Ouragan nucléaire

What we have here is a late-night monster movie in which the monster is an artificially intelligent computer, which controls all functions at a nuclear power plant and which, of course, goes haywire, initiating a process that could lead to a meltdown while viewing power-plant personnel both as entities it must protect and as viruses infecting the system. Technicians frantically scramble to hack through the computer's digital defenses, but the hurricane that rages outside delays desperately needed expertise.

Not a bad plot, but the execution is just silly. Much of the dialog sounds improvised, and most of the scenes appear to have been filmed on the first take. Nevertheless, if you have nothing better to do, grab some popcorn and maybe an adult beverage, sit back, and get ready to smile!

One cliché after another that fuels some awful acting. There is a lame attempt at a lesbian relationship, that would make any lesbian cringe. The programmer keeps trying to hit on the heroine, her partner, the sheriff. There is a hurricane and the probability of a nuclear plant meltdown, yet the 'maintenance man' is more concerned with eating and his lunch break - right up to the last five minutes of this disaster. A woman gives birth in a barn in the middle of a hurricane and immediately thereafter is able to run briskly up the road to a house as if she had just made toast where she, the sheriff, and the clueless programmer are met with, "oh a baby!" I won't waste the reader's time writing about the dreadful writing, acting, editing, production (de)-values in this waste of film. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

The title makes this sound like one of those dodgy disaster flicks knocked out by The Asylum but I'm afraid to say that NUCLEAR HURRICANE is even worse: it's a film with two separate story lines, one involving a renegade computer at a nuclear plant and the other involving a hurricane, that have zero to do with each other despite the scriptwriter's attempts to stitch the two strands together.

This is badly written indeed, a film that jumps all over the place with characters and sequences and makes little sense as a whole. There are whole interludes which are just put there to try to drag the running time out to make this reach feature length, and of course that makes for a very boring film. At least it's adequately shot, but given Fred Olen Ray's copious genre experience I wouldn't expect otherwise.

What's notable here is that the script contains some truly abysmal humour, and the actors can't help but deliver it in a most stilted way. I even felt sorry for them on occasion. The hurricane stuff is so routine it's not even worth mentioning, but the 'evil' computer stuff is a little more fun, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY rip-off though it is. Jamie Luner and Jack Scalia are really slumming it here. One thing the other reviewers didn't mention is that the film features Gil Gerard and Erin Gray teaming up on-screen together after their roles in the fondly-remembered BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY, although both have aged so much that you could be forgiven for not recognising them.

Disaster movies can be entertaining, although the number of bad ones are too many to list, and the idea was interesting. But Nuclear Hurricane failed in every single way imaginable. Even for low-budget it looks cheap, very drab in lighting, grainy in the way it's shot and the editing is often sloppy at best. There is no better news about the special effects which look artificial and under-proportioned, if you are expecting an epic nuclear hurricane like the title promises you'll be disappointed, this hurricane didn't even rise above lukewarm. The music is very generic, you hear similar-sounding scores all the time and with much better pace and placement. The writing is really awful and was in serious need of a re-boot(pun intended) in Nuclear Hurricane, with very inane dialogue that has a lot of talk but entirely vacuous and sometimes irrelevant. There's even attempts at humour, and not only is the humour not funny at all, more tired than anything else, but it's most of the time placed inappropriately. Story-wise the movie is a complete slog, with sluggish pacing, padding that adds little(the pregnant woman subplot was not interesting and suffered some of the worst of the dialogue) and no tension or fun. It's also incredibly repetitive and has so many holes that you can drive the biggest ever truck through them, it's very difficult to be engrossed when the story is this confused(some scenes almost incomprehensible) and stupid. The characters are a cardboard and unlikeable bunch, especially the female sheriff, not many characters recently have got on my nerves but this character did. The most interesting character is the computer Staci, but even that character was derivative of Hal9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The acting is poor, with no chemistry or sense that they cared about the jeopardy they were in, ranging from bland to overwrought. This is including Jamie Luner. All in all, awfully bad from start to finish with nothing good to say about it. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Saw it on Prime, had a sandwich and diet coke. Thought I was on a coaster of a ride, but never thought I was seeing a crash. First 10 minutes was a thing about a helicopter rescue gone bad, never would think that was the best part of the movie. I love stinker movies, but this is very hard to watch.