An earthquake strikes the city of Los Angeles. Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones), the head of the city's Office of Emergency Management, insists on coming to work to help out with the crisis, even though he has taken a vacation with his daughter Kelly (Gaby Hoffmann). His associate Emmit Reese (Don Cheadle) notes the quake caused no major damage, but seven utility workers are later burned to death in a storm drain, one escaped and survived but was severely burned on one side of his face at MacArthur Park. As a precaution, Roark tries to halt the subway lines which run parallel to where the deaths took place, but Los Angeles MTA Chairman Stan Olber (John Carroll Lynch) declines, feeling there is no threat to the trains. Against regulations, Roark and a colleague Gator Harris (Michael Rispoli) venture down the storm sewer in the park to investigate. They are nearly burned to death when hot gases suddenly spew out of a crack in the concrete lining and flood the tunnel. Geologist Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) believes a volcano may be rapidly forming beneath the city with magma flowing underground (similar to the formation of the Mexican volcano Parícutin which emerged and grew tremendously in just one week) but cannot come up with enough evidence for Roark to take action.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The film features two parallel stories. The first one is set in an unknown past time and is about a young man (Clémenti) who wanders in a volcanic landscape (shot around Etna) and turns into a cannibal. The man joins forces with a thug (Citti) and ravages the countryside. At the end, his company gets arrested and during his execution, he recites the famous tagline of the film: "I killed my father, I ate human flesh and I quiver with joy." The story is about the human capacity of destruction and a rebellion against the social prerequisites implied against it.
An American NASA spacecraft is hijacked from orbit by another, unidentified spacecraft. The U.S. suspect it to be the Soviets, but the British suspect Japanese involvement since the spacecraft landed in the Sea of Japan. To investigate, MI6 operative James Bond—agent 007—is sent to Tokyo after faking his own death in Hong Kong and being buried at sea from HMS Tenby (F65).
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.
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.
Glaucus, a centurion returning to his home in Pompeii after a spell in Palestine, arrives on the edge of town just in time to see Ione, the beautiful daughter of the city's Consul, lose control of her chariot. Glaucus saves Ione's life and then heads into town to see his father. On the way, Glaucus intervenes in defense of a thief named Antonius, who is being severely punished on orders given by Gallinus, a Praetorian Guard. On arriving at his father's house, Glaucus discovers that it has been looted and his father murdered by a band of ruthless hooded thieves who have been terrorizing the city, always leaving a cross painted on a wall as a calling card. Glaucus vows revenge against the killers.
In Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1880, Professor Sir Oliver Lindenbrook (James Mason), a geologist at the University of Edinburgh, is given a piece of volcanic rock by his admiring student, Alec McEwan (Pat Boone). Deciding that the rock is unusually heavy, Lindenbrook, mostly thanks to the carelessness of his lab assistant, Mr. Paisley (Ben Wright), discovers a plumb bob inside bearing a cryptic inscription. Lindenbrook and Alec discover that it was left by a scientist named Arne Saknussemm, who had, almost 300 years earlier, found a passage to the center of the Earth. After translating the message, Lindenbrook immediately sets off with Alec to follow in the Icelandic pioneer's footsteps.
Le célèbre géologue a filmé les cratères en activité de volcans d’Europe, d’Indonésie, du Japon, d’Amérique centrale, d’Amérique du Sud et de l'Afrique des Grands Lacs. Tazieff cherche toujours à être au plus près du cratère, malgré le danger couru et les risques permanents à prendre, afin de nous plonger au cœur de l’éruption.
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.
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.