should also be noted that this film has some major ties to legendary horror films as well, since the band Goblin, who scored the iconic Dawn of the Dead and just about every single Dario Argento film ever, perform the score here and man, it's simply incredible. It's ominous, beautiful and powerful and I'm not going to lie, I want this soundtrack. 
 
Either way, this film is one I’m proud to have in my collection, and sadly, my search for a quality DVD print of this film continues. Because unfortunately, the one I have right now was released by a company that firmly believes that any word resembling a swear word needed to be bleeped out to save my ears from such foul language. But in the meantime, that can be overlooked thanks to those fine performances that I mentioned a moment ago, and because this motion picture does present a frank and human look at one of our nation’s biggest natural disasters. See this one if you get a chance, it’s definitely an entertaining ride. 

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