Original Australian Daybill Poster St Helens Killer Volcano
Poster art by Ken Hoff. St. Helens, alternatively titled St. Helens, Killer Volcano, is a 1981 made-for-cable HBO television film directed by Ernest Pintoff and starring David Huffman, Art Carney, Cassie Yates, and Albert Salmi. The film centers on the events leading up to the cataclysmic 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington, with the story beginning on the day volcanic activity started on March 20, 1980, and ending on the day of the eruption, May 18, 1980. The film premiered on May 18, 1981, on the first anniversary of the eruption. One of the film's associate producers, Seattle filmmaker Otto Seiber, nearly lost his life in a filming expedition on Mount St. Helens shortly after the May 18, 1980, eruption. His film crew had been dropped off by helicopter in the area on May 23, 1980, and as they filmed the devastation, their compasses started malfunctioning due to the magnetic field differences in the volcanic ash. This resulted in them getting lost and nearly killed by a second large explosion on May 25, 1980. Brief clips from the 1980 documentary film The Eruption of Mount St. Helens! Filmed during that expedition were included in the movie, as were clips from a previous expedition to the Mount St. Helens area several weeks before the May 18, 1980, eruption.
