Kelly McGillis, like Rodney Dangerfield, don’t get no respect. And while I’ve previously been part of the problem, having poked a little fun at her coming out many moons ago, I can say in all seriousness that she is criminally underrated as an actress. Sure, she’s been adequately celebrated for taking everyone’s breath away in Top Gun (1986), but beauty alone is little more than a genetic fluke. Any number of actresses could’ve roared off on a motorcycle with Tom Cruise and audiences would’ve responded favorably (though few would’ve brought the kind of energy to the role that made you think, “Huh, so Maverick’s a bottom”).
Witness (1985) is rightfully remembered as one of the great thrillers of the 1980s. But it’s also one of the best cinematic love stories of the last 40 years, and much of that is due to an incandescent performance by McGillis as Rachel, the Amish widow whose son witnesses a murder that Harrison Ford’s big city detective is determined to solve at great personal cost. Rachel’s goodness, curiosity and capacity for surprise light her from within. You hold your breath when McGillis is onscreen, whether Rachel is bathing, unashamed, with Ford’s detective in view, or illicitly (but innocently) dancing with him in a barn. Her presence is never short of mesmerizing.
While I am firmly of the opinion that the critical reputation of both Witness and McGillis’ contributions to it will only grow in the decades to come, we are here today to address a sorrier matter. It is called Storm Chasers: Revenge of the Twister (1998), and the IMDb plot summary recently caught my attention: “After a twister takes her husband’s life, a storm chaser throws herself into her work and discovers a lab where experiments are causing tornadoes.” Was this going to be the Death Wish of weather event movies, with McGillis murdering tornadoes to avenge her husband? One could only hope.
Here I must reveal, with the heaviest of hearts, that Jamie Marshall (McGillis) never quite gets her widow’s revenge. But she continues working for the Center for Severe Storms Research in Norman, Oklahoma, both to preserve his legacy and prevent additional deaths whenever possible. In the years since his demise, she’s garnered a reputation as a loose cannon whose weather-tracking vans are uninsurable. Of her efforts to train volunteer storm-spotters, her boss ruefully notes, “Seventy-five percent of them drop out after one training session with you.”
She is nevertheless dispatched to a Colorado town reeling from a catastrophic tornado when models indicate more storms are on the way. Behind the scenes, her besuited superiors worriedly discuss strange new weather patterns in and around her destination—which is located near a new, top-secret governmental facility known as Pine Feather. “These figures can’t be right,” Frank (James MacArthur) says after skimming a report. He is grimly assured by colleague Tony Grant (David Millbern) that the numbers are correct, and is further informed “There was definitely a low-precipitation supercell. But here’s what’s really strange. There wasn’t any rain!”
What we have here, in other words, is Piranha-level insanity, minus the bikinis and winking humor. Wolf Larson is the bashful starlet of the bunch as Will Stanton, a dedicated FEMA employee who must work in close proximity to Jamie as she inches closer to discovering what is now called climate change. Resembling the love child of Ron Eldard and Damian Lewis, with a hint of David Eigenberg, Stanton alternately harrumphs and bats his eyelashes at the thrill-seeking storm chaser, until she witnesses an enthralling round of ball lighting (no pun intended) in his presence and his patience is rewarded with an unexpected sexual encounter.
Sadly, Storm Chasers does not turn into the Crash (the original gangster 1996 David Cronenberg adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel, not the Paul Haggis pap) of weather disasters, even though one of its tornadoes is saucily referred to as “deviant.” Screenwriter Jeffrey Wynne and director Mark Sobel play it maddeningly straight, even with groaner dialogue (“Looks like the sky’s full of surprises. Kind of reminds me of our wedding day”) and a preposterous climax that involves characters surrounded by multiple-vortex tornadoes as they shelter under an overpass.
Their faces are clean afterward, their clothing none the worse for wear. “They still have their skin. That’s unrealistic,” my wife, an armchair meteorologist, remarked. Here are a few of her other complaints, which were occasionally shouted in exasperation:
- “You don’t chase at night or in planes!”
- “You wouldn’t see that part of the cloud if the storm was already over you!”
- “There are no United Methodist nuns!” (It’s a long story.)
- “That’s a picture of a hurricane!”
- “Tornadoes have no eye!”
Personally, I was more concerned with a FEMA worker not knowing the Fujita scale, but never mind that. Storm Chasers, with production values only marginally higher than what used to be found on public-access television, was produced for the Family Channel. Its original target audience was tweens and their long-suffering parents, and the performances of Liz Torres (as FEMA’s director of operations) and McGillis, who has the stature and easy self-assurance of an action hero, outclass the material. There’s only a joke or two that lands—as when Stanton’s friend Smitty (Adrian Zmed) refers to Jamie as “Xena the Weather Princess,” but the plot provides more than enough unintentional laughs to make up for it.
Streaming and DVD availability
Storm Chasers: Revenge of the Twister is currently out-of-print on DVD but streams at Tubi.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Leave a Reply