Ciclone

Good effect for an old movie, good cast. Bad timing 5 star for the effort and remember Mexican movie

Now this one had some damn good ideas. A cyclone reeks havoc, and we follow the struggle for survival of not one, but three groups of people (initially on a plane, a tourist boat and a fishing boat), all afloat in the vast ocean waters. But somehow director René Cardona Jr manages to mess up everything he possibly can and turns it into a pretty damn bad movie. The acting is downright hilarious. And some people speaking with their mouths closed due to bad dubbing, does not help things either. But it does make it funnier. The dialogues are close to being the most stupid, idiotic and plain ridiculous things I've ever heard in a movie. Yes, there's a bit of cannibalism. Yes there's a couple of shark attacks. But nothing too explicit. And that's okay, really. Doesn't have to be. When the rest of the movie's good, at least. But it's not. It's bland and uninspired with just plain retarded characters. Too many of them, even. And learning that there's even a version of this film running no less than 118 minutes, I wonder now how redundant a movie can actually get.

Having seen this film twice now - which some might find unbelievable or even masochistic - I felt I had to comment on it. It's easy to pan. The music is cheesy. In fact, as my wife suggested, it sounds like a porn flick. The dialog is downright juvenile if not stupid. Its runtime is way too long. I could go on but you get the idea. So why did I watch it twice? Well, one of my guilty pleasures is bad movies and I am a devoted fan of Carroll Baker and this movie fit both bills. Strangely enough the second time around I found much to like. The underwater scenes were really well done, especially those of the corals which were absolutely spectacular. The sharks were awesome, shown in all their predatory splendor and captivating ferocity. The cyclone scenes were also really cool, especially the ones of the seawall breaking and subsequent flooding. My guess is they were filming a real cyclone as these were not studio or miniature shots. And of course it starred Carroll Baker, still a knockout at 47, even without a hint of makeup. And Arthur Kennedy, at 64, in another trademark performance. Seeing him in this megalomaniac turkey was akin to a pilgrimage. To be honest, had it not been for these two actors I would not have bothered to see the film let alone review it.

You'd have to be a truly unscrupulous and slightly decadent Mexican trash-director in order to take a real-life human tragedy, like that of the plane crash in the Andes, and maximally exploit its storyline and horrific elements. René Cardona Sr. already directed a fairly truthful and impressive re-enactment of the real disaster in 1976 ("Survive!), but apparently his own son was jealous at the money-making concept and decided to make pretty much exactly the same film, only set in a *slightly* warmer climate and with a handful of sharks thrown in for additional menace. The result is a preposterous and severely unpleasant film that falsely aspires to be an intense drama, but actually it's just shameless excuse to depict the mental downfall of people and slowly build up towards cannibalism for the sake of survival. "Cyclone" opens with cheerful postcard images of a sunny holiday resort where tourists make boat excursions near the coastline. Then the calamity displayed in the title brutally interrupts the holiday spirit and, for several long minutes, Cardona Jr. simply edits together a compilation of random National Geographic documentary images to illustrate the harshness of the cyclone. Castaways from a tourist excursion and a fisherman's boat, as well as survivors of a sea-crashed plane gather together in a tiny sloop and face several long days of hunger, mental & physical exhaustion, desiccation, hopelessness and of course the inevitably increasing feelings of mutual hatred and competition. If all this painful human suffering isn't enough yet, the waters are also infested with bloodthirsty tiger sharks. After nearly a dozen days of despair, some of the survivors see no other option than to feed on the flesh of the deceased, but this socially sensitive suggestion really tears the group apart. Like I said, "Cyclone" is an incredibly unpleasant viewing experience and it hardly appeals to any cinematic target group. The film is far too heavy-toned for horror fanatics but simultaneously it's too uneven to please disaster-film freaks and too repulsive for admirers of dramas. The characters are bleak and the script draws their personalities rather inconsistently. Carroll Baker's character, for example, is initially portrayed as a real bitch that protects her poodle from the burning sun rather than to rescue fellow human beings, but when the climax approaches she suddenly transformed into one of the most amiable people on board. Same problem with Arthur Kennedy's priest character! At first he's comprehensive and helpful, but later it actually seems as if he wants to prevent people from saving themselves. Do not, repeat NOT, raise your expectations too much regarding the shark sub plot. The exact same shark footage is shown no less than four times and, if my memory serves me well, these scenes also already featured in Cardona's other sea-adventure "Tintorera". The last half hour of this extremely overlong (120minutes) exploitation ordeal is literally disgusting and actually discouraging for those who were still expecting a happy ending. The gore and bloodshed is shocking, indeed, but you can't possibly neglect the many moments of boredom and the overall execution of "Cyclone" is downright tasteless and sick.

René Cardona Jr made the overlong, boring and trashy shark flick Tintorerra a year before he went to make this overlong, boring and trashy disaster/survival flick with sharks thrown in. I can only imagine that the director was a real big fan of Steven Spielberg's Jaws as this is his second shark flick where sharks are not the main focus, and by rights don't actual have a real part to play in the story. I am thankful to say that he has ditched the soap opera elements of Tintorerra in favour of some more exploitative survival style elements, and it's slightly more interesting; although really the film is a mess and far to boring to entertain. The plot focuses on an airplane full of people that crashes during a storm. The survivors get themselves onto a small boat and are swept out to sea, but it's not long before hunger starts setting in, and this in turn sets off arguments between the survivors as they realise that they have to eat...something. However, their hunger isn't the only thing they are under threat from, as there's sharks in the vicinity too.

The plot actually sounded like it might lead to something decent, and I dare say it would have done in the hands of a decent director. However, René Cardona Jr is obviously not one of those and he manages to turn the whole thing on its head and ensures that nothing about the film is likable. The idea of people being forced into cannibalism is interesting; but the characters are boring and the overall atmosphere is far too impressive for the film to be enjoyable at the same time. There are some real unpleasant scenes in the film, and while this might have pleased some people; they are not done very well at all and a scene that sees a man kill a dog, for example, looks incredibly fake and stupid. The location used is just about the only successful element; as we see the people baking in the hot sun and this helps to get their desperate situation across. Anyone going into this film is liable to be extremely disappointed as there are no sharks at all for most of the film (excluding some stock footage) and they don't appear until the last ten minutes. By then, it would have taken something really special to create some excitement, but predictably; we are only served more disappointment.