Directed by: Andrew Stevens, Jim Wynorski
Starring: Kevin Sorbo, Gigi Erneta, Alex Meneses, Andrew Stevens, Maeghan Albach, Glenn Morshower

If you’re into exploitation, sexploitation or just general trash cinema, you might be familiar with the name Jim Wynorski, a.k.a. H.R. Blueberry, Jay Andrews, Salvadore Ross and a number of other pseudonyms. Mr. Wynorski is the auteur behind films like Not of This Earth (featuring Traci Lords’ first mainstream role), The Bare Wench Project and sure-to-be-classic Dinocroc vs. Supergator. With Fire From Below, he joins forces with writer/director/producer/actor Andrew Stevens and the thespian talents of Kevin Sorbo to bring us…a piece of junk. I love the disaster film genre, but sweet Jeebus what a load of horse hockey one has wade through to find the good stuff.

Kevin Sorbo is a brilliant (and dashing, it must be said) seismologist. Kevin’s present girlfriend is also a brilliant seismologist. Kevin’s ex-girlfriend works for Andrew Stevens, who is the greedy head of a mining operation digging lithium out of the ground. This particular form of lithium is fantastically reactive and could be used for weapons, which is a nice business plan right there. But the operation releases lithium gas which ignites instantly when it comes into contact with water, meaning the entire region is in lethal danger. As random people and finally an entire small town perish, Kevin Sorbo and the U.S. military respond in the only possible way: by blowing stuff up.

The screenwriting in Fire From Below can only be described as lax, giving the impression that the absolute minimum of effort was invested. It has a cut-and-paste feel with its completely generic storyline, flat dialogue and almost nonexistent characterizations. The supposedly funny oneliners are slightly embarrassing, and the acting is perfunctory. As for visual effects, a critical part of any self-respecting disaster film, they range from decent (the flaming gas clouds that chase our heroes) to pretty bad.

But let’s give credit where credit is due. Fire From Below is more bloodthirsty than many of its made-for-cable colleagues, and at least a couple of deaths are entertainingly creative. A small town is suffocated by the toxic gas and that sequence has some eerie potential. A waterskier is chased across a lake by a fireball that finally incinerates both her and her friends in the boat, and later a teenage kid taking a leak explodes as his urine ignites the reactive gas. The latter scene is one of the more original disaster movie deaths I’ve seen in a while, and that’s worth something. I LOL’d, as the kids say.

But is that enough to bump the rating an extra star? Sorry, but no. These short moments can’t really balance the not-really-trying feel that permeates much of this movie.

Rating: 1/5

And yes, I would love to see someone make this film for real. Awesome OTT concept, and certainly not too much sillier than some films that do exist…

Directed by: Gordon Yang
Starring: Lou Diamond Phillips, Nicole de Boer, Greg Evigan, Stephen MacDonald, Frank Schorpion, John Maclaren

I really, truly, deeply wish that I could report how Metal Tornado stunned me with its massive awesomeness… but unfortunately, it’s my duty to be honest and tell you that it’s another example of the predictable mediocrity of made-for-tv disaster movies. It’s by no means the worst the genre has to offer, but no more than just about okay for a slow Sunday afternoon.

And I say that with some sadness, because I liked the idea of a magnetic tornado when I first heard about this film. There are lots of interesting possibilities for large-scale destruction and general nastiness built into the concept of a vortex hurling all kinds of razor sharp items around. There are some scenes where something really gruesome seems about to happen – and then the script takes another, less bloody (and probably cheaper) route. I realize Metal Tornado is intended for television, and made for a moderate budget, but come on, guys! It’s a disaster movie! People are supposed to die. Horribly. On-screen, if possible.

Plot? Oh, right: Lou Diamond Phillips plays an astrophysicist employed by a company, Helios World, that has invented a method for collecting energy from solar flares, thereby solving the world’s energy problems once and for all. Just as the operation is about to go live, an ex-consultant with the company calls the CEO (Greg Evigan) and tells him that there is a dangerous design flaw in the system. Mr. CEO refuses to listen, and sure enough there is an incident during the first download of solar flare energy. Some of the energy escapes and creates a ”rogue magnetic vortex”, that roams around the countryside, gobbling up any metal within range. Lou Diamond Phillips, along with co-worker/girlfriend Nicole de Boer, realizes that Helios World is responsible for what’s going on, but Greg Evigan refuses to investigate – until the magnetic tornado heads for Philadelphia. Cue that service-minded part of the military that’s always eager to lend out some groundbreaking new weapons technology…

It’s the standard TV disaster movie setup with the standard cast of characters, and it’s all pretty much what you expect. Visual effects are mostly decent while the acting is all over the place: Lou Diamond Phillips gives it a good effort, and Greg Evigan portrays the Helios CEO as the greasiest executive I’ve seen for some time, while some of the supporting cast are on the amateurish side. There are no real surprises along the way, but it’s all reasonably competent, particularly compared to some other SyFy offerings.

The major problem with Metal Tornado is that after a promising beginning, the story gets bogged down in a tiresome succession of scenes with people looking at computer screens and talking on the phone, but precious little real action. As I said initially, this film squanders several good opportunities for disaster spectacle and grievous bodily harm. The setups are pretty good: I really liked the scene where a lumberjack starts his chainsaw, which is then pulled out of his grasp by the magnetic vortex and sent hurling through the air – but the guy escapes with a gash in his helmet. Later, the French arm of Helios World creates a vortex that tears Paris apart, but let’s not spend more than seven seconds on that part of the story, because it’s much more urgent to show what happens to a trailer on an empty field in rural Pennsylvania. A waste of potential, I say.

There are certainly some fun moments, but overall I like the concepts and setups more than the actual execution. Still, Metal Tornado is ever so slightly above average for low-budget TV disaster flicks. Primarily for genre fans, and possibly fans of Mr Phillips.

Rating: 2/5

Summit Entertainment has released the first promo picture for Paul W.S. Andersons Pompeii, along with a more detailed plot outline:

It’s late summer in 79 A.D. and the city of Pompeii glitters at the foot of the mighty Mt. Vesuvius. MILO, the slave of a shipping tycoon, dreams of the day he will buy his freedom and marry his master’s daughter, COLUMBA. What he doesn’t know is that Columba’s debt-ridden father has promised Columba to a despicable Roman Senator to pay off an overdue loan.

Milo does know that his friend, the Gladiator NIGELLUS, is being forced to compete the next day in a seemingly unwinnable battle in the Coliseum. As Milo tries to find a way to save his friend, he learns that Columba has been promised to another man and that he himself has been sold to a new master. Just as it seems things can’t get any worse, Mt. Vesuvius suddenly explodes with the power of 40 nuclear bombs, sending a torrent of 1,000-degree ash and smoke into the city. Lava flows down the mountainside, killing thousands. As Pompeii crumbles, Nigellus is imprisoned inside the Coliseum, Columba is locked inside her family’s villa, and Milo is trapped aboard a ship bound for Naples.

As the people of Pompeii flee the obliterated city, Milo is determined to return to it to save his friend and his beloved Columba. With fire and ash destroying the only world he’s ever known, an ordinary man is tested to his breaking point in this heart-pounding tale of extraordinary heroism.

As reported before, Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Alien vs. Predator) will direct from a script by Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler (Batman Forever), and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park). If all goes according to plan, shooting will start in spring 2012 and the film is slated for a 2013 release.

(Via Collider.com)

The project is listed as being in the pre-production stage. At the moment, the only thing we have to go on is a teaser trailer, a poster and a short synopsis:

Deep underwater in the Marianas Trench an accident results in a devastating Tsunami that destroys the Hawaiian Islands as it continues toward the west coast. Panic ensues all up and down the western coast of North and South America. In an attempt to lessen its impact, scientists launch an underwater explosion that inadvertently makes the tsunami more powerful and focused on Los Angeles. Scientists rush to a solution while the military begins planning for the worst. Los Angeles begins emergency evacuation. Lives and loves are lost even as a brash young grad student comes up with a solution: start the mother of all earthquakes to counter the rushing torrent and raise the continental shelf off the coast of the United States.

Whatever happens, it doesn’t look good for Los Angeles…

I’m not familiar with TomCat Films, but they seem to be focusing on high concepts, low budgets and the occasional mockbuster. Their backlist includes titles like Aliens vs. Avatars and The Amazing Bulk (yes, really), so I think we can sort them in the same box with The Asylum, UFO and CineTel. Good to get to know you, guys.

Teaser trailer below.

For more upcoming disaster films, check out the Coming Attractions page.

According to the LA Times, New Line Cinema is planning a big earthquake disaster movie titled San Andreas 3D. The screenplay is written by Allan Loeb (21, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps). According to reporting by Deadline New York, writers Jeremy Passmore & Andre Fabrizio wrote the original script and Loeb was brought in to polish it up. Producer Beau Flynn (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Journey to the Center of the Earth) is also connected to the project.

According to the LAT report,

the hero is forced to go on the road to reconcile with his children and his estranged wife, who’s moved away and taken up with another man

Nothing more about the plot as of now, but the promise of watching the San Andreas fault wreaking havoc to western U.S. is enough to make me interested. No director or cast connected. And as the title indicates, this will supposedly be a 3D film.

Will certainly keep a close eye on this one.

*

For more on new and upcoming disaster films, check out Coming Attractions.

Directed by: Stephen Soderbergh
Starring: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Elliott Gould

Too few disaster movies these days earn the epithet “star-studded”, but Contagion is a nice exception to that trend. And apart from the big names above, supporting roles are filled with a bunch of nice actors of the “Oh, I know that guy/girl, where did I see him/her before” kind.

Also, kudos to director Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for actually killing off a couple of their A-listers at relatively early points in the plot. That’s also a good ol’ genre tradition that is sadly neglected nowadays.

Contagion starts off with Gwyneth Paltrow as businesswoman Beth Emhoff, who gets infected by an aggressive new virus on a trip to Hong Kong. Stopping over in Chicago to meet her lover, she manages to start a new virus cluster in the Windy City before returning home to her husband (Damon) and son in Minneapolis.

As the virus rapidly starts spreading across the United States (and indeed the world, but the narrative focus is on the American side of the story), Dr. Ellis Cheever (Fishburne) of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is drafted by the Dept. of Homeland Security to lead the fight against the epidemic. He in turn dispatches epidemologist Erin Mears (Winslet) to Minneapolis to begin the investigation in the field.

While the effort is underway to try and identify the new virus, as well as coming up with a cure, conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede (Law) begins to pester scientists and implies that the virus might in fact be a secret biological weapon. He also begins promoting a homeopatic cure called forsythia, and claims the government is covering up its healing qualities.

Soderbergh intercuts swiftly and deftly between the many characters and multiple plot strands, but the very structure of the film makes it a somewhat cool piece of work. Contagion is more an overarching depiction of what a major pandemic outbreak might do to modern society, than a visceral human drama, giving the film a slightly analytical and distanced feel. Matt Damon’s character is supposed to be the human focus and the guy we identify with, but even that storyline is a little too lean to really engage your feelings. On the other hand, the rapidly spreading panic and society’s descent into chaos with looting and riots are well handled.

The stellar cast does a good job all around, and Soderbergh tells the story efficiently if not excitingly. A competent and watchable but less than thrilling effort.

On a sidenote, I quite enjoyed seeing the inevitable conspiracy theorist treated not as a lone, intrepid truth-seeker (as per usual in the disaster genre) but as a greedy opportunist among others. Had my fill of self-aggrandizing conspiracists lately.

Rating: 3/5

Directed by: René Cardona Jr.
Starring: Arthur Kennedy, Carrol Baker, Lionel Stander, Andrés Garcia, Hugo Stiglitz, Olga Karlatos

Cyclone (also released under the title Terror Storm) is a 1970′s disaster film that comes across as a mix of Mission of the Shark and Alive, with a touch of Jaws for good measure. Directed by Mexican B-movie director René Cardona Jr., Cyclone is certainly ridden with flaws, but having read Glenn Kay’s pan of the film I was surprised to find it somewhat effective – at least in parts. I guess it depends on your outlook and expectations.

The story takes place in some tropical paradise — presumably somewhere on the Caribbean coast of Mexico — where three separate groups of people end up fighting for survival together, lost at sea after being caught in the titular cyclone. First, we’re introduced to a group of tourists taking in the sights from a glass-bottomed boat captained by the hunky Andrés Garcia. Next, we take to the skies where we meet the passengers and crew of an airliner. And finally, we check in on a small fishing boat and its small crew. As the storm pounds the coast, the plane crashes in the ocean, the fishermen have to abandon ship and get into their dinghy, and the tourist boat drifts helplessly out to sea. Over the next hour, the three groups encounter each other, so everyone ends up on the sightseeing boat. This merry crowd is a predictable selection of clichés — the priest, the doctor, the socialite and her pampered dog, the greedy businessman, the pregnant woman, the rugged fishermen and the token black couple — and the concept of “character development” is nowhere in sight.

The storm itself is over and done with in the first 20 minutes. Most of the remaining running time deals with the hardships facing the survivors, primarily the lack of food and water which causes various conflicts and forces some tough moral decisions. This portion of the film is slow-moving and downbeat, but interrupted by scenes of higher tension. A childbirth, for instance, which leaves the mother radiant with happiness despite not having had more than a few sips of water for the past week. Most shocking is the sudden and brutal sequence where the socialite’s dog is tossed into the water and then rescued — only to be killed and eaten. (Yes, finally a disaster film where the pet doesn’t survive! That’s a redeeming point right there.) Such details add a flavor of exploitation cinema that sets Cyclone apart from its slicker Hollywood cousins. That vibe is reinforced as the situation gets ever more desperate and the survivors turn to cannibalism, which isn’t handled as discreetly as in, say, Alive. After one of the characters, a doctor, cuts up the body of a dead fisherman, we see the roof of the boat littered with pieces of flesh laid out to dry in the sun, which contributes a certain unpleasantness to the atmosphere.

Finally, as a fight onboard causes the boat to sink, help arrives in the form of two small airplanes. Unfortunately, so do the sharks. After more than an hour of slow going, the end of the film is a comparative blur of action as the sharks attack the survivors who desperately struggle to get out of the water. No CGI sharks here, but rather footage of real sharks attacking what I’d guess is clothing stuffed with animal guts. Who makes it and who doesn’t is a bit hazy thanks to the messy editing – and how all those people manage to squeeze into what looks like a two-seated plane we’ll never know…

It’s easy enough to pick this film apart, because as I said initially, it is a flawed piece of work. The special effects are hit-and-miss: some of the airplane shots look pretty good as does the underwater work, but the torrential rains and massive waves that drench the boats seem to be accomplished by pointing a firehose at the unfortunate actors (you can see perfectly calm water in the background). Cyclone also offers one of the most memorable continuity errors I’ve seen, when the crash in the ocean transforms the airliner from a propeller plane to a jet. Several actors are beyond wooden, delivering the clumsy dialogue like they were reading it directly from the script. Also, this cut of the film is almost two hours, which is far too long (there is also a shorter version available, however).

At the same time, the slow pace, grim atmosphere and and general feeling of hopelessness sets Cyclone apart from many other disaster films where there seems to be room for romance and gunfights even in the most desperate circumstances. I wouldn’t call it “realistic”, but I kind of like the almost claustrophobic focus of the plot, and I like how Cardona Jr. won’t let the characters off the hook even when salvation is within reach. Oh yeah, and the dog dies!

Good? Well, let’s settle for surprisingly watchable despite its shortcomings. This is the first Cardona Jr. film I’ve seen, so I can’t compare it to his other work, but I’ll certainly seek out the Andean plane crash film Survive, written by René Jr and directed by his father, Rene Sr.

Rating: 2/5

Trailer:

Directed by: Travis Fort
Starring: Patrick Labyorteaux, Julie McCullough, Nick Afanasiev, Katie Wilson

You have to admire The Asylum for their unwavering dedication to cinematic trash. They are truly an exploitation studio for the new millennium. While their films usually are short on most qualities that we usually demand from good movies, The Asylum are cheerily upfront about it. Can’t not love that attitude.

Their latest disaster “epic” is, to get straight to the point, hilarious. I frequently had a big smile on my face as I watched it. Make no mistake, it is still utter crap – but it is so ridiculous that it’s kind of impossible (at least for me) not to like it.

2012: Ice Age is basically The Day After Tomorrow on a shoestring budget. The concept is admirably absurd: volcanic eruptions on Iceland cause a gigantic glacier to come unstuck and throw itself down the American east coast at a roaring 200 miles per hour (!), crushing everything in its path. You might wonder how Iceland can spawn a glacier considerably larger than the island itself, or how the glacier can zoom at blinding speed across 1600 miles of open sea without ever slowing down, but to ponder such minor details is, of course, pointless. Suffice it to say that this one makes The Day After Tomorrow seem pretty realistic.

Scientist Bill Hart is dropping his daughter off at the airport while at the same time communicating with an associate on location in Iceland. As the glacier heads for the United States, Bill grabs his wife and teenage son and heads for New York in order to rescue the daughter. Their perilous journey — dodging huge chunks of flying ice blown off the glacier, fighting their way past massive highway queues and through incessant digital snow, even dealing with a gun-wielding hitchhiker — is intercut with brief glimpses of the military’s efforts to stop the glacier by throwing various forms of explosives at it.

The silly screenplay is nicely complemented by the sometimes confusing editing style, which occasionally makes it a bit difficult to understand what’s going on, or how one shot relates to the next. For instance: a sequence where the glacier hits Newfoundland is preceded by a few shots of what certainly looks a lot like an alpine village. Are there alps on the Eastern seaboard? Does Canada look like Switzerland? Am I just ignorant? In another sequence, we get a wide shot of an emergency shelter populated by Japanese people in breathing masks, but as our heroes enter the Japanese are gone and the shelter is filled with mostly Caucasians — and not a breathing mask in sight. Also, the choice to shoot some action scenes in close-up doesn’t really add to the clarity of the proceedings. As for VFX, they’re standard Asylum quality.

Lead man Labyorteaux frequently appears lost in thought (perhaps wondering how he ended up here). Julie McCullough starts out doing some frantic comedy-style acting before settling down in a role that more or less consists of tagging along. Afanasiev as the son gets several opportunities to show off his best pantomime “OMG, look at that”-face.

I’m not sure if the filmmakers are actively making fun of the Roland Emmerich school of disaster movies, or if the hilarity is just a side-effect of the cheap’n'quick, who-gives-a-crap production style. Whatever the answer, the result is weirdly entertaining in a way that practically defines the concept of “So bad it’s good”.

As for other Asylum disasters, I found Megafault a bit boring, and 2012: Supernova slightly more entertaining. 2012: Ice Age kicks both of their asses. This is a treat for bad film connoisseurs everywhere.

Rating: ?!/5 (Craptastic)

I have not yet seen a release date for the upcoming magnetic twister flick Metal Tornado, starring Lou Diamond Phillips, but if you head over to Imagination’s website you can take a peek at the trailer. It’s a bit on the low-res side, but we do get to see a couple of glimpses of the Eiffel Tower being devoured by the metal-gobbling storm. Yum.

For more on this fine moviefilm, check out the original post.

Update 14 Dec 2011: Read the full review of Metal Tornado.