Tornado

A reasonable effort all round on a small budget, but nothing really to do with tornados. A bit too much plot for the length of the film, however, Chester Morris, now starring in B movies, is quite good in the lead role.

This early entry in the disaster film sub-genre starts out with a bang! We witness a tornado and its path of destruction. Though the twister itself is rather cartoonish, the damage it causes is quite effective.

The scene switches to the days leading up to the storm, and the story of singer, Victoria Kane (Nancy Kelly), and coal miner, Pete Ramsey (Chester Morris). Mining disasters, musical interludes, class warfare, romance, and revenge soon follow.

Like most movies of its type, this one takes its sweet time getting to the titular calamity. Delving into melodrama / soap opera territory, it's easy to forget that there's a tornado in this movie! By the time it arrives, it's almost anticlimactic, with a couple of toy houses collapsing, and everyone getting their just desserts...

The influence of Cecil B. DeMille is clearly in this Pine-Thomas Production from Paramount's B picture unit. William H. Pine was DeMille's Associate Producer for several of his feature films and this film even with its low budget there are a lot of DeMille like touches here.

You'd have to go back to some of DeMille's silent films though. The story concerns coalminer Chester Morris who marries a traveling singer played by Nancy Kelly who has ambitions to climb socially. With her spurring him on, Morris gains some promotions and then gets a hold of a piece of land and opens his own coal mine. Whatever he does including building the grandest mansion in town is not enough for Kelly who's two timing him with the owner's son of another mine played by Morgan Conway.

The last ten minutes of the movie comes the Tornado which acts as the great leveler of Morris's ambitions. It's almost of biblical proportions and for that I refer you to the silent Ten Commandments, Madam Satan, and other DeMille films with great disasters coming as retribution.

Pine-Thomas films set a good standard for B pictures. They may be cheap, but they never look ragged and Tornado definitely fills that bill.

Chester Morris is a hard-working coal miner, liked by the men in his crew, and by Gwen Kenyon. He loves showgirl Nancy Kelly, so they get married. Then they discover a vein of coal on some property they own, and he sees the chance to become a rich mine owner. But Miss Kelly's social climbing offends the local gentry.

It's another of the competent moviesproduced by the "Dollar Bills", William Pine and William Thomas, using stories that have been proven winners, and stars, like Morris, a bit past their peak, but still fine performers. This one has something extra to it. Miss Kelly's character shows signs of mental illness, and the characters don't know how to deal with it. Morris is also surprised to discover that the tough mine owner who used to employ his father and him has a social conscience and is willing to help him out in order to give the workers jobs, while his friends are not as reliable in a pinch.

Perhaps that last point appeals to me more than it would to most people, but the cast is up to handling the detail work under competent director William Berke. There's also a very good special effect sequence when the eponymous tornado rages through town. A competent team can always produce a watchable movie. Occasionally, when the stars align, they manage something even better.

Tornado (1943)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent disaster film about a poor miner (Chester Morris) who marries a showgirl (Nancy Kelly) just as his luck changes. He ends up rich and running his own coal mine but soon items from his past are going to catch up with him and he's about to learn something about his loving wife. I guess it should come as no shock that this disaster movie, like many others from its genre, is full of story and not a very good one. I guess I should take that back because the first forty-five minutes or so are pretty good as we get an interesting tale of greed, jealousy and the dangers of mining. I thought the first half of the movie featured some pretty good drama as Morris must turn his back on some of his own morals to finally get some place and how this will effect everything that is coming to him. There's some stuff early on with a mining blast that creates some nice drama including a very good segment with Joe Sawyer who plays a tough guy who ends up a cripple. Where the film starts to lose its punch is in the final half-hour where things just turn way too silly. In the before mentioned blast, a woman is blinded in the event and her dad seeks vengeance on whoever took her into the mine. Of course this ends up happening at the end of the movie and it's just too much and too silly to work. Also silly was the love triangle that happens, again, in the final twenty-minutes or so. The movie runs a brief 82-minutes but there's enough plot for three movies here and with the running time so short you really can't focus on any of the stories as the film is constantly jumping around and in the end this takes away from the full impact. The movie does feature some pretty good performances with Morris leading the way with the tough and charming type of character he was born to play. The actor has no problem showing off his tough side and he's very believable as someone poor and struggling. The blue collar type character is one Morris could play in his sleep and he does a very good job here. The same is true for Sawyer who most will probably remember for his Hal Roach comedies. He is a favorite of mine and I was surprised to see how well he handled this dramatic role. Nancy Kelly, William Henry and Gwen Kenyon round out the cast. The tornado that the title promises appears mostly at the start of the film and then we flashback to the drama before going back to the disaster again at the end. The special effects are decent, if nothing special, and I couldn't help but think that some of them were lifted from another movie, although which movie never came to mind. With that said, the movie could have actually benefited from less story but fans of Morris, Sawyer or disaster films in general will probably want to check this one out.