Geysers on Film


Speaking of geysers on film, I thought I'd toss out a few other places where geothermal features become part of a movie's set or otherwise make an appearance.

One prominent example is the John Wayne film North to Alaska. None of it was filmed there, with the Wayne character's mining shack located at Hot Creek, Calif. instead. In almost every outdoor scene you can see one or more springs sputtering away, and their sounds are prominent in the audio background.

The terraces at Mammoth make an appearance as the planet Vulcan in the first Star Trek movie. At that point, I usually tune out because I've seen all the special effects that I care about.

There is a winter scene of Charleton Heston as an 1830s fur trapper climbing around Castle Geyser in The Mountain Men.

I'm sure there are more, and will try to add to this list as I hear about them or see them. The imdb.com database lists a number of films with Yellowstone as a location, but no details on what or where in Yellowstone was filmed. There are a lot of silent shorts from around 1901 listed, and it would be interesting to know more about them, and how to get access to them.

And then there's all the cartoon characters from Yogi Bear to Elmer Fudd who've been shot out of Old Faithful, but I'll leave building that list to someone else.