Storm Chasers: Revenge of the Twister (1998)

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is the online plot summary for the film, "When a tornado takes her meteorologist husband's life, his wife and colleague devotes her own life to prove his theories that violent twisters are predictable." The plot summary is misleading, but wait there's more, it turns out there's a HAARP-like facility is manipulating the weather and it creates multiple tornadoes and the two main characters attempts to uncover the dark truth.When you hear a plot like that you probably want to watch the movie, it heightens your exceptions, my expectations were high when I bought a rare DVD copy for around $30, at the end of the film I was disappointed.The trailer (which was very vague, short, and misleading) for this film displays a lot of action, action is something this film lacked, instead you have the main characters bickering throughout most of the movie. The only tornado sequence is at the end of the film which was an insult to me.If you have low expectations, enjoy this film, otherwise stay away.

This was the (very) late-night film on BBC 1 last night so I thought I'd give it a go since I'm always up for a witching-hour TVM - sometimes they offer the opportunity to unearth a gem, you never know.The acting on display wasn't too bad for the genre and came over as 'real', despite the unreality of the situation. I say that because I wasn't sure about the science. I'd have to delve back into my old Climate Geography text-books for that - I am a Human, rather than Physical Geographer in any case. Regarding the plot, it took some time really to get one engaged but when once it did, engaged - like, potentially, our chief protagonists? - you were, to the extent that there was a run-out-of-film feeling at the end - but as this was a relatively low-budget TVM does that not go with the territory?All in all 'Twister' it wasn't but a creditable effort for a TVM it was and we could have done with another quarter- to half-hour to fill things out. It was, at any rate, quite an education on the abbreviations of a couple of US organisations - CSSR and FEMA - a marriage between the two, dare I venture to say?

!!!! POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO`S NEVER SEEN A TVM !!!!The problem with STORM CHASERS is that it`s a TVM which means...The budget is low . This means that instead of seeing a terrible tornado we`re instead shown the aftermath of a terrible tornado which is composed of film footage and a " Tent City " set up in a car park The main protagonist/hero is a ballsy woman who doesn`t take any nonsense off men , especially nonsense off well buffed hunky men The ballsy woman ends up with a romantic interlude with a well buffed hunky man she intially disliked The ballsy woman saves the day Very predictable stuff that seems somewhat belated to tie in with TWISTER . The lovey dovey stuff seems to overwhelm the side plot involving a research facility which led me to think that the TVM would have worked better if the producers had upped the conspiracy theory aspects a lot more but the science used is just plain stupid so perhaps they shouldn`t have bothered in the first place As everyone else is keen to point out it`s fairly inoffensive ( Compared to the previous movie I`d seen tonight THE LIFE OF STUFF it`s CITIZEN KANE in comparison ) but I couldn`t help wondering what Kelly McGillis was doing in a low brow TVM . This the actress who won plaudits in WITNESS , TOP GUN and THE ACCUSED . I guess a lot can happen in ten years

Jamie Marshall is a storm chaser who loses her husband Jim at the beginning of the movie as both are chasing a storm. Two years later,she is too dedicated to her job; people she trains often quit because she is too tough. She also sees no need for rules and she has a real attitude problem. Yet her superiors still want to send her to investigate a tornado in Colorado, in an area where such storms never happen. Wallace Houston, who is in charge of FEMA's efforts, is warned about Jamie's behavior, and she soon finds out she was right to be concerned. Independent-minded Jamie hates having to bum a ride from Will, one of the FEMA workers. Will, whose girlfriend Melanie wants him too commit and stay in one place, can't stand Jamie. Jamie despises him too, so...The writing at the beginning of this movie seemed pretty pathetic. Later, it got better when there is action rather than dialogue, or when the dialogue concerned matters other than weather. Once Jamie suspected the Pine Feather nuclear facility of being responsible for drastic weather changes, I thought things were going to get a whole lot better. There was more action as the movie progressed, but not much until the very end. And something else happened in the second half: more comedy. Some of it may have been unintentional, but it was entertaining nevertheless. Certain events near the end would have made a whole lot more sense if this had been a satire.The visual effects were pretty good, especially on Jamie's computer. Nothing one would expect to see on Oscar night, and not particularly realistic, but plenty scary. Stock footage of storms and their aftermath, and of a major fire that destroyed homes, added some to what little realism there was.Still, this wasn't bad enough to be on anyone's top 10 list of all-time bombs. That's about all I can say.