Twister

Twister is a disaster film about storm chasers. The film is based on a script written by the bestselling author Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin. Steven Spielberg was one of the producers of the film which stars Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasing meteorologists in the trail of the fabled F5 twister.

Although not a massive success at the box office the film has achieved almost cult status as one of the best weather disaster films of all time. It highlights the brilliant work by dedicated scientists who put themselves in danger to help generate prediction data that will save lives in the future.

Many viewers thought that the stars of this movie are the twisters themselves, brought to life by Industrial Light & Magic. Quite a lot of the twister (or tornado if you are outside the USA) events are in fact fairly close to what could happen; tornados are famous for destruction and also for leaving things amazingly untouched.

The film was used as the basis for a popular attraction at Universal Studios Florida and was the first Hollywood feature film to be released on DVD.

Paxton’s character meets up with Hunt and their old scientist gang to get her to sign divorce papers. This is happening while the team are in the middle of storm chasing where Hunt is hoping to gather data on twisters using their uniquely designed machine. Paxton gets caught up in the chase and ends up helping the team with the experiment but can they avoid being sucked up into the twister before the machine deploys?

Cinema release 1996

Certificate PG

Available on DVD and Blue Ray