Super Cyclone (2012)

With this being Women's History Month, and knowing that one of my favorite films directed by a woman is the Asylum Mega Shark vs Gatoroid directed by Mary Lambert, I thought I'd go back to the Asylum well and found this potential gem written and directed by Liz Adams, and starring one of my favorite actors, Ming-Na Wen. Let's see how it did.

Super Cyclone is about an oil rig off the coast of LA that digs a little too deep and taps into an active volcano--or something like that. Engineer Nick Turturro realizes they're in trouble, and it only gets worse as a storm forms out of the super-heated volcano ocean water. When expert meteorologist Ming-Na and her partner are called in to help, the manager of the oil rig thinks it's best if Turturro goes with them back to the mainland, as a Super Cyclone is forming, and it's headed straight for LA. Now it's a race against time, as our crew needs to out-maneuver all manner of shaky cams and CGI obstacles to get to the local military base, where they can liaise with some stern upper military types, and come up with an off-the-wall solution that just may work.

And where does that leave us? With this pre-Sharknado era of The Asylum disaster film, who knows? We're looking for something special in this sea of CGI monsters and natural disasters complete with shaky cams and actors looking for a quick buck while waiting for their agents to come to them with something better, and despite the presence of Ming-Na, I don't know if this movie has it. Also, the guys working on the oil rig who were thrown into the ocean were essentially being boiled alive, and while "boiled alive" consisted of thrashing around in the water and yelling, the idea of it was still less fun and more grotesque--I mean, I turn the hot water up too much in the shower and the pain is pretty rough, I don't want to imagine anyone going through that. And therein lies the rub, for one of these movies to work, it needs to be fun, and I think this one, while it had its fun moments, overall didn't have as much fun in it for what I'd want.

When we look at Ming-Na's career at the time this film was made, this was just before Agents of SHIELD, and you can see that she doesn't do anymore Asylum flicks after that. As I mentioned above, I've always been a fan of hers, and think it's great that she's had this career resurgence through Agents of SHIELD, and now the Boba Fett series on Disney+. I think in this film we can at least see why she's been so successful on these other shows, because she brings a little extra to what is otherwise a pumped out paint-by-number jawn that The Asylum could sell to Sy-Fy so they could fill another time slot and rake in the ad revenue. At the very least, it seemed like she was having fun with it--but I imagine she's having much more fun with the work she's doing now.

When I started the DTVC, The Asylum was bigger with their Mockbusters--Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, etc. At a certain point, they transitioned to these disaster movies, I think in part because they had a deal with Sy-Fy to air the movies on there. As The Asylum is wont to do, they pumped out tons of these, while at the same time pumping out Mockbusters. Here I think is where Liz Adams comes in. She gives them two scripts--this and another film, Air Collision, and I imagine they're saying "if you can direct them for X amount of money, go for it," and then that's it, Liz Adams hasn't directed anything since, and really hasn't done much else in the movie industry since. She also wrote Shark Week in 2012, but that was directed by Fred Olen Ray's son Christopher, who is still pumping out DTV flicks, his most recent being Assault on VA-33. I don't know if that's telling, if there's something about doing this Asylum stuff that can be difficult to the point it turns someone off from movie making altogether, and you have to be the son of one of the greatest schlock auteurs of all time to want to keep working in that ecosystem. Maybe there is a sense of "did I get into this industry to write and direct a movie where I'm telling Ming-Na Wen and Nicholas Turturro to thrash around and act like their SUV was picked up by a super cyclone?"

And that gets us back to The Asylum. It's almost like they made our Hall of Fame last fall through sheer force of will. This is now 34 of their movies we've covered, and as much as I want to deride them or hate them, the volume of their output means it's too much of a statistical probability that I'll need to review more of their movies in the future, meaning they're a certainty for the 40 Club and beyond. I looked them up on IMDb, and it's showing they released 14 movies in 2021, plus 8 episodes of their series Black Summer. Again, it's a mix of Mockbusters and disaster movies, but nothing is really remarkable. By the same token, Fast and Furious: Death Race from 2020 is one of the most read reviews I've done since I've come back from hiatus, so it does highlight the fact that with that volume of output, they can still get hits from time to time--by the same token, my Sharknado 3 review is the least-viewed of my reviews since I've come back, which shows they can also overdo it to the point of fatigue.

Speaking of that volume, when I was seeing what pictures IMDb had of this movie, I saw some from the film's red carpet premier. The what now? This movie had a red carpet premier? Do all Asylum releases have a red carpet premiers? I looked, and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid also did. When I looked up Fast and Furious: Death Race, I didn't see one, nor did I for some others I looked at, but I was just going off the pictures on the IMDb page. I can't imagine they do 14 red carpet premiers a year, I feel like that would be worth another movie and a half for them. Anyway, when I looked at the pics of the premier for this film, it seemed like two actors from the film posted all of them, Andy Clemence, who was third billed in this and has 10 IMDb credits to his name; and Mitch Lerner, who has more credits on IMDb, but a lot of them are for shorts. It's like "hey, look at me with Ming-Na and Nicholas Turturro!" and they have the "yes, I'll do this picture with you" smile. Don't get me wrong, I would definitely get my picture with them too, it's just by posting it on the photos section of the IMDb page, we now know there was a red carpet premier for this movie, and we know Ming-Na and Nicholas Turturro had to get pictures with Mitch Lerner while they were at it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. It seems like this is on all the major streamers for free, including Tubi here in the States. I think if you're a Ming-Na fan like me, the better bet is to watch her on Agents of SHIELD or the Boba Fett show--or the short lived sitcom The Single Guy from the 90s if you can find it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381317

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