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I’m a sucker for
disaster movies. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking the
Man-punished-for-his-hubris variety, like The Towering Inferno or
City On Fire or Deep Core; or the fury-of-Nature kind,
like Earthquake or Tidal Wave or Volcano
(imaginative titles, ya?); or the recent crop of global warming tales,
The Day After Tomorrow and its small-screen spawn, which manage
to have it both ways: I love ‘em all! And of course, the only thing in
the world that’s more fun than a big, splashy, overflowing with special
effects disaster movie is a big, splashy, overflowing with special
effects disaster movie’s pathetic, low-budget, made-for-TV rip-off.
As it happened,
Tornado! played television a full three days before Twister
was released to cinemas (an example of what we in the trade like to call
the “Roger Corman two-step”), but for all that there is very little
doubt about which of the two went into production first. I might as well
state openly here that I’m not very fond of Twister. Its effects
are good, sure, but Helen Hunt’s Jo Thornton irritates the you-know-what
out of me, as a character, and even more as a scientist. So it might
seem a little perverse when I tell you that the thing I like best about
this particular Twister rip-off is just how undisguised and
shameless a rip-off of Twister it actually is.
Tornado!
is set in Texas, in a section of “Tornado Alley” in the vicinity of
Amarillo. Government auditor Samantha Callan (Shannon Sturges) flies
into the farming community to oversee the field trial of an experimental
tornado data recording device developed by Dr Joe Branson, and to decide
whether or not the project will continue to be funded. Branson’s field
headquarters are the farm of Ephram Thorne (L.Q. Jones) and his
grandson, Jake (Bruce Campbell), a former graduate student of Branson’s
who dropped out before completing his PhD, and who assists his former
mentor’s research by acting as a “chaser”. Branson’s efforts to
demonstrate the ability of his invention to withstand the power of
tornados and to record vital information that will make it easier to
predict their occurrence and course are frustratingly hampered by the
difficulty of catching a twister in the first place. The project is
further undermined by the contemptuous attitude of Ephram Thorne, who as
a child lost his mother to a tornado, and who dismisses any notion of
the phenomenon ever being “understood” by science; and by the equally
scornful attitude of professional weatherman Richie Cochran (Charles
Homet). Unimpressed by what she sees, Samantha swiftly decides that
funding of the project will stop – only to find herself being drawn into
the lives of the residents of tornado alley, and reluctantly attracted
to Jake.
Now – let’s just step
back a moment and see where we stand, shall we? We have:
·
An
initially hostile couple who fall in love while chasing tornados
·
A major
character traumatised by witnessing, as a child, the tornado-related
death of a parent
·
An
experimental device for recording information about tornadoes, which has
to be planted directly in the path of one, at considerable risk to those
involved
·
A
weatherman who earns the scorn of his professional colleagues/rivals by
working for a television station, and for being more concerned about
furthering his career than about saving lives
Sound familiar? In
truth, “undisguised and shameless” barely covers it. Twister, of
course, is hardly a masterpiece of screenwriting, but its dramatic
defects are least partially compensated for by its effects scenes.
Tornado!, on the other hand--- I really don’t understand how
anyone, even a TV executive, could think it a good idea to make a
disaster movie on a special effects budget of approximately $0.97, yet
it happens with bewildering frequency. Still, rarely do these
half-hearted efforts reach the sheer depths of Tornado!, which
can’t even afford a tornado!! Seriously. There’s some broadcast news
footage of tornados; there are a few building storms; but every time it
looks as if we’re heading for the big disaster scene, the pay-off, the
Reason Why Most Of Us Watch Disaster Movies In The First Place, we –
fade to black. You know – for an ad break. I suppose it’s just
faintly possible that when Tornado! was first broadcast, when it
had actual ad breaks, this tactic might have been slightly less
noticeable; but in a cut-together, uninterrupted form, these ominous
three-second blackouts – all of them followed, of course, by hey-you-shoulda-been-here
post-tornado wreckage scenes – become increasingly ludicrous. In truth,
the most exciting tornado-related aspect of Tornado! is the
exclamation mark in the film’s title.
Still – for all of its
embarrassing limitations, Tornado! does have one thing that
Twister does not, one thing that saves it from being a total waste
of time and effort; and that thing is, of course, The Bruce.
Newsflash: Bruce
Campbell is slumming here. Boy, bet you never heard that before, right?
But slumming or not, he’s the best thing about Tornado! – bet you
never heard that before, either – and for some of us, the mere
presence of The Bruce is reason enough to watch it. It is not, after
all, every man who can call a woman a “tight-ass bean counter” and yet
make it sound like the sweetest compliment she’s had in ages; and
besides – he sure can cut a rug….
If Tornado!
fails as a disaster movie, as a straight drama it has at least some
merit; and for this we can thank the efforts of its cast. The “initial
antagonism turns to love” chestnut has been around so long, Adam and Eve
were probably bored with it. When Jake Thorne and Samantha Callan are
introduced at the tiny regional airport, you can see them – Bruce and
Shannon, that is, not “Jake” and “Samantha” – exchange a look that says
as plainly as words, “No sense in wasting time – let’s get on with the
verbal sparring!” Remarkably, Campbell and Sturges very nearly make this
work, partly because they’re both professional enough to put this kind
of paint-by-numbers stuff over, and partly because if the story of
Tornado! is wearisome in its familiarity, the dialogue is rather
better than you’d expect in a film of this nature. (I shall have a bit
more to say on the subject of Tornado!’s screenwriter a little
later on.) Occasionally, unexpectedly, the script even pokes a little
fun at its own clichés. There comes a moment, for instance, when Ephram
Thorne, the film’s inescapable Wise Old Man Who Is At One With Nature,
intones a frankly embarrassing speech about how tornados have “a devil’s
heart, and a dead soul”. Far too many films ask us to take this sort of
tosh at face-value; so it is a remarkably welcome moment when, shortly
afterwards, another of the “chasers”, Tex, ridicules it outright (“Ohhhhh,
tornadoes got a heart and a soul….and a gall bladder, and a stomach….”)
while most of his auditors, clearly veterans of the Ephram Thorne School
Of Rhetoric, snicker appreciatively, and Jake squirms with mingled
mortification and annoyance; it takes the outsider, Samantha, to step in
and tactfully turn the subject. Nor is Tex later killed off for this
display of disrespect, as you might anticipate.
Freeing Samantha Callan from the morass of made-for-TV expectation –
she, in turn, is The Career Woman Who Must Learn The Error Of Her
Independent Ways – proves beyond the capacity of Tornado!’s
screenplay, but at least she maintains her sceptical attitude for rather
longer than is usual. (We learn, with more than a little incredulity,
that Samantha is known around Washington as “The Terminator”: she’s the
one her superiors send in when they want a project killed off.) Still,
there’s never any real doubt about her eventual destiny – particularly
not after the script plays the Androgynous Name card: “Call me Sam!”
Much more successful is the tinkering with the character of Jake Thorne,
who can sometimes be a bit of blow-hard, a bit of a know-all, a bit of a
jerk….and the script acknowledges as much. The film’s most surprising
moment comes when a tornado manifests itself – just in time to stop
Samantha from flying back to Washington to file a negative report, of
course. The chasers set out in pursuit, partly intent upon finally
testing Joe’s device in the field, but mostly in an effort to warn the
townships that are facing potential destruction. In touch with the
regional warning service, Jake is asked to make a call as to which way
the tornado will go, and which communities must be issued a warning. He
does so….and he is wrong…. This unexpected outcome has the
effect, of course, of legitimising Joe’s recording device. After all, if
Bruce Campbell can be wrong in his predictions of tornado
behaviour, then clearly such a device is needed, despite what the
Wise Old Man might say to the contrary.
Oh, yeah. Joe’s recording device. Remember that? I wouldn’t be surprised
if you didn’t: the star of Twister has been reduced to a minor
supporting role here; and every time the good doctor starts to explain
to us how his invention works, the film tactfully cuts away.
Consequently, some of you out there might well be wondering just what
Tornado! is doing being reviewed here; and in truth, its inclusion
is a bit of a cheat, given the perfunctory nature of its
scientific content. However, what little “science” the film possesses is
rather interesting, inasmuch it illustrates clearly the complete
ignorance, or perhaps I should rather say, the complete lack of interest
of your average film-maker in the basics of science. Now, in this
instance I’m not talking about the way science is conducted, but
something far more elemental: the way that it is funded.
Although, as I mentioned up above, 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow
has since engendered an entire sub-genre of global warming-themed films
and mini-series, it wasn’t the first of its kind. Tornado! opens
with the traditional Ominous Warning graphic, this one about the
increasing frequency and severity of meteorological phenomena such as
tornadoes, and the concomitant need for better early warning systems –
systems based on information provided by devices such as the one
developed by Joe Branson. Unlike its big-budget cousin, Joe’s machine is
a purely stationary gathering of complex data recorders, housed in a
casing surrounded by firing mechanisms meant to anchor it to the ground
securely enough for it to withstand even an F5 storm – just supposing
one should conveniently happen along…. (Branson’s device, by the way, is
twee-ly named P.A.T.T.I. – “Portable Analyser of Technical Tornado
Information”. And as it happens, “Patti” is also Branson’s wife’s name:
a fact which, he claims, didn’t dawn upon him until “weeks after” he
named his invention. I think if I were Mrs Branson, I’d be contemplating
a D.I.V.O.R.C.E.) Now, this sounds all very well in theory, but how does
it work? We don’t know. The arrival of Samantha, there to decide
(supposedly) whether funding to the project will be continued or not,
just happens to coincide with the device’s first ever field test.
Joe Branson receives Samantha with a puppy dog eagerness that barely
conceals his sweaty desperation at being confronted by the holder of the
purse-strings; Jake, with frank and immediate hostility. Both of them
regard her from the outset as The Enemy, and it is no surprise when
their instincts prove well-founded. Samantha first confesses to Jake
that she has really been sent to shut the project down, and later, that
her mandate comes courtesy of the “anti-environmental lobby” in
Washington, which wants to “pull the plug on any project that even
acknowledges global warming”. Jake is outraged by this, and clearly the
viewer is supposed to be, too; and under certain circumstances, I might
well be; but---
We learn, over a series of conversations, that Joe’s funding has been
running for six years; that it has taken every day of those years for
him to produce a model that can even go to field trials (if I were him,
I don’t think I’d be shooting off my mouth about how “naming it” was the
most difficult part of the project!); that at no time previously has the
funding body so much as inquired into how Joe has been spending its
money, let alone demanded a little bang for its buck….yet when someone
is (for whatever reason) sent in to see where the money has gone, it is
treated as an outrageous imposition, proof of how eee-vil they
are back in Bad Ol’ D.C.
Needless to say, this is not, to put it mildly, how scientific funding
is generally administered.
And, hey! – call me venal, but if I could find a funding body willing to
hand over the moolah, to take no interest in what I was doing with it,
and to wait a full six years before it bothered to ask for some sort of
pay-off, or even to think about cutting off my cash flow, well, as far
as I’m concerned that body could be just as eee-vil and
agenda-ridden as it liked; I’d still be perfectly happy doing business
with it.
Tornado! is one of those
films for which I feel an affection considerably beyond its merits. I
can’t remember when I first saw it, but by the time I saw it the second
– third? – time, it had attained a certain significance in my mind. As
the opening credits rolled, I found myself thinking, “Hey, I know that
name….and that name….and that name….” I couldn’t immediately
place those names, granted; but they were nevertheless somewhere in the
bulging Rolodex of my memory; and a quick trip to the IMDb revealed that
many of those who participated in Tornado! in 1996, including
director Noel Nosseck and co-star Shannon Sturges, would go on to one of
my favourite stupid killer animal films of recent years, 1999’s
Silent Predators (a heartwarming tale of rubber snakes on the
rampage). But this time around, the name that really leapt out at me was
that of screenwriter John Logan. Tornado! was Logan’s first
professional assignment. He has since gone on to work on a few bigger
budgeted projects, and achieved a certain measure of success.
Gladiator….The Last Samurai….The Aviator…. I haven’t,
myself, seen any of these later works, but I understand that some people
like them. No, it is not for these more recent achievements that I know
John Logan’s name. To me, he is, and will always be….the screenwriter of
Bats….
Sorry, John! |
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