St. Helens

With Dante's Peak on its way out of theaters and Volcano heading in, the low-budget Goodtimes label is trying to ride the hot-lava wave by reissuing a barely released 1981 disaster flick, St. Helens. Schlock director Ernest Pintoff's documentary-style dramatization of the 1980 real-life event has all the usual cliches of money-grubbing developers versus an earnest young geologist (played by David Huffman, who died in 1985). Art Carney turns on his cranky charm as a lovable codger who refuses to vacate his home. There are some odd touches, like curse words that seem to have been newly dubbed in to keep the film from seeming too much like an outdated PG family film (there's now no rating given). The token bad guys also provide dramatic tension with dialogue like ''He'll pay for dropping that log!'' In any case, there's no point caring about the characters, since the movie climaxes with an explosion that kills them all. D-