Worst/most ridiculous movie depiction of tornadoes or chasing

Elaine Spencer

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This is a question I decided to post for fun after watching some cheesy '70s disaster flicks. What are some of the worst depictions you have ever seen in a movie (can be theatrical, made for TV, or direct to video) of tornadoes and/or tornado chasing?

By "worst" I mean any or all of the following: 1) scientifically inaccurate, 2) overly dramatic or badly scripted, 3) giving a false impression of what chasers do, 4) unintentionally funny.

Of course, "Twister" is likely to recieve numerous citations and with good reason, but I'd encourage everyone to also think of OTHER flicks that were just as over the top, or worse.

My personal, ahem, "favorite" is a miniseries titled "Category 6: Day of Destruction," which can best be described as a VERY poor man's "Day After Tomorrow" and features a gigantic tornado AND hurricane (!) both converging on Chicago. It also includes a storm chaser character named "Tornado Tommy," played by Randy Quaid, which right there tells you all you need to know about him. :-)
 
There was some made-for-TV movie released at about the same time as Twister, I believe called Tornado, that was pretty bad. In the end the cowboy grampa decides to sacrifice his life by spending his last moments pounding the stakes of the instrument pack into the ground so that the tornado won't blow it away. The family watches in horror from a small opening in the underground storm shelter.
 
Elaine Spencer said:
It also includes a storm chaser character named "Tornado Tommy," played by Randy Quaid, which right there tells you all you need to know about him. :-)
Click to expand...

This immediately came to mind when I read the topic of this thread. That scene where he gets fairly close to what's basically a dust devil and then starts shouting about how it was the largest tornado he's ever seen... actually, that scene is a very accurate depiction of chasing.

I thought they did a pretty nice job with most of the tornadoes in Twister. The chasing itself was not entirely accurate but the graphics weren't bad. Especially the wedge at the end, apart from the way it dissolved, was nicely animated.
 
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Good day all,

Many come to mind ... Category 6 and Tornado - I've seen those as well!

Another was 'Atomic Twister' and 'Storm Tracker' ... The latter being about generating (and steering) hurricanes for a 'weapon' with some reactor towed behind an aircraft! One experiment that went out of control being Andrew in 1992.
 
In the movie Natural Born Killers I cringe every time I see that tornado. But then again accuracy has never been the top priority of Quentin Tarantino.
 
Probably the worst in terms of graphics, representations, and acting is Tornado Valley. Hell, even the title tells you, some fresh out of production school nitwit not either from the USA or from anywhere near Tornado Alley produced this *#$#. The tornadoes are the diameter of a person, but cause miles of damages, and it's like Twister all over again, except really low production. In terms of trying to get to accuracy, but never reaching it, Night of the Twister takes the cake. However, I enjoyed Night of the Twister. A little more realistic, to a point.
 
Jeff Duda said:
There was some made-for-TV movie released at about the same time as Twister, I believe called Tornado, that was pretty bad. In the end the cowboy grampa decides to sacrifice his life by spending his last moments pounding the stakes of the instrument pack into the ground so that the tornado won't blow it away. The family watches in horror from a small opening in the underground storm shelter.
Click to expand...

I believe the name of that move was Tornado: Terror Takes Shape. It was pretty lame. The dude had a weather radio blaring in every room.
 
Don't want to give too much away. A great cult classic "Donnie Darko" has a tornado at the end. Actually pretty decent graphics & landscape shot of it.
 
I think Ice Twisters, Metal Tornado and Alien Tornado are all really bad. As for Tornado, I actually sort of liked it as a low budget Twister rip-off. It does have Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame.

Bill Hark
 
There was plenty that was bad depiction in Twister. Chasers driving right along side the tornado, having the cow flying through the air and the large oil tanker going over their head without their car moving a bit. But the funniest one, I think, was the first tornado that they chased. This tornado is moving down a straight path through the crop fields and then it "sees" the farm house to the right. It then changes path and moves to the right to make sure that it "gets" the farm house before moving on. Like the tornado has a brain or something.

David
 
Night of the Twisters was one of the lamest movies, of any kind, I've ever seen. I realize it must have been low-budget, but, goodness gracious, I'm not sure you could have produced a worse movie if you tried. A bunch of whining, pouting, braid-dead adolescents trying to survive through a storm with absolutely no common sense. Frankly, it was an insult to the teenagers of Nebraska. And this "expert" from the weather service, or whatever fictional facsimilie, running around with his official cap on trying to hunt down some tang in the shelters but providing no expertise at all about the storms. Not only was it technically incompetent, but the "drama" was laughable.
 
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