In 2009, American geologist Adrian Helmsley visits astrophysicist Satnam Tsurutani in India and learns that neutrinos from a massive solar flare are causing the temperature of the Earth's core to rapidly increase. Arriving at a party in Washington, D.C, Helmsley presents his information to White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser, who takes him to meet the President.
Une des fortes éruptions se produit dans le mont Paektu. Scientifiques et militaires du Corée du Nord et du Sud s’entraident pour prévenir ce catastrophe, car de nouvelles explosions risquent dominer la péninsule coréenne…
Quatre naufragés dont la fille d'un milliardaire américain (Irish McCalla) échouent sur une île volcanique non cartographiée, mais dont il apparaît rapidement qu'elle sert de cible aux exercices de l'US Air-Force. L'un des naufragés étant rapidement abattu à coups de sagaie, les trois rescapés tentent l'exploration de l'île. Ils découvriront le cadavre d'un jeune femme au visage hideux, puis assistent à une danse exécutée par une douzaine de filles en tenue légère, et découvrent enfin un curieux laboratoire souterrain où un ancien criminel nazi (Rudolph Anders) se livre à d'étranges expériences de transmutation de peau afin de tenter de guérir sa femme gravement brûlée au visage. Les naufragés sont capturés, les deux hommes torturés et la femme d'abord courtisée par le dignitaire nazi, puis destinée à devenir sujet d'expérience. C'est à ce moment-là que le volcan se réveille.
Matt Benson est un enquêteur du FBI qui mène une enquête sur l'île de Ginostra, dominée par son volcan menaçant et en collaboration avec la police italienne sur une affaire de règlement de comptes entre mafieux locaux. Une famille a été exécutée et seul le jeune Ettore, âgé de onze ans, est rescapé et aimerait se venger. Benson accueille le garçon dans la maison qu'il loue en compagnie de sa femme sur l'île afin d'obtenir des renseignements de l'enfant. Mais des liens obscurs lient le policier américain avec d'autres habitants de l'île et les motivations des uns et des autres, tout comme celles de la police italienne impuissante devant la mafia ne sont pas simples à comprendre.
Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) is a downtrodden everyman from Staten Island, working a clerical job in a dreary factory for an unpleasant, demanding boss, Frank Waturi (Dan Hedaya). Joyless, listless, and chronically sick, Banks regularly visits doctors who can find nothing wrong with him. Finally, Dr. Ellison (Robert Stack) diagnoses an incurable disease called a "brain cloud" which has no symptoms, but will kill Joe within five or six months. Ellison says that Joe's ailments were psychosomatic, caused by his horrific experiences in his previous job as a firefighter. Ellison advises him, "You have some life left...live it well." Joe tells his boss off, quits his job, and asks former coworker DeDe (Meg Ryan) out on a date, but when he tells her that he is dying, she becomes very upset and leaves.
In 1865 during the American Civil War, a massive storm sweeps through a Confederate prison camp. Union soldiers Cyrus Harding (Michael Craig), Herbert Brown (Michael Callan) and Neb (Dan Jackson), are planning an escape via a tethered gas balloon. When a new prisoner, Union war correspondent Gideon Spillet (Gary Merrill), is brought into their cell, they knock out the guard and escape from the prison house. Once they arrive at the balloon, they drag one of the Confederate guards named Pencroft (Percy Herbert) aboard. After he explains that he knows how to pilot the balloon, they let him join the group.
As a yacht sails into an island chain in the South Pacific, a large number of natives in pontoon boats sail out to greet them. The natives dive for the trinkets the yacht's crew throws them. A shark arrives, scaring most of the natives away. In an attempt to catch a shark by throwing it bait that has been tied to a harpoon-sized hook, Johnny Baker (Joel McCrea) accidentally steps into a loop that tightens around his ankle. The shark takes the bait, and the rope grows tighter, causing the rope to yank the young man overboard. Luana (Dolores del Río), the daughter of the chief, saves his life by leaping into the water and cutting the rope.
Andre Laurence (Jourdan) takes a trip to a Polynesian island with his college roommate Tenga (Chandler). He assumes the native life and marries his friend's sister, Kalua. An eruption of a volcano and the Kahuna, the island's shaman, decides that the volcano can be appeased with the sacrifice of Kalua.
Le personnage central est un officier de liaison italien auprès des Alliés, à Naples, fin 1943, au début de la campagne d'Italie. Entre la misère et les décombres d'une ville qui vient de sortir de la guerre, le peuple de Naples tente de continuer à vivre.
Durant l'été 1976, la ville de Basse-Terre est évacuée car le volcan de la Soufrière est sur le point d'entrer en éruption. Werner Herzog parcourt la ville déserte et décrit la situation.
Submersible pilot Toshio Onodera wakes up pinned inside his car in Numazu after an earthquake wreaks havoc in the city and nearby Suruga Bay. As aftershock triggers an explosion, a rescue helicopter led by Reiko Abe saves him and a young girl named Misaki.
On a tropical island in the Pacific, a lonely volcano named Uku watches the wildlife creatures frolic with their mates and hopes to find one of his own. He sings a song to the ocean each day for thousands of years, gradually venting his lava and sinking into the water, but does not realize that an undersea volcano named Lele has heard him every day and has fallen in love with him. She emerges on the day that Uku becomes extinct, but her face is turned away and she cannot see him. Uku sinks fully into the ocean, heartbroken, but revives when he hears Lele singing his song to him. His fires re-ignited, he erupts back to the surface, this time right next to Lele, and the two form a single island where they can be happy together.
On the fictional Pacific island of Talua in French Polynesia, some 500 miles from Tahiti, Father Doonan (Spencer Tracy), has been relieved of his duties by Father Perreau (Kerwin Mathews). Father Doonan has fallen out of favor with the island's residents because he stumbled on the island's carefully hidden secret: Hansen's Disease (leprosy) among the children of the islands. He built a hospital for the children by the island's volcano.
Shelby Gilmore (William Holden), who owns a newly constructed hotel on a remote Pacific island, wants desperately to marry his secretary, Kay Kirby (Jacqueline Bisset) and proposes to her under the impression that she'll become his seventh wife. Kay is in love with Hank Anderson (Paul Newman), an oil rigger whose scientists are warning him that a nearby active volcano is about to erupt.