The Eruption of Mount St. Helens: IMAX (1980)

The Eruption of Mount St. Helens was my favorite IMAX film when it came out and for the 20 years following. (It could still be so but it's time to screen it again and compare it with others I've seen in the third decade. By the way, the best venue on which to see any IMAX movie is the 360-degree hemispherical Omnitheater at the Science Museum of Minnesota in downtown St. Paul.) The live footage of the mountain's liquefaction, collapse, and catastrophic explosion is unparalleled in the annals of science documentaries. The angry mile-high pillar of ash is as unforgettable as the Northwest's black pall was eerie. Though snow plows cleared most of the ash mounds that covered the highways and fouled car engines, I visited the region one year later to still see hillocks of ash everywhere. I personally surveyed the deforestation from a twin-engine tour plane and found it to be just as in this movie: Hundreds of square miles of flattened trees, all pointing away the source of the hellish destruction that took the lives of Harry Truman, David Johnston, and others. This documentary clearly and thoughtfully conveys the vast devastation that gives one pause to humbly consider the immense energies contained within our common creche, our planet Earth. 5 stars.