Saturday, November 14

Disaster movie shorthand: Tornado with (!)= B movie fun. Tornado without (!)= bad

Turns out I learned something today.
The movie Tornado! from 1996 is a campy yet fun disaster movie.
The 1994 movie Tornado ( no exclamation piont), is a super strange gypsy curse/devil worship movie that involves what appears to be a vengeful tornado god.

At first, I thought it was going to be a nice straightforward weather menace movie.
The opening scene involves a small boy watching his father get blown away by a tornado.
Seemed like a good start. A little derivative perhaps (a la Twister), but very acceptable.

Then the movie cuts away. The little boy is suddenly all grown up..and talking to his amulet!

I have no idea how/why the amulet is connected to the weather.
I also have no idea why the father had some type of special amulet.

I'm now an hour and a half into this movie, and I still have NO idea why this guy has a special gypsy amulet, or how his family is at all connected to the tornado god.
I also have no idea what the tornado god is doing in a movie at all.
Or why the tornado god is involved with devil worshipers.
Or why there are gypsies in the story.

Really, not a clue.
The only reason I keep watching is to see if they have someone explain the whole darn plot at the end.

So far I've seen 3 tornadoes, and 1 of them occurred in some sort of nightmare sequence.
Some sort of scary face just appeared in the most recent tornado.
I'm assuming that it's the tornado god?

Apparently the tornado god likes eating helicopters, and shooting lightening at the ground.
Normally I'd be opposed to tornadoes having faces, but since the sequence just increased the death count by 5 or 6, I'm feeling forgiving.

Basically, this version of Tornado gets an "F."
No slumming A-list or B-list actors, terrible special effects, nonsensical plot, and NO MASS CARNAGE.


UPDATE:
End of movie. No explanation. The "F" stands.

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