Twister

The Dorothy in Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin’s screenplay is modelled on NOAA’s TOTO, a sensor-packed barrel two people could set in a tornado’s path in thirty seconds. Its centre of gravity was too high for extreme wind, no tornado ever hit it dead on, and it was retired after 1987 over safety and the difficulty of getting it in front of a storm. Jan de Bont’s film dramatises an experiment that never worked. The tornado is as much sound as image: lion roars, tiger growls, camel moans, jet engines. It was nominated for sound and visual effects and lost both; visual effects went to Independence Day, which also beat it at the box office and left Twister second worldwide for 1996. When DVD launched in seven US test markets in March 1997, this was among the thirty or so launch titles. Shooting stopped after the Oklahoma City bombing of 19 April 1995. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded by the lightning lamps, fixed with plexiglass filters; cinematographer Jack N. Green was hospitalised when a hydraulic house set activated with him inside. A good fit if you count the lion-and-jet-engine roar on a real sound system as half the film. Not for anyone who will find the team’s conflict thin once it narrows to signing divorce papers.