Ice Twister

Saturday night has become a vast wasteland for prime time television programming. Most of the networks have relegated this time period to reruns of the current series they are pushing at the moment with little to no thought to original programming. The SyFy channel has come up with their own remedy of sorts by broadcasting genre flicks made cheap an quick creating what has become known as their ‘Saturday night specials’. While these films are frequently panned by critics and viewers alike they are, collectively, pretty bad. That is to say the acting is typically stunted performing a boil-plate script with mundane direction. I have also noticed that how these flicks are perceived appears to have a lot to do with the age of the viewer; those in the younger generation grew up in an age of fantastic special effects and Sci-Fi movies that had incredibly huge budgets. For this generation the potential for enjoyment is proportional to the level of elaboration of the ‘B’ horror flicks were frequently the fun was derived from how terrible the special effects were. Realism wasn’t important as we sat in the darken theater watching these creature features or the ever popular global disaster movie. One example of this can be found in the consideration of ‘Ice Twisters’. It takes a classic fifties ‘science run amok’ premise and morphs it into a seventies disaster movie with just a little touch eighties nature gets even motif. If this sounds like a bizarre mélange of genres, well it is but for those of us who have remained movie mavens through each of these epochs there is a sense of nostalgia back to when the monster had a visible zipper up his back or a stick almost off frame pushing it. Between producers like Roger Corman and places like Hammer or Troma Studios we were always certain our trip to the movie theater would provide an afternoon of fun. In order to feel something similar with a movie like ‘Ice Twisters’ you need to be able to completely shut off you modern expectations for special effects and sit back to enjoy the ride. When you are on a roller coaster you don’t worry too much about the physics your attention is focused on the moment.

Providing the story was Paul A. Birkett and Andrew C. Erin with Erin also garnering the scripting credit. Both have written in this cinematic ilk before and Mr. Birkett just came up with an interesting variation on the creature feature with his flick ‘Altitude’. There is a certain skill set necessary even for a ‘B’ flick screenplay. They certain have made strides in this regard. This film is admittedly not great but it does hit the required factors necessary for an enjoyable couple of hours. Taking up the written word and turning them into this flick was Steven R. Monroe. His directorial credits were mostly other ‘Saturday Night Specials like ‘Ogre’, Storm Cell’ and Wyvern’, but much of his work has been operating the camera for hit television series including ‘the Wonder Years’ and ‘My So-Called Life’. This translated to an eye for details that is evident in the construction of this film. Even with the obviously limited budget for special effects Monroe works well in what he had to work with getting a visually cohesive flick out of it.

There are countless folk sayings about the weather and our inability to do anything but complain about it. For scientists like Dr. Austin (Ingrid Torrance) the dream to create weather is what drives her research. Her current project is to take cloud seeding to the next logical step. Instead of coaxing existing clouds to release their moisture Dr. Austin seeks to create new clouds by pulling cold air from the upper atmosphere using a series of self sustaining aerial drones. Now if there is one thing movies like this should teach us is never play around with the balance of nature and if you do by all that is holy do not accept finical backing by the military or any government agency known only by a series of letters. As soon as something goes wrong their eyes will light up flashing ‘potential weapon’. Needless to say the movie hardly gets through the opening credits before their well intended plans to water the global deserts goes horribly awry. Instead of producing rain clouds over a well defined area the freezing cold air pulled down is turned into tornados; not just your average ruin of the mill type but twisters capable of freezing anything nearby instantly. As the good doctor and her assistant try to track down the danger she runs into her former mentor, Charlie Price (Mark Moses), who is in town for a book signing. It turns out that he was once a preeminent scientist but forsook that to become a science fiction author whose best sellers focus of scientific disasters; the degree of coincidence is unbelievably high but just go with it. Also on the way to meet up with the author is a pair of journalism students; Ashley (Luisa D'Oliveira) and Gary (Ryan Kennedy). They get sidetracked by the titular storms missing their meeting and for Ashley an urgent need to find a place to pull over and pee. One distinction made by this movie is its ability to take several separate threads pulling them together forming a nicely played albeit predictable conclusion.

The movie holds together slightly better than average and the acting is done with a modicum of professionalism. The effects are not up to contemporary standards but as previously noted for those of us that found some light hearted entertain with flicks like this my advice is get some friends, order a couple of pizzas and some beer and have a little fun.

Posted 12/15/2010