Metal Tornado

So many bad reviews from so many Canadians and Canadian (?) pseudo-scientists. Boo to the bunch. This modest movie followed the formula flicks of the 50s without missing a beat. It didn't have a gigantic budget. Agreed. And the plot didn't ask for gross over-acting (or any kind of profound acting). Agreed. The science is shaky. Agreed. So what are we doing with things like "The Exorcist" when a little girl can turn her head completely around or "Jaws" when sharks become as intelligent as human beings? So much for the verisimilitudes. I suppose it was a bad idea to base the film in Canada. Perhaps it should have been shot in the U.S. Perhaps "King Kong" should have been shot in the tropics or the remake of "The Thing" in Antarctica. So much for the carping about location. The film entertains quite well, the acting is quite satisfactory and the cutting and music quite fine. No, the film doesn't boast Clark Gable or Elizabeth Taylor. Neither does "Psycho" or the original "Dracula". Nor does it have a colossal budget. I enjoyed this film and thought it was well prepared and interesting.

Curtis Stotlar

Trying to find a new, much more powerful way of using solar energy, scientists are setting free a magnetic field which roams across the country, whirling around every kind of metal thing, until the effect is a metal tornado which destroys towns almost like a very big lawnmower. Every time the hero is asked just how scientific the whole thing is, he says something like "No time to explain now", and starts to run. So much for that. Following the clichés of the genre, there is a rebellious genius, warning that a catastrophe is near, and an evil business man who wants to hush the whole thing up even at the cost of some lives. With increasing power of the storm, they have to work together and find a possible solution, though.

Yes, it's a typical genre movie going by the checklist what's got to be in there, but still it was better than I expected. It was wise just to put a town in Pennsylvania in danger, not having to save the whole world this time. A parallel event in Paris is also described, the Eiffel tower being a perfect choice for any catastrophe related to magnetism, but since all the main characters are in the US, this string of the story remains pale.

Even if the special effects are very, very cheap - such as rattling a shelf with tin cans to show the tornado is approaching - it looks okay for a TV production. Always keep in mind we are talking about small budget TV here, comparisons to Hollywood blockbusters with their enormous technical capabilities are therefore neither reasonable nor fair. Taking that into consideration, I vote 6 of 10.

I'm rolling on the floor still laughing my guts out. Thanks for the HUGE laugh. Bad acting, bad computer generated graphics, bad story plot. I bet any money that director is out of work. LMAO.

Update: I tried to save the above to the point review, but this site said my review wasn't long enough, which only added to my wet spot in my pants from laughing so much from the movie. Just what more can I say about the worst movie I ever saw. Poor Richie must be hard up for cash these days. Anyhow, I'm going to try and save this review again with this new paragraph in hopes it will make it to the review section.

Another Update: Oh My Freekin God. I have to have 10 lines in order for this review to be valid? I'm on muscle relaxants now to calm my pulled gut muscles from laughing so much.

An experiment with unlimited energy form solar flares goes awry. At least that is the premise. In reality, it is a standard disaster movie. The head of the firm was warned ahead of time that the technology had a flaw. Naturally, it was ignored. After the fact, Michael Edwards (Lou Diamond Phillips) suspects there is a problem; so do we.

The formula is standard. We already know the individual characters needed form watching other standard disaster movies and the plethora or tornado knockoffs. Now we get to guess which actor gets to play which character.

We have flying cars before their time.

Finally, they throw in some drones. But I miss big bugs and flame throwers.

Despite it airing on the notorious SyFy channel, I saw it anyway hoping for a film to ease my mind after a very on-edge weekend. I have seen some awful movies, whether on SyFy or not, and while SyFy have done much worse, Metal Tornado was awful. I will give some credit, the acting is not too bad, there has been far worse acting than this. The problem was that the actors didn't have anything to work from, as the characters are so dull I didn't give a tuppence about them and the dialogue has no natural flow to it at all. The effects, photography and editing are haphazard and the music has melodrama written all over it, but it's the story that sinks Metal Tornado, not only does it drag to the point of boredom and doesn't make any sense whatsoever, I failed to see the point to it. The concept didn't grab me, and at the end of the day I just didn't care. All in all, I was kind of expecting it to be bad, but not this awful. At least the actors tried, however that is the only good thing I can say about the movie. 2/10 Bethany Cox