The Kilauea volcanic eruptions are obviously sad and devastating, but at the same time I understand why people on the Big Island of Hawaii, particularly those near Leilani estates on the eastern slope, might want to ogle the destruction. A fascinating, relatively rare phenomenon. On the other hand the lava seems to move about as fast as a turtle, if that, so it’s hard to relate in terms of disaster-movie similarities.

Almost all the volcano movies — Dante’s Peak, Volcano, The Devil at 4 O’Clock, Irwin Allen‘s When Time Ran Out, the 1935 version of The Last Days of Pompeii — have at least slightly exaggerated the speed at which lava flows. And few have dealt with the the threat of sulfur dioxide gas, or so I recall.

At the risk of sounding facile, which volcano movie has delivered the most realistic depiction of how lava actually looks and behaves, based on what we’ve seen over the past two or three days?