Tornado! (1996) – Review

When a major studio has a high-profile project in the pipeline it’s not unusual for smaller production houses to try and piggyback their own similar-themed films to capitalize on these bigger releases, especially if that larger film is getting a lot of good buzz, such was the case in 1996 when Hallmark Entertainment made-for-television tornado movie that aired three days before Warner Brothers released Twister in theatres.

The movie starts with a text card stating that “Scientists warn that due to the increase in global warming, existing weather patterns are becoming steadily more severe; creating stronger hurricanes, worse floods, longer droughts and devasting tornadoes” which is an “inconvenient truth” that viewers today can certainly attest to. The hero of this particular story is storm chaser Jake Thorne (Bruce Campbell) whose friend and former graduate school advisor, Dr. Joe Branson (Ernie Hudson), has developed a machine that may be able to provide earlier tornado warnings.  While this seems to be a plot point right out of Twister at least this film doesn’t have a rival storm chaser group driving around in black SUVs with a stolen copy of the machine, in fact, the conflict that is introduced in this movie is in the form of Samantha Callen (Shannon Sturges), a government auditor who must determine whether Dr. Branson’s project warrants more funding because nothing is more exciting than accounting, but she least brings some love interest into the equation.

“Sorry Ernie, I’m setting aside storm chasing to chase some tail.”

Much of the film’s humour stems from Callen being a “city girl” and wondering where the local mall is, while “Salt-of-the-Earth” Jake Thorne will make it his mission to poke fun at her fish-out-of-water character, a trait that is only bearable because it’s Bruce Campbell and he’s one of the few actors who can really pull off the charming asshole trope. The other key character in this drama is Jake’s grandfather Ephram Thorne (L.Q. Jones) who doesn’t believe that science is capable of detecting Mother Nature’s fury, stating that “All the computers in creation can’t change nature, now a tornado’s got a devil’s heart and a dead soul, and until you’ve seen that you ain’t telling me nothing about nothing.” Who can argue with that wholesome piece of frontier gibberish? Of course, it will be Grandpa Thorne who sacrifices his life to get Branson’s machine anchored so that it can withstand the high winds as the big tornado approaches.

Note: The machine that Branson designed to record atmospheric information inside the tornado has powerful legs that can be anchored several feet into the ground, so as not to be blown away while in the path of a tornado, which seems like a common-sense approach that the characters in Twister couldn’t seem to grasp.

While this film doesn’t have “evil” corporate storm chasers, the kind that are in it just for the money, we do have an antagonist in the form of Richie Cochran (Charles Homet), a local weatherman who has aspirations of moving up to the big leagues – who knew weathermen had big leagues – and his past history with Jake will cause some tension throughout the movie, as will his hitting on Samantha when the group go out dancing.  That is all window dressing as the real conflict happens when Jake is sure a big tornado is heading right for their area but Richie won’t go on television with a warning because if it turns out to be wrong it could hurt his career because, you know, weathermen being wrong is something that never happens. Eventually, Richie will do the right thing and issue the warning so that “conflict” does have a resolution of some sort. Of course, the film’s real resolution is Grandpa spitting in the eye of the Devil.

“From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!”

Stray Observations:

• The marketing team must have spent many a day and night coming up with such an original and gripping title as Tornado! for their movie about a tornado. I bet when they came up with adding an exclamation point they gave themselves high fives and a raise.
• As was the case in Twister, the scientist in this film uses the Fujita Scale to reference wind speeds when, in fact, the Fujita Scale actually measures the damage caused by the tornado and not the wind speeds.
• Jake describes an F5 tornado as “A killer” but pretty much all tornadoes are lethal to humans and an F5 simply leaves more destruction in its wake.
• We see Jake getting angry at Richie for shooting footage of the aftermath of a tornado but doesn’t he realize that all news stations everywhere do the same thing? It’s not like exploiting human tragedy is a new thing.
• Both this film and Twister show a tornado with a calm center, like the eye of a hurricane, but tornadoes don’t have calm centers and many of them have mini-cyclones rotating around the main vortex.

Clearly, tens of dollars were spent on the effects of this film.

One can’t expect much in the way of visual spectacle when watching a made-for-television disaster movie but Tornado! not only has very poor special effects there is barely any tornado action at all during its short 86-minute running time, with most of what we get being generated by offscreen wind machines. On the plus side, Bruce Campbell and Shannon Sturges have good screen chemistry and Ernie Hudson is more than up for the task as the dedicated scientist friend.  Then there is L.Q. Jones, who was clearly having fun with his part and his performance elevated every scene he was in, no matter how ridiculous it was.  While this made-for-television movie may have been a simple case of cashing in on the upcoming movie Twister I still found the characters in this film to be likable to be more than the ones found in that bigger-budget outing, and it does get bonus points for pointing out how Washington DC does its best to avoid the Global Warming issue.