Metal Tornado

"Metal Tornado" (2011) is another Syfy creature feature, although this time the "monster" is -- you guessed it -- a metal tornado, a magnetic vortex that attracts an increasing amount of metal objects (cars, toasters, etc.) and moves about according to an iron vein under the earth.

Aside from the protagonist Lou Diamond Phillips and Kate Drummond, the latter as a barely seen biker babe, the cast is blasé (although the youth who plays Diamond's son is good). Nicole de Boer is also on hand.

As noted in my title blurb, "Metal Tornado" is surprisingly well done for a made-for-TV creature feature; unfortunately it's unmemorable. There's nothing about it that makes it standout from the scores of similar TV movies. Although it tries to work up suspense, it lacks drive, and it's definitely NOT horrifying. Ultimately, it just comes across as hackneyed and forgettable.

"Metal Tornado" is only worth viewing if you have a preference for one or more of the cast members and you have an unquenchable hunger for these types of trite movies.

The story takes place in Pennsylvania, with many shots of Philadelphia (and some of Paris), but the film was shot in Ottawa.

The runtime is 90 minutes.

GRADE: C-

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.

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.

First of all, it's a stinker. Secondly, it's a Canadian stinker. Fans of science-fiction pretty well agree that nobody has ever made a good sci- fi movie and there is nothing in this movie to challenge that axiom. But this has the added handicap of being a bad Canadian sci-fi movie. The story line is silly and predictable. The acting is wooden and clichéd. But even being awful could be forgiven if they had not used the Ottawa Valley to masquerade as Pennsylvania. Have these people no shame? They drape American flags over obviously eastern Ontario architecture and then run credits at the end about all the government support. This must be as big a source of puzzlement to foreign audiences as it is of embarrassment to Canadian ones.I suppose the problem is that our brilliant movie people (directors and actors both) go to Hollywood, leaving only the hacks and greenhorns to slurp at the public trough while grinding out artless and unoriginal bumpfh like this and posing as artists. This movie made me bored. It made me embarrassed. And it made me mad!

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