Hurricane Smith (1992)

I was browsing Tubi to see what they'd added (as I'm wont to do), and discovered this on there. At the same time, our friends Brett and Ty at Comeuppance Reviews mentioned this on a recent podcast episode of theirs, where they looked at DTV films that had things to do with the weather in their titles--which is great considering the star is Carl Weathers. I went back and looked at their review, which they'd written in 2011, and saw my comment saying then that I needed to check this out. Guess we're finally here. In addition to Comeuppance, our friend at robotGEEK's Cult Cinema has covered this too.

Hurricane Smith follows Weathers, a man from Texas who works in construction, as he goes to Australia to find his sister after his mother passes away. He doesn't have a lot to go on in terms of her whereabouts, but the one picture he has leads him to a nice house that then leads him down a rabbit hole of drug runners who also dabble in prostitution that are currently fighting a war with a rival gang, lead by the always evil Jurgen Prochnow. Will our hero find out what happened to his sister and take these guys down?

 

When I was a kid, I remembered Hurricane Bob being this big deal that ended up not being that big of a deal. I looked it up on Wikipedia to see if I remembered correctly, and it turned out that no, it actually was a big deal, causing over a billion dollars in damage, but I guess where we were on the southern tip of Maine it just wasn't as bad. Anyway, this movie is like the big hurricane warning that ends up not being that bad. There's very little action for large portions of the film, and for a movie that uses "Hurricane" in its title, it needs to be like the Scorpions song, Weathers showing up in Australia saying "Here I am fellas, rock you like a hurricane," and then he just starts taking guys down in fun brawls and shootouts every 10-15 minutes. The end action sequences were nice, Weathers was good as the hero along with Prochnow as the baddie, and the setting in Australia was great to see, but overall this one has too many dead spots to work.

I realized in writing this that I've never done Action Jackson on here before, so the only other Carl Weathers film was Rocky IV. In looking at Weathers's bio, there's actually not a lot of DTV stuff in there that fits what our site is about, which explains why we haven't seen him much. But it doesn't mean he wasn't getting after it, because around the same time as this, he was doing the syndicated action series Street Justice, which was one of my all-time faves; and then from there he went on to take over In the Heat of the Night. This does make me wonder what if though, because the way he handled himself in the action scenes in this one, plus the great work in Action Jackson, he would've been great in a 90s PM flick or two.

Then we have Jurgen Prochnow as the baddie, who is great as well. Like Weathers, the only other time we've seen Prochnow on here was in a Stallone film, in that case Judge Dredd during our look at comic book adaptations. I thought I had reviewed a film he did with Elizabeth Hurley and Patsy Kensit, Kill Cruise, which was on one of those 10 movie packs, but I guess I didn't get around to it. Also like Weathers, he'd seem like he'd have had a more prodigious DTV career, but the IMDb bio doesn't really reflect that. He leans into this baddie here in a way that, had there been more action, would've made the film. He has a few other DTV flicks in his bio, so I don't think this'll be the last we see of him here--who knows, maybe someday I'll go back and do that Kill Cruise one.

One classic 80s/90s action trope that this one covers is the shirtless male bondage torture sequence. Why was this ever a thing? I was going to say, I think every action star has endured it, until I realized I don't think Seagal has... (pause to allow you to draw your own conclusions as to why). I was trying to think if there was a similar trend for women, but I think that was more in those "caged heat" prison movies, whereas the mainstream films just did more straight ahead bondage without the torture. Back when I did the Van Damme film The Shepherd I joked about that one having the tag "shirtless male bondage" on IMDb, so I checked if this one had the same thing. It didn't, opting for "bare chested male bondage" instead. The term "bare chested" reminded me of when I was visiting my grandparents in the mid-2000s, and my grandmother was looking up restaurants for us to go to. Hooters came up on the list she found. She was like "I think they're just full-chested, not bare-chested," and I was like "Grammy we're not going to Hooters." Now looking back, I wonder if we should have, just so I could tell everyone in this paragraph what that was like.

Finally, we learn in this film that Americans are referred to as "septics," short for "septic tanks," in Australia. Funny that I say I learned this here, because technically I learned it when Ty and Brett wrote their review in 2011, but I guess it didn't take--meaning many of you are probably also reading this now, and in 2032 someone will tell you this piece of trivia, and you'll say "wow, I never knew that!" I looked it up, and the other term I saw along these lines was "seppo," again short for septic tank. What makes this all the more fantastic, is the fact that in the film we get constant glimpses of American things that Australians like, like our cars, or this character wearing a T-shirt of Warrant's Dirty Rotten Stink Filthy Stinking Rich album--which was definitely a tape I had back then. We even see a Sea World van used in a car chase scene. That's the problem with us Americans, we're like cockroaches, and our influences are everywhere. I was trying to think if we had a derogatory term for Australians, and I think it's more mimicking the accent based off of Crocodile Dundee, and Foster's and Outback Steakhouse commercials. My favorite Foster's commercial was the one where this woman pours the rest of her date's beer into his glass, then smashes the can against her head and says "ready?", to which the date says "absolutely." The announcer tells us that this is Australian for "keeper." Man, those commercials were great.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this for free in the States on Tubi. Overall I think it's a bit too slow to recommend, but it has its moments. While we're on the subject of Australia, one thing I can recommend is our friend Simon's YouTube channel, Explosive Action. In addition to showing his great B movie and metal collection, he sometimes takes us on his trips to make purchases. It's a really cool channel, and worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099814

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!