| | | Don't Breathe. Don't Look Back.
Features: DVD
The house rips apart piece by piece. A bellowing cow spins through the air. Tractors fall like rain. A 15,000-pound gasoline tanker becomes an airborne bomb. A mile-wide, 300-miles-per-hour force of total devastation is coming at you: Twister is hitting home. In this adventure swirling with cliffhanging excitement and awesome special effects, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton play scientists pursuing the most destructive weather front to sweep through mid-America's Tornado Alley in 50 years. By launching electronic sensors into the funnel, the storm chasers hope to obtain enough data to create an improved warning system. But to do so, they must intercept the twisters' deadly path. The chase is on!
"A gale-force movie! The special effects are spectacular!" Janet Maslin, New York Times
"...a keeper, a tumultuous love story set against the backdrop of 24 hours of really, really inclement weather..." Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
"It's hard to dislike a picture with flying cows and oil trucks." Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
"A summer crowd-pleaser worthy of its wind." Mike Clark, USA Today
"...full of marvelous special effects. The story exists only to provide some respite between those marvels..." Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic
Editor's Note
In this action-packed disaster film set in America's heartland, an ex-husband-and-wife team of storm chasers rushes to be the first to study the dynamics of tornados with some fascinating new technology. Though Helen Hunt (AS GOOD AS IT GETS) and Bill Paxton (APOLLO 13) star--along with a pre-fame Philip Seymour Hoffman--the uncredited lead roles are the tornados, created with eye-dazzling computer-generated effects. SPEED director Jan de Bont takes the helm for this massive box office hit, while bestselling author Michael Crichton contributed the fast-moving story. TWISTER earned Academy-Award nominations for its achievements in sound and visual effects.
Plot Summary
This special effects-laden blockbuster chronicles one day in the life of a band of gung-ho "storm chasers," who track and follow twisters and tornadoes. The group, led by the gutsy Jo and her macho, soon-to-be-ex Bill, have invented "Dorothy," a tank containing sensors that can provide much-needed info about these mysterious, severe weather conditions.| But in order for Dorothy to work, she first must be swallowed by a twister. So Jo, Bill, and the gang put their lives on the line innumerable times, as getting close to the storm means dodging everything from windswept cattle to flying oil tankers.| For Jo and Bill in particular, making meteorological history means having firsthand experience of the inside of a twister...
| Features | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | This Is A Blu-Ray DVD Made For Blue-Laser Format Players Which Produce Higher Quality Picture & Sound |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Warner |
| Release Date: 5/6/2008 |
| Running Time: 113 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1996 | | Catalog ID: 1000027141 | | UPC: 00085391186311 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 2.40:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Winner (1997) | | | British Academy Awards, Stefen Fangmeier, et. al., Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects | | | MTV Award, Twister, Best Action Sequence | |
Nominee (1997) | | | MTV Award, Helen Hunt, Best Female Performance | | | Oscar, Stefen Fangmeier, et. al., Best Effects, Visual Effects | | | Oscar, Steve Maslow, et. al., Best Sound |
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| | Professional Reviews | Entertainment Weekly
"Flying cows are an excellent thing in a movie....Eye-popping..." -- Rating: B 05/24/1996 pp.70-1Variety
"...[A] theme park ride of a movie....Paxton and especially Hunt bring a great deal of vigor to their [characters]....De Bont's direction is muscular..." 05/13/1996 New York Times
"...TWISTER stays as uptempo and exuberant as a roller-coaster ride....With a kinetic energy that keeps up with the characters..." 05/10/1996 p.C1 Chicago Sun-Times
"...The movie is wall-to-wall with special effects and they're all convincing..." 05/10/1996 p.33 ReelViews 8 of 10
As movie-goers, we expect different things from big-budget summer blockbusters than we do from "normal" films...The plot is expected to be very basic -- only complex enough to frame the spills and chills...This year's first entry is the eye-popping, ear-blasting Twister, Jan De Bont's violent weather follow-up to Speed...Twister, which follows a team of tornado chasers as they track down storms, is exciting, if a little shallow. This particular disaster movie, which pits man against an implacable, unstoppable enemy, owes as much to Godzilla and Jurassic Park as to The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. It's a perfect motion picture roller coaster -- fun, fast, and furious... as long as you don't think too hard...Twister is peppered with bits of information about how to react if a tornado approaches, how dangerous the storms can be, etc. Despite these snippets of safety-conscious advice, the movie doesn't function as a public service announcement, nor should it. Twister doesn't have any pretensions. It is what it sets out to be: an effective piece of big money, early summer entertainment designed to blow viewers away. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
``Twister,'' directed by Jan De Bont, is tireless filmmaking. It lacks the wit of his ``Speed,'' but it sure has the energy. If the actors in this movie want to act, they have to run to catch up with the camera, which is already careening down a dirt road to watch while an oil tanker truck spins into the air, crashes and explodes. The movie is wall-to-wall with special effects, and they're all convincing, although it's impossible for me to explain how Bill and Jo escape serious injury while staring right up into the Suck Zone of the Finger of God...I think the movie has to be graded on two scales. As drama, ``Twister'' resides in the Zone. It has no time to waste on character, situation, dialogue and nuance. The dramatic scenes are holding actions between tornadoes. As spectacle, however, ``Twister'' is impressive. The tornadoes are big, loud, violent and awesome, and they look great. Even ``Dorothy'' looks good, until you realize the entire machine, including its flashing red lights and little gizmos sticking up into the air, is essentially just a garbage can filled with plastic balls...The movie, which is classified PG-13, clarifies that rating with one of the greatest single explanations in the history of the MPAA Code and Ratings Board, and I quote: ``For intense depiction of very bad weather.'' - Roger Ebert
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