Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York

Plot synopsis:
A volcano beneath New York City seems unlikely, yet nothing else can explain the bizarre tremors and terrifying explosions wreaking havoc on the city. Tunnel digger Matt MacLachlan (Costas Mandylor), head of the team of "Sandhogs", has witnessed lava seeping into the city's aqueduct system and knows the unimaginable truth. A group of tramps trying to keep warm in Central Park near a heat vent all die from carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide poisoning. A boat in the harbour is caught in a venting and explodes. The FBI Terror Task Force begins to look for the imagined terrorists who killed the tramps and blew up the boat.
Matt is taken off of the sandhogs as some of his men were badly injured, which prompts an investigation. Pipes which were supposed to carry water are filled with steaming acid because of the volcano. He reunites with his former wife Susan, who has been sent to interview him on what happened, and convinces her that there is something seriously wrong in tunnel number three. Together they sneak down into the tunnels, which have been sealed off, and she sees enough to believe him.
Doctor Andrew Levering (Michael Ironside) has been conducting a geo-thermal energy experiment, which has triggered the volcanic activity as his project drills down seven miles into the earth in a secret location hidden in a warehouse in downtown New York. Neil Kavanagh and other people are financing this project, but since there have been no results they are ready to pull the funding, forcing Andrew to take more chances to produce instant results.
Matt and Susan go to the Mayor, only to find out that Susan's her boss Jacob Reed lets her down. Neil, who is there also, manages to make the idea of a volcano look impossible so the Mayor dismisses them. Shortly afterwards, a home owner opens the door to his house, only to be buried alive and instantly killed by a stream of molten lava. The whole block of houses goes up in flames, with 72 people missing, all of whom are presumed dead, and the Mayor begins to wonder, while Agent Walters of the FBI's Terror Task Force is given leave to do whatever he has to do.
Using a handheld thermal detector, Matt and Susan drive around the suspect area and find unnatural heat coming from a warehouse. They enter, but Matt is recognised by Andrew, who then binds them as prisoners. In an effort to produce results, Andrew, by this point, acting in desperation, goes too far and the workers start to desert as flames leap from the drill hole. He tries to seal it but is badly burned by the flames. Meanwhile, Matt and Susan manage to escape as the unleashed lava causes the warehouse to explode. The effects of Andrew's latest efforts are seen on the streets of New York as lava spouts out of manholes and buildings catch fire, killing thousands and causing untold damage.
The Mayor sees what is happening from his office and Neil reluctantly admits his part. He decides on an evacuation of the city. But all is not lost, as Matt has an idea which he tells his work crew his idea. He tells them that an explosion in the right place will divert the lava along the city's aqueduct tunnels and into the nearby sea. The race is then on to do it in time, but Andrew, who survived his burns, but was horribly disfigured, and is now stalking the streets of the city with a gun, learns of their plans via a television broadcast that also announces over 1,000 counts of murder to be handed down against him. The deranged doctor follows the team into the tunnels and faces Matt and Susan as they attempt to set the charges necessary to open the tunnels. Delusively believing that his project is still viable, Andrew shoots Matt, but one of his shots goes astray and destabilizes the wall, releasing steam that blinds him. Matt and Susan escape from the tunnels just in time to avoid the lava flow, while Andrew is killed in the eruption. Their plan works and the city is saved.

Tags: violence

Review:
This is about a group of underground tunnel workers in NY who come across some molten lava while digging a new sewer.
The woman who comes to investigate for the government just happens to be the ex-wife of the tunnel digger, and of course we run through the usual cliché of them disliking each other and then getting back together over the course of the movie.
Yes, someone has to stand in the way of our heroes doing what must be done, if for no other reason than that it's in the handbook of required clichés for disaster movies.Overall, it's just insanely cheesy and silly, with lines like "They're screwing with the pressure of the Earth's crust".
The two main characters turn in good enough performances.I say this is not too terrible - for a disaster movie - because there's no sappy melodrama involving kids, pregnant women, sanctimonious paramedics, or inner city gang members.
Oddly enough, for a disaster movie, the "special" effects actually serve as a backdrop for the story, not the other way around.
Diasaster Zone: Invasion of the Demented Camera Guy. It's hard to say which was more toxic: the magma or the camera work in this film.Endless dart-in's, dart-out's, dizzying pans, rapid-fire jump-cuts, unnecessary point-of-view changes, and so on.
Irritating in nature, devoid of purpose, it has become a pandemic in made-for-TV flicks.Once the bumbling camera movement has you popping sea-sickness pills, the movie introduces you to the same old assembly-line stereotypical characters rehashed on a hundred other made-for-TV flicks.
You've got some Einstein-wanna-be scientist causing the menace, a bunch of blue collar heroes that are the only ones who want to save the city, a female scientist that discovers the problem but nobody listens, politicians who are breaking the law and not listening to reason, dimwits in an anti-terrorism unit, and a few extras whose only reason for existence is obviously to be victims.
While the plot of the movie wasn't bad and almost plausible, the camera work was extremely distracting and a bit annoying.
And Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York could be chapter one.First question to the film makers: there were two fairly good Hollywood volcano movies in the 1990s.
No matter how close they are to searing death, no matter how precarious their emotional circumstances, I could only chuckle.To summarize: DZ:VINW is really no worse, no better than the other under-shoe feculence of the Sci-Fi Channel (not counting it's rather good series, Stargate and Battlestar).I'm sure the film makers are nice people and will do good work elsewhere.
The person who filmed it kept zooming the camera in and out like they were investigative reporters.
Have I seen worse than Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York?
The script is cheesy and forced more times than not, the story was decent enough in concept was very predictable and suspense-less in execution and the characters are no more different than the stereotypes that are here, there and everywhere in SyFy's movies.
All in all, a near-disaster of a movie, where both my eyes and ears were feeling sensitive by the end.
I love the "no animals were harmed" line at the end; apparently it's okay to show 3700 people, some of whom I knew, dying, apparently.There are at least three scenes I saw where 9/11 footage was used; if the special effects look fake, they're made for the movie; if they look real, well, that's our friends and family members dying.BUT that's not why it should be banned.
Somebody clearly watched "Volcano" and "24" while writing, filming, and editing this movie, since its obviously trying to emulate them.
Any death in this movie is deserved due to the bad acting.The CG effects look cheap and cartoonish, the lame tie-in and obvious shot at the anti-terror task forces are ridiculous.Other than the fact that the city of New York is facing total destruction, I found little of any redeeming value is this laugher.Michael Ironside must really be desperate for money.
Matt (Costas Mandylor) works in the underground pipelines of New York City, with a lot of other brave men and women.
Is there going to be a series of these now, like "Disaster Zone: Tidal Wave in Detroit" or "Disaster Zone: Earthquake in Indiana" or "Disaster Zone: NC State Basketball in the NCAA Tournament"?Anyway, I hope so, because this was the best "Disaster" comedy I've seen since Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120461/) and TV's 10.5 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364146/).If you're looking for thrills and science, go rent a documentary.
But if you are looking for laughs and "Science!", you've got the right movie.
DISASTER ZONE: VOLCANO IN NEW YORK is one of the most unintentionally funny movies I've seen in a while.
It's an attempt to convey a large-scale disaster movie on a TV movie budget, which of course is doomed from the very beginning, but the whole affair turns out to be so overblown, ridiculous and ultimately cheesy that it becomes a highly entertaining production.The essence of the film is as simple as this: there's an erupting volcano underneath New York.
Levering is played by cult favourite Michael Ironside, one of those actors like Lance Henriksen who's still good value even when he's slumming it like he is here.Of course, the fate of the city lies in the hands of one man, namely rugged hero McLaughlin (played by Costas Mandylor, better known for his depraved role in the SAW franchise).
Mandylor is paired with tough cookie/eye candy Alexandra Paul, and away we go on an odyssey of unlikely scenarios and disaster film clichés.There are plenty of enjoyable set-pieces to mention, from tunnel workers finding themselves burned by acid (some surprisingly graphic effects are utilised here) to a scene where a smoking human skull is blown out of the ground.
Sadly, there's never the kind of large-scale destruction that you'd hope from the premise, but there is one isolated scene of lava coming out of a guy's house which is worth watching the film for alone - it's an absolutely highlight of cheesy, cringeworthy effects work.
And that, my friends, is what DISASTER ZONE: VOLCANO IN NEW YORK is all about!.
I went into viewing this movie thinking it would be bad, but it far exceeded my expectations.
I watched this movie because I am a hardcore Costas Mandylor fan, but my god does he deserve (and luckily has gotten) better roles than this.
However, if you can appreciate a bad cheesy movie knowing that it will be entertaining enough to make you laugh, then go for it.
It is also so far the worst Costas Mandylor film I have watched and that is including an episode of Tales from the Crypt that he was barely in, and a horror movie called Hyenas that had bad CGI animated beasts in it.
This made for sci-fi channel movie was so bad it was funny!
What was disturbing was the shot of lower manhattan smoking....I am just SURE they used some 9-11 footage...and I HOPE they didn't...because that would be wrong!The special effects were tolerable for a TV movie.
At least it is not aggressively bad so that you feel cheated if you watched it.Characters are pretty standard, evil scientists taking short cuts, ex-lovers at odds with each other that must work together to save the world and so forth and so on.Disaster warnings start small and build slowly so that the "man" is not aware of the problem until almost too late and then must turn to the "rebels" they have been trying to suppress because they don't want a panic or interrupt the annual picnic or whatever.
Every possible cliché for a disaster movie, you would think that someone would say "But wait, that's been done." But no, they just went right ahead.
It's a normal day of hard hats and hazards for New York's finest tunnel workers until a group of them are assaulted by acid, sulphur and...lava?
Are the two events related?The purpose of 'Disaster Zone: Volcano In New York', apart from having an unnecessarily long title, seems to be to convince the viewer that 1997's 'Volcano' with Tommy Lee Jones was a cinematic masterpiece by showing what it might have been if it had been produced by the Sci Fi Channel.
Yes, it was an interesting idea, and it was done better elsewhere.Nonetheless, you might be tempted to give 'Disaster Zone' a look if like me, you're a fan of both disaster flicks and indeed volcano disaster flicks.
Therefore, being neither especially good nor especially bad enough to be entertaining, 'Volcano In New York' will recreate a disaster zone in your living room should you choose to follow in my footsteps and be mad enough to watch it..
Such was the question occurring to me as I struggled through yet another disastrously ridiculous SciFi Channel disaster movie.
I have watched half a dozen of these "SciFi Channel World Premiere Event" movies in the past year and each is uniquely, achingly bad in its own right.
Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York, however, brings bad into a new light.Every hackneyed device of disaster movie development is employed to predictable, hackneyed affect: the hero, a burly tunnel digger, leads his crew of rough-but-capable misfits (Local 147 "Sand Hogs") in a daring race against the volcano to save New York City from certain incineration by lava.
Throw in some incompetent DHS and FBI investigators; an incredulous mayor and his scheming, corrupt deputy; a female Sand Hog whose daddy was a legend among Sand Hogs; a foreman who is overly safety-conscious, except when he's not; and the unfortunate but gruesome deaths of several supporting "color" characters and you've got your standard disaster movie fare, all dressed up with nowhere to go except straight down the tubes.As seems to be the new standard, the volcano is not itself the "enemy," typically the case in classic disaster movies; no, the volcano is the unfortunate result spawned by a greedy (read: evil) scientist of the "mad" persuasion who has drilled a 7-mile deep hole beneath Manhattan into the Earth's molten core so as to capture the thermal energy and make bazillions of dollars.
Greedy, Evil Scientist guy has been able to pull this off with the help of the Deputy Mayor, who has greased palms all over the city in order to keep the drilling secret until such time as the thermal energy could be captured and the resulting power plant used to "open franchises" the world over.
C'mon, you know how this goes: the greedy, evil scientist guy dies, the safety-waffling foreman dies, the homeless guy dies, the black guy dies, the Hispanic pyromaniac dies in a column of lava, the female Sand Hog survives and Mr. Sand Hog and Dr. USGS get back together and suck face as the credits roll.In the 50s and 60s, we were subjected to horror movies populated with monsters created from nuclear testing.
In the 70s, disaster movies became an art form, with man struggling - often in futility - against the ravages of nature: no way did George Kennedy try to stop that 1975 earthquake, but he sure managed the aftermath really, really well.
There is no moral imperative in an avalanche: the best one could be accused of is getting what's coming to them for being in the wrong place, against instructions.In these modern disaster movies, we are treated to scenarios in which garden variety pests (bees, bats, locusts and the like) become monsters created out of genetic engineering or toxic waste dumping, or the very planet itself rebels against its victimization at the hands of mankind, specifically, Greedy Evil Scientist guys and their investors.
There are no surprises in Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York, except perhaps your own surprise at your willingness to waste two hours of your life on such dreck.
This movie has all the elements of a fine disaster movie; inept Government officials, unjustly ridiculed hero, the evil psychologically challenged scientist and the sniveling bureaucrat trying to cover it all up to save his own butt.
When confronted with an explanation the mayor turns to the sniveling underling who happens to be in league with a complete nut of a scientist intent on bringing Geothermal Energy to New York City, a good cause but a bad concept by doing it in the heart of the city.
The science if very fuzzy so don't expect any "A" from a Geology teacher as the vulcanology is about as good in this one as in other volcano movies.
Actually this is the best parts of the show because Matt (Costas Mandylor) and Susan (Alexandra Paul) actually works well together and has very good chemistry.
There is a final attempt to stay the disaster by the sandhogs by diverting the lava into the underground tunnels of NYC which saves the city.
The Disaster Zone IS this movie!
They died from inhaling poisonous gases generated by the underground volcano.* Workers and scientists travel through subway tunnels and other confined spaces - within sight of flowing lava!!
and the best performance in the movie,) and the hateful footage from 911.I really disliked the way the "heros" managed to get away in a GM truck.
This movie has every, I repeat every, cliché in disaster films.
I must admit that there are touches I haven't seen in my favorite volcano movie "Dante's Peak", like the rubber duckie.
It's the movie Volcano ala Sci-Fi Channel.
It's got the usual bureaucrats who won't listen to the scientists who are trying to warn of a impending disaster, FBI agents who get all ultra paranoid thinking it's all terrorism and the mandatory love interest.
This disaster film was released as a made-for-television movie on February 25, 2006.
The unrated film follows a group of underground workers in New York who begin to believe that a volcano lies under New York City, and is connected with an illegal drilling operation.
The 92-minute long film stars Costas Mandylor as an underground pipe worker who first sees signs of a volcano, Eric Breker, Pascale Hutton, Zak Santiago, and Michael Boisvert as his co-workers, Alexandra Paul as his ex-wife, and a scientist working to uncover the strange phenomenon, Robert Moloney as Paul's associate, and Michael Ironside as the head of the illegal drilling operation.
Nothing interesting really happens until over 50 minutes into the film when Mandylor, and Paul investigate the illegal drilling operation, and are held hostage by Ironside, who is the best performer in the group, and really seems to enjoy his scenery chewing role.
Volcano in New York is just abysmally bad.
It has every cliché character (and I mean every one) that you'd expect in a disaster movie.
They're all here.Add in the stereotypical science project goes wrong plot and "band of everyday heroes" that save the day and you've got a film that you could do yourself the favour and just NOT watch and still know what will happen at the end.Of course, from the SciFi Channel, you already know that the script will be dire, the dialogue inane and ludicrous and the characters annoying as hell.
Intersperse real-world eruption footage, cheesy "Youtube" quality lava CGI and what looked jarringly like 9/11 footage (I kid you not) and you have an awful mish-mash of effects that fails dismally.And whilst I mention the 9/11 footage, am I the only one to think that using such footage was just plain wrong?
The least they could have done was cut out the three or four scenes from the movie.So then, rubbish plot, rubbish effects, awful dialogue and questionable stock footage.
The CGI could've been better done by a junior high schooler with too much time on his hands!The ending was straight out of "Volcano" (1997).It's so clichéd:people with histories being thrown back together; gov't involved conspiracies; a small group of people saving the day, with a villain trying to thwart the heroes.And of course, copy-catting a bigger film.You don't have to have a big budget to create a decent film.
ludicrous disaster movie!
The people responsible for coming up with the idea for a volcano hitting New York City don't waste the opportunity to at first suggest that unexplained mayhem may be the work of terrorists.
The only decent idea in this movie script is the lunatic scientist portrayed by Michael Ironside, who at least might make you slightly interested for the latter scenes when he has lost the plot, ranting about using larva as an energy source or something.In the end, the main guy and (reunited) ex-wife pop the loony and save the day.garbage..
And it did not fail to disappoint.The story line of this particular offering has to do with a scientist, Dr. Levering (Michael Ironside)who has come up with a plan for tapping into geothermal energy to heat Manhattan much more cheaply than conventional methods.
Can Matt and Susan manage to stop the volcano before it obliterates most of New York City?
Like most disaster plots, this one's full of holes.
And finally, throughout the movie, people are way to close to lava with no problems caused by the hear or the fumes.
Michael Ironside does a pretty good job as the mad scientist, who just gets crazier and crazier as the movie goes along.
Worst disaster movie ever.
I have just seen this movie and I personally think it is the worst disaster movie of all times!
**SPOILER WARNING** The plot was interesting at the beginning, but at the part where the supposed "volcano" erupted the plot became a kind of the film Volcano, specially the part where the plan to save New York was to "guide" the lava to the ocean.
The special effects were so lame that I laughed every time the "lava" appeared.
In the part when the lava began to "burn" the city it looked like I was watching a cartoon..
To sum up I wasted 2 productive hours of my life watching this movie personally, this film may deserve a score of minus 4.