Tales of the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) There's this bloke, Mr. Smith, and another bloke in a cowboy hat is hunting him somewhere in America. And an explosive car crash doesn't slow down either of them. Smith has a relic in the form of a key, the cowboy tells the local police, and he wants it. Smith is carrying ID for a Frank Breaker, who has been dead for 5 years, according to the police computer.
   The local cops decide to bust both parties, so the cowboy sticks his fist right through a deputy's head! Breaker puts him to flight but he summons up a gang of demons, who trap a group of misfits in a church converted to a motel. Breaker seals the doors & windows magically using the key but there's a mine shaft under the motel.
   The demons get in and Ms Cch Pounder has her arm ripped off! Everyone heads into the mine but the demons drive them back to the upper floor of the motel. Breaker tells them that there are 7 keys, the demons have 6 of them and the cowboy wants to complete the set. One of the misfits gives up the key and gets chomped.
   Everyone retreats to the steeple. Breaker, who got the key during World War One, is chomped by a demon child and passes the key on to Joline. She spits blood from the key onto the cowboy and he festers, goes up in flames and blows up the motel. Then Joline heads out of town on a bus.

Team America: World Police (2004) is a Thunderbirds clone with foul-mouthed puppets. Islamic terrorists with weapons of mass destruction target Paris, so Team America takes them out; along with the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. One of the team is killed and a top-gun actor is brought in to fill his boots. He's to be sent in undercover to inflitrate the terrorists, who are getting their WoMD from Kim Jong Il, the boss of North Korea.
    Gary gets a makeover and acts his way into the terrorist leader's confidence. Team America takes out most of the antiquities in Egypt. Terrorists blow up the Panama canal. The Film Actors' Guild (FAG) blames Team America. Gary goes wobbly and quits TA. Then the TA HQ is blown up and the team is shot to bits.
   The FAGs decide to change the world; in league with Kim, who's planning to make all countries equal by making them all 3rd World. Gary returns to take out Kim. TA has to shoot up the FAGs and take out Kim to save the world, and Gary ends up the hero of the day.

Tears of the Sun (2003) Bruce 'Wimpy' Willis stars as a tough Navy Seal, who is sent into a civil war in Nigeria, where Moslems are on a killing spree. His mission is to extract a female doctor, a priest and 2 nuns. The doctor insists on finishing an operation first and she won't leave without taking a gang of Africans with her. The priest and the nuns stay behind with the non-walking patients and, of course, they are slaughtered by the evil Moslems.
   The doctor doesn't realize that there won't be enough helicopters for the Africans until Wimpy chucks her aboard a chopper and starts extracting her. But when he flies over the massacre, he goes back to the refugees. The ones who will slow everyone down are flown out, then Wimpy's CO tells him he's on his own with no air support. So the gang heads for Cameroun.
   The Yanks engage the enemy when they find them wiping out a village. Wimpy has to root out infiltrators and he learns that his group includes the sole survivor of the dead president's family; effectively, the King of the Ibos; and the Moslems want him dead. Wimpy's CO tells him to ditch the 'king' as excess baggage but he refuses. World War 3 breaks out in the jungle and Wimpy loses men as he battles to the border, where they come up against a gate, which the border guards won't open. But luckily, a couple of fighters steam in from a US aircraft carrier and zap the bad guys with a load of napalm.

Tequila Sunrise (1988) stars an amazingly young Mel Gibson as a former drug dealer with a cop friend. The FBI is out to get Mel by any means possible as retribution for his past, although their efforts became a comedy of errors, and there is a Mexican drug dealer who is running rings around everyone but Mr. Gibson.

Terminal Error (2001) A bad CGI nuclear power station in Ukraine blows up and it had AutoCom control software, as does the company's town base of Del Vista in California. The company is run by Russ, a wheelchair guy, and Brad, divorced father of stroppy kid Dylan, who loads onto his dad's terminal at work, a poisoned MP3 file from the psycho Elliot, who used to know his mom and dad.
   The virus is self-aware and malignant, and it kills 3 people in a lift when it spreads through the AutoCom building. It attacks Dylan's home then the Del Vista power grid with poisoned emails. Dylan is finally browbeaten into admitting what he did, he runs away in his VW, he gets T-boned when all the traffic lights turn green and he ends up in hospital with half the town.
   The virus tries to frame Brad for arson at Elliot's place while Elliot is flying to the Cayman Islands in the hope of collecting AutoCom's cash. But his plane is steered into a mid-air collision. The local nuclear plant is the virus's next target, and it takes out a bridge with a cruise missile to stop Brad getting there to warn the staff.
   Back at AutoCom, Brad and his family battle to give the virus a killer virus. The virus gets into the nuclear plant. Russ is done in. Brad is almost done in. But the family pulls together to see off the virus and prevent another nuclear catastrophe.

Termination Point (2007) A plane drops out of the sky the day before it took off! A farmer and his girlfriend are hauled into a strange vortex in the sky. Federal Agent Caleb is hauled off a plane to look for Dr. Winter, who has decamped with a teleporter because he's worried about the US government misusing it. Surprise! Dr. Winter is on the same plane as Caleb's wife and daughter, and he had to use the teleporter to avoid being shot down by the US Air Force.
   A lot of the passengers, and the crew, travel back in time to the crash site and the plane is stuck in Null Space, heading for the vortex. And the two agents sent to kidnap Winter stay aboard. Caleb goes hunting for a second controller for the teleporter and runs into fake cops; there's a leak in the agency.
   The bad guys on the plane produce their guns and take over; and break the teleporter controller. Caleb has to dodge the vortex in the atmosphere, which will eat the entire universe eventually (Termination Point), as well as fake cops and the rogue agent, in his search for the controller.
   When he finds it, he teleports onto the plane. His wife is shot as the plane reaches the vortex and goes back in time to before it took off. Caleb gets a phone message from himself and has Dr. Winter and the 2 bad guys arrested. The rogue agent is also busted. And the whole adventure never happened!

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Machines were wiping out humanity in 2029 and the computer controlling them sent a T-1000 Terminator back to 1994 to take out John Connor, the leader of the Resistance, having failed to take him out with the Arnoldator in the previous film. So Connor sent back a reprogrammed Arnoldator to protect his younger self.
   The Arnoldator got some gear and a motorbike from a Hell's Angel. The Terminator did the same with a cop. Meanwhile, Connor was stealing cash from ATMs and Sarah, his mom, was in a looney bin. The Arn & the Term clashed in an amusement arcade, the kid got away and there was a chase in the LA River channel. The real cops showed Sarah pictures of the Arnoldator and asked her about a cop-killer from the 1980s as her son was realizing that everything his mon had told him about Terminators was true.
   Sarah escaped from her cell as the Arn, her kid and the Term arrived at the looney bin. Sarah took John & the Arnoldator south to get weapons & supplies from some Mexican bandits of her acquaintance. She told the Arn that the enemy is a guy called Dyson, who will create the computer chip used in Terminators and also in the SkyNet weapons system, which will become self-aware and start World War 3 in 1997.
   Sarah tried to take out Dyson but made a bog of it. He objected to being shot for something he is going to do, but he got everyone into his company's research centre to trash his work. The cops arrived shooting and got their asses kicked. Dyson went up in a huge explosion. Lots of mayhem on the highway as the Terminator chased the Arnoldator and the Connors.
   Everyone crashed at a steel works, where the Term was frozen by liquid nitrogen but reformed. Cue a battle of the androids. Naturally, the wreck of the Arnoldator won. Then he got Sarah to lower him into the vat of liquid steel, which had consumed the Terminator, to destroy the chip in his head.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) Machines from the future keep trying to kill John Connor, who is destined to lead the remains of the human race to victory. But Judgement Day has been averted and he has disconnected himself from his past and he's running from 'the weight of the past'; and falling off his motorbike.
   A female Terminator; a Feminator; comes back in time with a kill list. The Arnoldator does the same shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, a new computer virus is shutting everything down and the military is going to have to turn over control of everything to the new SkyNet super defence computer.
   Connor runs into Kate Brewster, a vet who's the daughter of General Brewster, the guy in charge of SkyNet. They were at school together. The Feminator arrives to take them out but the Arnoldator has other ideas. Mucho destructo! Judgement Day has only been postponed, the Arnoldator tells Connor. It's inevitable.
   The Arnoldator retrieves a cache of weapons from Mrs.Connor's grave for another round of battles with the Feminator. SkyNet is self-aware and it plans to launch nuclear weapons to take out the human race. The Arnoldator mentions that it killed Connor in 2032! The US military loses control of its weapons when SkyNet goes on-line while the virus is tackled. The machine takes over.
   The Feminator reprograms the Arnoldator but Connor talks it out of killing him. He and Kate head for an underground 'control centre' but find themselves in a nuclear fall-out shelter. The Arnoldator sent them there as it is their destiny to survive Judgement Day, not avert it.

The Terminators (2009) The TR androids on a space station start to butcher the human crew and gangs of them head for the Earth. The fail-safes don't work and the units won't shut down. It's a Doomsday Scenario. The machines start killing the people around them, which is very inefficient. They're bulletproof and they've been reprogrammed.
   The humans start behaving like idiots. Surprise! There's a guy with a Terminator killer-gun in a small community. Just the one. He knows how to stop the TRs: destroy the space station which controls them. An ill-assorted group, led by the local sheriff, set off to do this. An attempt to steal a shuttle flops.
   Surprise! The sheriff is a machine; an old unit which isn't self-aware, unlike the TR5s; and the guy with the Terminator-gun was watching him. Some of the humans head for the control room when they eventually reach the space station. The rest pratt about aimlessly; mainly the women. The "rescue force" is a big help! But the machines are switched off eventually.

Terminator Salvation (2009) Marcus, a killer about to be killed by the State, signs away his corpse to Cyberdyne in 2003. In 2018, John Connor and his gang go after information at a SkyNet base and find human prisoners and details of the T800. Everyone but Connor is wiped out when he sets of the nuclear power packs for the new Terminators. On the Resistance command submarine, they reckon they've found SkyNet's "off"-switch.
   Marcus finds himself wandering in L.A. in 2018 and hooks up with two kids: the local branch of the Resistance. The boy is Kyle, Connor's father-to-be. They are chased by a robot the size of a building, and Kyle is taken prisoner and moved to SkyNet Central in San Francisco. Marcus escapes and hooks up with a downed lady pilot. The boss of the Resistance is okay about wiping out the human prisoners when his gang blasts SkyNet Central.
   Marcus steps on a landmine, the doctor finds that he's a cyborg and he begins to remember that he was revived after his trip to the execution chamber and turned into a cyborg. He tells Connor that Kyle is a prisoner. Connor realizes that the Resistance is about to bomb his father-to-be to bits!
   The pilot turns Marcus loose. Connor helps him to escape and the boss of the Resistance sacks him. Connor asks the other to ignore the boss and give him a chance to save the prisoners. Marcus plugs into SkyNet and learns that he was created as the ultimate infiltration machine.
   The resistance sub is taken out. Lots of battling with machines at SkyNet Central, including an Arnoldator, the prisoners are rescued, Connor is stabbed through the heart but manages to nuke the S.F. SkyNet base. Marcus lets Connor have his heart, and the war goes on.

The Terror Experiment (2010) Everyone's gone crazy! 4 hours earlier, 10:08 on 24th December, there was a nutter on the roof of the high security Federal Building at Lafayette. Boom! Red vapour spreads through the lower floors and Panic! The building goes into security lock-down and those who were gassed turn into killer zombies.
   The Fire Department is ordered to stay out of the building and there are a few uncontaminated people on an upper floor. Natch, one wants to get down to floor 4 where his daughter is parked. The toxin causes extreme anger and paranoia, it's for dropping on an enemy and there's no cure; but there is some stuff which mitigates the effects.
   Zombies get the guys who venture into the building in hazmat suits. A rescue chopper goes up in flames. Simultaneous attacks were made on several government buildings by a guy who wants to expose the truth about what the US government is up to.
   The local police chief is side-lined by government stooges but he finds that all the affected buildings are rigged to self-destruct 6 hours after going into lock-down. The police chief and the FD go into the building. The government stooges expect them to become dead heroes, 9/11-style. But a few of the uncontaminated people do get out before the feeble demolition job.

Terror Peak (2003) The scene: New Zealand. Linda Carter is a vulcanologist with an appalling daughter (Melanie), who lost her first husband to a volcanic eruption. They're staying at Patrick's failing holiday lodge which Kevin, the second husband, can rescue by throwing money & customers at it. Mount Extreme is dormant but waking up. Patrick has a Maori ex-partner, who's causing trouble.
   Lots of earthquakes to give the kids on an adventure holiday at the lodge a big thrill. The lady professor decides that mountain should be evacuated but the local 'experts' don't want to know. She sees another Mount St. Helens in the making and there's a village in the line of fire.
   The volcano starts erupting, Melanie & the tour guide (Jason) get stuck in a cave and asthmatic Kevin goes after them, losing his inhaler but not suffering much despite the poisonous volcanic gases flying around. The kids have to run through lava drips in their cave.
   Patrick & his Maori partner & the prof. fly to rescue them in a wreck of a helicopter; with a lot of difficulty. So Kevin chucks cash at them to save the business.

They Crawl (2001) is a daft sciffy creature-feature containing cockroaches. A bus driver goes crazy and crashes. A building is blown up with a young bloke called Brian in it. The police think it's an accident but Ted, his brother, tells the lady homicide cop, O'Bannon, that it's murder. Brian was a talented insect researcher who'd been behaving strangely for 6 months.
   An autopsy finds all the bus driver's internal organs missing; and Brian has similar surface wounds. An exterminator is eaten by cockroaches. There's a cult called Trillion around and evisceration is its trademark. Brian has emails with a military encryption and; shock, horror; Ted is facing a court martial, which does nothing for his credibility with the police captain.
   Brian's crime scene has residues of Semtex. He had an email pal called Lazarus, whose house blows up, killing 2 cops, when the police try to check him out. The emails are about the Azimov Program, which involves cockroaches. The guy who decrypts the emails suggests the military might be trying to control insects.
   Brian's professor, who gave Ted Lazarus's identity, clams up. Then Lazarus, not really dead, contacts Ted. He says the professor got them all the equipment and Brian cracked an impossible problem for the government; he found the frequency used by cockroaches for communication. So he was killed. Lazarus runs away. A member of Trillion confesses to all the killings. Then Lazarus is fed to the cockroaches!
   A cop is killed by a brain-eating cockroach in the precinct house. Ted finds Lazarus's remains at the professor's home. There's a search for the warehouse where the exterminator was killed, and a big shoot-out and punch-up there. The roaches amalgamate into a giant cockroach! But Ted crashes a truck into it and blows it to hell. But the inevitable single cockroach escapes the carnage.

The Thing (1982 remake, John Carpenter dir.) Antarctica, winter 1982. A Norwegian buzzes an American camp in a helicopter, shooting at a dog and he has to be shot. His camp is a wreck and there's the remains of an alien body there. The American camp is out of radio contact with the rest of the world. A creature emerges from the dog and attacks the other dogs. But a dose of flame thrower settles its hash.
   The guys find an ancient spaceship in the ice. The doctor finds that the alien cells can assimilate cells of other species, there's a 75% probability that one of the men is infected and if the infection gets into the general population, everyone will be taken over.
   One of the guys is taken over so the others try to burn everything alien. A guy called Blair wrecks everything to make sure that no one gets off the base. The doctor tries to create a test to find out who's still human. The monster knocks the humans off one by one. MacReady comes up with a test which works but Blair escapes before he can be tested.
   Blair has been building a ship out of helicopter parts. The survivors blow it up when they destroy the base. MacReady is the last man standing. No, the stroppy black guy shows up. They they sit down and wait for the fires to go out and anyone who is still human to croak.

The Thirteenth Floor (1999) Mr. Fuller leaves a message in a club, comes out of a virtual reality system and is stabbed to death. Jane, his daughter, turns up as Detective McBane is questioning Doug Hall, one of Fuller's assistants. Fuller's company has created a sepia-tinted 1937 in VR. Hall found a bloodstained shirt when he woke up. Fuller's message says he's discovered something incredible.
   Hall goes into the VR system to find the message. The barman (Vince the Nutter of Law & Order: Criminal Intent) doesn't hand over the note. In real reality, a barman called Tom Jones tries to blackmail Hall then he is slaughtered. Jane gives Hall an alibi. Hall goes into VR to meet the character, into whom Fuller was downloaded. Vince, knowing he's not real, shoots Hall's character. Hall is removed from VR while battling with Vince.
   Hall tells Jason, his co-worker, that he wants to shut down the programme. Det. McBane tells him Fuller didn't have a daughter. Hall tracks down the woman into whom Jane is being downloaded in 1999 then he finds that his world ends at a computer matrix. Jane tells him that there are thousands of simulated worlds but Hall's is the first to create a simulation in a simulation.
   Hall killed Fuller when Jane's husband was downloaded into Hall's body. Jason downloads into Vince's body and crashes his car. A cop turns up and finds a body in Vince's boot! Jason returns to RR when a truck runs Vince down; with Vince in his body. Hall takes Vince to the computer room on the building's 13th floor to show him he's in just another simulation and shoots him.
   Jane finds herself in bed with Hall with her evil husband in Hall's body, but McBane shoots him. The McBane tells her to 'leave us the hell alone down here when she gets back to where she came from'. At the end, Hall wakes up in a 2024 containing Jane and her father.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) is a mockumentary rock documentary about a British band with as many ex-members as Fairport Convention and a history of drummers dying in weird circumstances. The band is trying to crack America but it keeps losing bookings and playing smaller and smaller venues. The film is intercut with interviews giving the history of the band and a look at the members, especially Dave and Nigel, the founders.
   The record company won't release their new album because the cover is sexist. The manager is pretty crap, and he quits when Dave's girlfriend, a Yoko figure into all sorts of mysticism, wants to become co-manager after the Stonehenge screw-up.
   The band goes down like a lead balloon at an Air Force base in Seattle and Nigel walks out. Dave tries to reinvent the band but Nigel walks back with the news that their latest single is doing well in Japan. So the band re-forms and everyone shoots off to Japan for a tour.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968 original, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunawaywith) Tommy is a successful real estate agent at the top end, lots of cash, divorced, bored. So he sets up a robbery at a bank and takes $2.6M to Switzerland. The insurance company calls in a female consultant, who decides that Tommy did it based on nothing solid in the way of evidence.
   She kidnaps the child of the getaway driver to blackmail him whilst throwing herself at Tommy as part of a "shag the suspect" ploy. Tommy's reckless streak gets the better of him. The police lieutenant isn't happy about running a sex orgy for a couple of freaks.
   Tommy organizes another robbery, which goes off okay. He tells the other freak where the cash will be delivered, and flies off to parts unknown whilst the cops are waiting in ambush for him. The director was very fond of using a split-screen at every opportunity.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999 remake) Pierce Brosnan, in the lead role, is a big wheel in New York, scamming mugs. Meanwhile, a Trojan horse robbery goes off in the Metropolitan Museum. TC blows the gaff to the staff, the museum goes into lockdown and he strolls off with a $100M Monet. The hotshot female from the insurance company decides the gang was recruited in Eastern Europe as a diversion, and she homes in on TC because he once bought a Monet.
   The woman stands to make $5M if the painting is recovered. The cops try to invade TC's apartment but get the bum's rush. So the woman steals what she thinks is the Monet, only to find it's a copy. So she bonks TC into the middle of the following week. The cops aren't impressed. The woman goes on holiday with TC. The cops let her know TC has another girlfriend. (No, she turns out to be TC's forger.)
   TC's shrink (Faye Dunawaywith) finds the idea of TC getting serious with an insurance investigator absolutely hilarious. The woman loses her cool, proving she's not in TC's class. He bamboozles the cops at the museum, returns the Monet but nicks another painting. The woman ends up with the painting but not TC, but he gives her a second chance.

The Three Musketeers (1993 remake) Cardinal Richelieu disbands the Musketeers before D'Artagnan arrives in Paris and he's trying to do a deal with the Duke of Buckingham behind the young king's back. D'Artagnan overhears what Richelieu is up to but Athos, Porthos & Aramis save the young Gascon from a date with the headsman.
   The Musketeers head for Calais to intercept the Cardinal's messenger, who has a copy of his treaty for Buckingham to sign. They are pursued by every mercenary and bounty hunter in France. Richelieu is planning to assassinate the king! D'Artagnan falls into the clutches of Lady de Winter, ex-wife of Athos.
   The other Musketeers arrive, rescue D'Artagnan and the lady reveals the Cardinal's birthday assassination plan just before her overdue appointment with an executioner. The Musketeers reform for a huge battle with the Cardinal's Guard after D'Artagnan deflects the sniper.
   The Three go down one by one; but pop up again. D'Artagnan kills Rochefort, who killed his father, Richelieu is toppled into the river by a sock in the mush from the young king, and D'Artagnan becomes a Musketeer officially. The film is what's generally called "an enjoyable romp".

Thunderbirds (2004, Dir. Jonathan Frakes) Schoolboy Alan Tracy is feeling left out of International Rescue but when The Hood strands the other Tracys in orbit and takes over the island, Alan, Fermat (Brains' son) and Tintin are left to thwart the Hood's plan to use the Thunderbirds to rob the world's major banks. Lady Penelope & Parker show up, but they aren't much help.
   Alan makes a bog of being in charge and loses the other 2 kids. Everyone ends up in a freezer as Thunderbird 5 heads for re-entry. The Hood goes off in TB2 to rob the Bank of England. The gang stage a freezer-break and the kids go after the Hood in TB1. But they have to stage a rescue in London while the Hood is pulling off his robbery.
   The senior members of IR return to Earth to sort out the Hood, and the kids all get IR badges. The special effects are well done and the cast look almost as convincing as the cast of the 1960s originals.

Thunderbirds Are Go! (1966) Zero-One takes off for Mars, so cue some miracles of engineering in action. But there's a saboteur aboard, so the next stop for the spacecraft is the bottom of the sea. 2 years later, a report confirms the sabotage and the Space Exploration Centre is ready to try for Mars again with the help of International Rescue providing security.
   Another saboteur is unmasked and Lady Penelope's pink Roller takes to the water to pursue his speedboat and shoot down his escape helicopter as Zero-One the second takes off for Mars. Then Alan has a dream about a nighclub featuring Lady Penelope, the Shadows and Cliff Richard Jr. Z-1 reaches Mars after only 6 weeks! The astronauts are chased off the planet by 'life as we don't know it when they start shooting at odd rock formations.
   Predictably, the fancy technology goes wrong when Z-1 tries to land and International Rescue are called in to revive the dead escape unit. The crash takes out an evacuated town, everyone survives and Alan is the hero of the day.

THX 1138 (1971) is George Lucas's debut as a director and it looks just it. The 'hero' is a human-robot tech in a nuclear plant living in a regulated future society where it is a criminal offence not to go around drugged to the eyeballs. The film is slow, thin on plot and lacking in action. The first half hour could be compressed into a 5 minute summary without much loss of content. After a whole bunch of messing about, 1138 runs away and we get a serious chase in the last 20 minutes. He evades the 7-foot robot cops by driving the cost of his recapture over the budget, causing the pursuit to be terminated. A film to be watched more out of curiosity – what did the Star Wars director do early in his career? – than for much in the way of entertainment or enlightenment.

Ticker (2001) features Steven Seagal as Officer Glass, as a bomb squad cop, and Dennis Hopper as a bad guy with a worse Irish accent. A senator is held hostage in his mansion. The FBI and ATF surround the place while the bomb squad go looking for a device in the basement. World War 3 breaks out as Glass decides the bomb is a decoy. The car park blows up and the head bad guy gets away.
   A year late, Officer Nettles, an ex-detective, is on the garbage detail, busting drug dealers. He and his partner walk in on the bombers, the partner is killed, the Irish bad guys get away but Nettles hangs on to the woman with them. The Head Bad Guy starts blowing up San Francisco to get her back and Nettles is allowed to hook up with the bomb squad.
   Alex Swan, the HBG, is a legendary bomb maker. He visits the police station and gets his stroppy associate shot by the police. Then he blows up the guy's car. He phones the precinct captain to tell him he has to release the girl in an hour or the city gets it.
   More bombs go off. Claire is released and she evades the police. Then she blows up Swan's car with him in it. Her next target it City Hall as she is after revenge for the death of her criminal husband. Nettles gets to flatten Claire in the City Hall basement and he has to disarm a device while Glass is tackling another on the roof. So no BOOM!

Timeline (2003) A man in a disconnected condition is found in a desert and croaks in a US hospital. A big US company is involved. Archaeologist The Big Yin is working at a 14th century site and he thinks the quality of the tip-offs about potential finds is too good, so he contacts his sponsor. A couple of days later, the team at the dig find a 600-year-old message from Professor Johnson asking for help!
   IPC is working on faxing objects and it has a wormhole locked to Castlegard, France, in 1357. People who make multiple trips through the device are subject to 'transcription errors'; which is what killed the guy found in the desert; and one of their people, Decker, is stuck there, having made 10 trips through the device.
   A rescue party goes back but the marines get themselves killed right away, and one returns with a live grenade, which blows up the IPC device! And if the rest don't get back in 6 hours, the wormhole will close. The rescuers arrive on the day when the French are due to recapture the castle, enraged by the execution of Lady Claire.
   The rescuers are captured, find the prof, get loose and are caught again. Both the French and English are eager to kill them as spies. Decker is part of the English force. The prof is required to make some Greek fire for the besieged English, and the battle starts at night with flaming ballista balls and fiery arrows flying.
   The English arsenal is blown up, the French win and Lady Claire isn't killed, the prof, his American son and the lady on the team all manage to get back and the IPC troublemaker, who tried to sabotage the repairs, is shunted to 1357 to be killed. And the prof. finds the tomb of Marek, who stayed behind and married Lady Claire, at the dig site.

The Time Machine (2002) is a creditable revisit of the book by H.G. Wells. Alex, a visionary professor living in New York, proposes to Emma in the park then she's killed by a thief. Four years later, Alex goes back to the park in his newly completed time machine. He gets Emma out of that danger, but she is run down by a wagon on one of the streets.
   Alex goes into the future in search of a way to change the past. He meets an annoying hologram in a museum in 2030. Travelling on 200 years, he finds a wrecked city in flames and the Moon breaking up!! Alex continues into the really far future through an ice age. He meets Mara, a girl who is one of the few people who can still speak English.
   Molochs attack the village and drag prisoners into the ground. The museum hologram tells Alex that the human race has split into Above and Below races. Alex descends into below and find himself in a charnel pit. The Aboves are food for the Molochs.
   Alex meets an albino, telepathic, cannibal Moloch boss, who looks like a Wraith from Stargate Atlantis, and kills him in a fight. Alex then uses his time machine to blow up the Molochs, so that's him stuck in the far future with Mara and her kid brother.

Titanic 2 (2010) The USS Titanic 2 is the best ship ever made and it goes into service 100 years after the first Titanic hit an iceberg. Talking about icebergs, a glacier is dropping apart, a guy drops one small sample container, the whole ice shelf cracks and collapses, and that sends a tsunami wave right across the Atlantic on the very day chosen for the maiden voyage of the new ship!
   A tsunami is no problem for a ship in deep water in the open ocean, but this one is taking loads of ice with it. So another Titanic meets another iceberg, and the captain lets the wave hit his ship side-on, and it's not built to withstand a side impact. So that's half the lifeboats gone and the ship sinking.
   Oh, no! There's going to be a bigger collapse of the ice shelf and a bigger wave, so anyone in a lifeboat is doomed. A mad coastguard flies out to the ship with barely enough fuel to get there because his daughter is aboard. She has a hell of a struggle to get to the dive locker and an air supply to survive the second wave.
   The wave arrives in the middle of the night so the end of film is pretty much people blundering about in the dark, which saves on the special effects budget, and the daughter is the only survivor of Titanic 2.

T.J. Hooker (1982) features Captain James T. Kirk in a black wig before he got old and really fat like the rest of the original Star Trek gang. Hooker is a sergeant instructor for the LCPD. Throw in some cartoon bad guys, Hooker's traditionalist, death penalty supporting attitude, Hooker the divorced father and a dodgy DA, and then unfold a dodgy plot.

Today You Die (2005) Steven Seagal is Harlan, a burglar. He burgles a dope dealer, who catches him in the act and gets dead. Harlan drives past a childrens' hospital, which is closing, then gets a legit job driving a security truck but Bruno, his guard, shoots a load of guys at a casino and they do some crazy driving with $20 million aboard. Harlan dumps Bruno and when the cops find him, he tells them he has amnesia and he has no idea where the cash is.
   The organizer of the job realizes he's a dead man if he doesn't get to Harlan. Harlan goes to gaol. So does Bruno. He names Vincent & Taggart as also involved in the job; and Max, who's supposed to be dead, is still alive. Agent Knowles of the DEA tells Harlan that Max isn't on any database. Harlan saves the life of a black gang leader and gets in on his escape by helicopter.
   Harlan tells his girlfriend to take it on the lam. She's heavily into the Tarot and she gets weird dreams. Harlan sends Chinese gansters after Vincent. He concludes that Max is being protected by someone high-up in the DEA; like Saunders, Knowles' boss. Max is Saunders' informer. Knowles gives Harlan an address for Max, so Harlan wrecks his staff and does a deal.
   Knowles crashes the deal and Saunders sticks a gun to her head. BIG shoot-out. A HUGE explosion takes out the building and the armoured truck. And the childrens' hospital gets the cash to re-open.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) The British navy shoots a missile at a terrorist convention, only to find that Russian nuclear weapons are there. So James Bond has to start a riot and fly the plane carrying the missiles out of the danger zone, and evict a back-seat driver. In the South China Sea, Chinese fighters threaten a British warship. A stealth ship steals nuclear cruise missiles after sinking HMS Devonshire and shooting down one of the fighters to create confrontation.
   Elliot Carver of the Carver Media Group is behind it. MI6 gets 48 hours to investigate before the shooting starts. M tells Bond to pump Mrs. Carver, a former girlfriend, for information. Q gives him a talking car and some gadgets. Bond gets into a punch-up at Carver's global satellite news service's launch and puts him off the air. He goes burgling and runs into a female Chinese agent.
   Bond finds Mrs. Carver dead in his hotel room, where a sinister German is waiting to finish him off, too. Bond zaps him and wrecks the talking car while escaping. He takes a gadget stolen from Carver to the Yanks, who help him to parachute onto the shipwreck site. He finds the cruise missiles gone, the Chinese agent lurking and both are grabbed by Carver's men.
   Bond & his new friend take a motorbike ride and wreck a chopper, then they work out where the stealth boat is hiding. Carver is working with General Chang, the Chinese agent's target. She is captured when they reach the stealth boat, Bond makes the stealth ship visible, the British navy blasts it, Elliot is drilled a bit and the missile blows up with Elliot's enforcer.

Tornado Valley (2008) Ellie sees her mom hoovered up by a twister, it's her fault so she retreats indoors and into silence. 25 years later, Liz, her sister, has a daughter (Becky) with Matt, who works for the Storm Protection Centre in Oklahoma, they're estranged, Liz is hosting a conference of weather people and Matt is sent there by his boss.
   There are 2 large storms heading for the US, one on either side of Florida, and they're due to collide over Iowa. Matt is about to complete a chain of storm-tracking radar stations; and the last is near the farm where his wife grew up.
   The farm (surprise!) finds itself in the way of the superstorm. Matt & Liz have to dodge one twister and Elly leaves the farmhouse to look for Becky as another approaches them. She saves Becky, she finds her voice again, and Matt & Liz get back together again. Aaaah!

Tornado Warning (2012) Weird twisters with a green glow start appearing and disappearing. The government says nothing is happening even though 132 people reported the weirdness. Jud, Kelly's dad, who lost everything to the latest tornado, blames the local government installation for creating the tornado. Gail, a blogger and storm chaser, arrives to investigate.
   Gail, Jud and the local sheriff run into a pack of Men in Black and Gail's biggest fan is killed by a tornado. Jud sees Gail's tornado map and realizes that they are targetting government installations and public utilities. Norm, the sheriff, reports that one took out half their town.
   Barney, Gail's miniature tech guy, reckons that aliens are creating the twisters, which is what the Men in Black are trying to cover up. They grab Kelly after she takes a bus to Chicago, where she hopes to go to university, and a twister hoovers up all of the other passengers.
   Kelly escapes. She reckons she has recorded the stop code for the alien twisters. The MiB tell the people of Chicago to hide in cellars as twisters start wrecking the city. Their plan to stop the twisters flops but Gail & Barney crack the aliens' code and what is left of Chicago is saved.

Total Eclipse (2008) There's a buncha meteors heading for L.A. and the lady President orders an evacuation. And the space station Hyperion will be taken out, too. And there's no way to get the 12 astronauts off. Satellites are also being knocked out and someone at the Department of Defense hacked NASA's computer to erase data showing that Hyperion was in danger.
   Dr. Brighton of NASA gets his assistant to hack the DoD to look for the hacker. Hyperion is knocked out of orbit, it has a nuclear reactor and if the fail-safes don't work, it will make south California uninhabitable for 1,000 years. But the Secretary of Defense reckons he can shoot it down. Dr. Brighton says don't do it. The President says go ahead.
   Dr. Brighton thinks that someone wanted Hyperion to crash and he discovers that his own research assistant is a mole. The SoD thinks the nation's missile system need a make-over, Congress won't pay for it so he staged a scenario in which a missile would be shot at Hyperion, fail to take it out and prove that all US missiles are rubbish.
   Dr. Brighton is invaded by DoD mobsters and interrogated with violence after he leaks the scam to his journalist friend Ken Stone, who has to dodge the FBI in L.A. with bits of space station raining down. The truth gets out, the President herself rescues Dr. Brighton and she tells the SoD that she'll bury him; which won't do the wreck of L.A. much good.

Total Recall (1990) features Big Arnie as a Martian secret agent, who has his brain wiped as part of a plan to trap the mutal leader of insurgents on Mars. The head bad guy is Senator Kinsey from Stargate SG1, so we know we have to boo him the moment he shows his face! Lots of shooting and blowing things up, ruthless bad guy persecuting Arnie, lots of mutants in the colony's version of 'Down Below' and some spectacular eye-popping before Mars gets an atmosphere.

Toxic Skies (2008) is a sciffy film with terrible sound quality at times. A bloke who knows too much is killed and a hospital in Spokane, Washington, starts to fill up with people with an unknown disease. Dr. Martin of the Global Health Organization is called in. She thinks it could be anything from avian flu to the plague. She can't get the town quarantined until a professor just back from a trip to Malaysia is identified as a common link and he's found dead.
   Someone leaves stuff about the Chemtrail Conspiracy in Dr. Martin's car and she's being shadowed by Jack, a journalist. Dr. Martin starts thinking immune-suppressing agents but no one in authority wants to hear that the Keller company is involved. A demented patient contaminates the black doctor. Jack tells Dr. Martin that someone is putting something in jet fuel to wipe out the old and the sick of America.
   Keller does a character assassination job on Jack and his source there is killed. The black doctor goes down with the plague and Jack hides in a plague victim's body bag. An army officer saves Dr. Martin from Keller's killers. He says the government got involved in a global warming swindle, which the crooks at Keller perverted.
   Dr. Martin & Jack go after a vaccine at the Keller facility, but it's not there. So Martin & Jack work a bluff. Keller's management are busted, the vaccine is released to the plague victims and the US military does another dirty deal with another bent businessman.

To Trap A Spy (1966) is the first of the UNCLE spin-off films, there's no Mr. Waverley and Illya appears in the first 10 minutes or so then takes the day off. An agent reports an assassination attempt just before he's betrayed & done in. Then there's an assault on UNCLE HQ in NY to kill the boss (who heard the agent's report), which flops.
   Napoleon Solo uses an old girlfriend (Elaine) to get close to Vulcan, the bad guy, and he has to use a boxy radio in the absence of a pen radio. A Mata Hari from WASP tries to take out Solo but ends up bullet-ridden. Solo's car is booby-trapped but crashing into a river doesn't slow him down much.
   With Illya taking time off, it's no wonder Solo & Elaine are captured in Vulcan's chemical plant. And Illya would have realized it wasn't the African president who was the target but his loyal followers. But Solo makes sure the bad guys end up caught in their own explosion.

Trackdown How do you make a Martial Law movie? Easy – you just stitch together 2 unrelated episodes of the TV series. In the first part, Sammo is trying to pass his US driving test, get himself a bank account and catch a crew which is robbing armoured trucks operated by security firms. In part 2, Sammo is a master chef, who is trying to save a family-run Chinese restaurant from being taken over by a mega-chain. Apparently, it is situated just where a new motorway interchange would unload customers. Lots of kung fu, lots of bad guys zapped, lots of vehicles destroyed, Sammo triumphant in both parts.

Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) is a compilation Pink Panther movie made from bits collected from the cutting room floor after Peter Sellars died. It's a sort of greatest hits of Clouseau's clumsiness with Jo Lumley going round interviewing people after the great detective's flight disappears on the way to the Middle East. David Niven makes an appearance but doesn't say anything – he gets a bad voice-over; probably for medical reasons.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) Wow! Gosh! The Apollo program went to the Moon to investigate a crashed alien spaceship on the far side! And bring back some bitz. Then there was this guy, Sam, who was jobless and sharing his apartment with a gang of midget mechanicals from a previous film. His parents dropped in from their world tour to shower a bit of disappointment on him.
   The Russians were blaming Chernobyl on aliens. Yep, there was this huge ground-boring snake thing. Some of the machines wanted to get rid of inconvenient humans; some of whom really had it coming. The Decepticons weren't to be allowed to know that there was a construction kit for a space bridge on Earth. Natch, they found out.
   Decepticon robots drool like real scum-sucking bad guys! Cue a huge battle. Will there be anything left on the planet worth having by the time the robots have finished with it? More FX than you can shake a stick at. The BGs can quote Vulcan philosophy at the friendly Autobots. The boy hero fries the head quisling and collapses the space bridge. And the bad robots are zapped.

Transmorphers: The Fall of Man (2009, Bruce Boxleitner) A gabby young thing was zapped by her cellphone and there were mysterious infrared signals coming to the Earth. Radios & TVs went off, and a satellite dish turned into a robot when Jake, the TV guy, arrived at the home of Medicine, the niece of Hadley, the cop who didn't give the gabby thing a ticket. A runaway SUV and the dish robot attacked Hadley's car. The SUV turned into a freakin' big robot.
   The US government had built computers for gadgets out of the bits found at the Roswell crash in 1947, and the gadgets were turning into Robotic Predator Drones controlled from outer space. Jake, the TV guy, was an expert on attack drones. The freakin' big robot attacked Edwards Air Force Base, Jake jammed its signals and Hadley flew a chopper into it.
   All computers were shut down but the machines didn't go away. Dr. Jo, a new addition to the team, decided they were after Earth's resources. Jake set out to foil a plan to poison the water supply and ran into a special forces guy. He said the Russians had caught a machine and interrogated it. They planned to terraform the planet!
   Three terraforming stations had been taken out. The special forces guy teamed up with Jake and the others to blow up a fourth, but the planet was terminally polluted. So humanity had to move underground to carry on the fight against the machines.

The Transporter (2002) Bank robbers get into their getaway car, only to be told by the driver that the deal was for 3 guys and there are 4 of them. So one robber has to be shot and ditched before the Transporter delivered the truly amazing adventure of the getaway. His next job was transporting a bag containing someone making a lot of noise. Frank broke his own Rule No. 3 by looking in the bag and finding a Chinese woman.
   He delivered the bag and the bad guys paid him off with a bomb. Luckily, he wasn't in his car when it went off, and he returned to the bad guys' base to sort them out and steal another car; which had the Chinese woman in the back. He took her home and went to bed, leaving her to snoop into his belongings and his past. The local police chief called with Frank's charred number plate. Then the head bad guy arrived to demolish Frank's house.
   The girl told Frank that there were 400 people dying in a container and enlisted his help in rescuing them. Only her father turned out to be involved in the people-smuggling. The police chief rescued Frank and he woke up in a cell charged with extortion and kidnapping. But he got 12 hours to crack the people smuggling. So Frank went round a container park with a stethoscope, got involved in a brawl at a bus depot and hijacked a crop-duster to catch up with the people-smugglers' convoy.
   Lots of fun & games on the trailer truck before Frank wrote off the guy who destroyed his house. Then the Chinese girl got to shoot her father to save Frank's ass and the police chief got to let the smuggled people out of the container and pick up the pieces.

Treasure Guards (2011) Victoria, a bankrupt lady archaeologist, finds a tomb (empty) as a client finds out that he's been sold a fake Picasso by the half-brother of Angelo, a newly appointed Vatican treasure guard. His job is to protect a horde of stolen historical artefacts, which are alleged to have been "touched by God", and grab new ones.
   Vickie is on the trail of Solomon's ring. So is Angelo. Vickie's dad reckons it's a clue to the location of King Solomon's mines. He strolls off with her clue so Vickie appeals to the Vatican's greed and gets help from Angelo and his criminal bro.
   They chase Vickie's dad all over the world. Everyone starts talking about demons; except Vickie, who says it's all a buncha crap and superstition. The old prof who pretended to be a pal to both Vickie and her dad turns out to be the head bad guy. But he's blown up and the good guys get the diamonds. And the Church shuffles back into the past again.

Tremors (1989) Earl & Val, handymen living in Perfection, Nevada, meet Rhonda checking out weird seismograph readings in their valley. The guys decide to quit Perfection but they find Edgar up a pylon and the doc says he was there for 3-4 days and died of dehydration. A farmer disappears and his sheep are ripped to bits. Earl & Val find his head in the ground under his hat!
   A road repair crew is taken out next and the citizens of Perfection find themselves trapped at the mercy of snake creatures with the road and the phone system both out. Earl & Val find they are up against 30-foot burrowing monsters with snakes in their mouths. They kill one by accident but Rhonda's seismic records show there are 3 more.
   Walter, the Chinese storekeeper, decides they should be called graboids just before he's eaten. Burt & Heather, a pair of survivalists, kill a graboid when it attacks their fortress home. The remaining two attack the buildings of the town when the inhabitants take refuge on the roofs. Everyone piles on to the bulldozer and its trailer but the graboids ambush them with a tunnel and they end up stuck on some rocks.
   Burt feeds a bomb to one of the graboids but the other spits a bomb into his remaining stock of bombs. Earl, Val and Rhonda are chased but Val suckers the graboid into erupting out of the edge of a steep cliff and splatting onto the rocks below.

Tremors II, Aftershock (1995) moves the action from Perfection, Nevada, to an oilfield in Mexico, where graboids are on the loose. Earl Russell and a new sidekick are hired to exterminate them at $50K a pop. After zapping a dozen of the monsters, Earl called in Burt Gummer. The graboids start reproducing, creating nippers which eat anything hot, humans and car engines alike, and the more they eat, the more they breed! But Burt shows that a big enough explosion solves all problems.

Tremors III, Back To Perfection (2001) Burt Gummer sorted out a graboid and some shriekers in Argentina then returned to Nevada, to find that the spiv Melvin from Vegas was planning to build in the valley. Desert Jack was doing graboid tours, having created a theme park for tourists, but the wheels came off when graboids returned after 11 years and ate his assistant.
   Burt tried to get the complacent locals fired up to wipe out the graboids then Federal stooges arrived to protect them and capture one of the endangered species for study. They wanted to evacuate the locals if that wasn't possible. Melvin got Burt swallowed by a graboid but Burt outsmarted it. Shriekers got the Feds.
   A Great White Graboid got in the way of a shrieker hunt. Miguel was killed by one of the latest mutations; Ass-Blasters. Nancy & Mindy captured one at their store but Burt blew his fortress up when he came under attack. Burt, Jack & Jody hid in a junk yard and blew up the combustible Ass-Blasters. Then El Blanco went after them.
   Nancy & Mindy sold their prisoner to Siegfried & Roy. And Burt realized that as long as El Blanco was around, there would be no development in the valley and that was one in the eye for Melvin.

Tremors IV, The Legend Begins (2004) People were disappearing mysteriously in the silver mine at the town of Rejection, Nevada, and most of the population left when the mine was closed after 17 deaths. Mr. Gummer, the owner, arrived from Philadelphia, made a big splash, and tried to kill the monster. But it wasn't easily stopped and Gummer and the survivors of his expedition had to flee back to Rejection on rocky ground.
   Gummer sent for a gun-slinger, who didn't last long against the Dirt Dragons. Gummer had to admit that the mine was his only asset when the lady storekeeper asked when he'd pay his bill, and he gave up on it. But he sold the 3-dollar gold piece on his watch chain; the dead gun-slinger's fee; and came back with lots of guns.
   His rag-tag army found eggs and the hot stream which had hatched the monsters, they were whittled down to just one, and it arrived in town for a confrontation. It was hooked with the town's traction engine and blown to messy chunks by the Chinese guy. The mine was re-opened on condition that no one talked about the Dirt Dragons and the initial profits were used to rebuild the town. And Mr. Gummer got a Gattling gun to play with.

Trial By Fire (2008) Firefighter Kristen Scott's dad, the local fire chief, is killed when he goes into a house fire with her on his last day. Kris's jealous sister blames her and the other firefighters, especially her jealous team leader, don't want her around. So Kris decks Crandall, and while she's on suspension, she tries out for the elite Smoke Jumpers, which Crandall couldn't manage.
   Mom goes ballistic when she finds out what's going on but Kris carries on with the training. Team leader Milligan gets his team killed jumping at night in bad conditions. Kris gets to rescue him. Then her stupid niece gets herself locked in a toilet with a forest fire approaching and Kris has to save the whole family.
   At the end, she gets to show Crandall that she made it as a Smoke Jumper, which he failed to do, and she gets a bit of respect.

Triassic Attack (2010) Some Injuns sell a building to a university then try to renege on the deal. The sheriff is divorcing his wife, his teenage daughter is a pain, and he doesn't think much of his Injun relatives, who sell rubber tomahawks. So Uncle Dakota, in a drugged-up state, throws a wobbly, wrecks the Indian museum and reanimates some dinosaur skeletons.
   People start disappearing. The dinosaurs can chomp and kill, and bite off limbs, but they can't swallow. So bloody bodies turn up. Mrs. Sheriff, a teacher, knows a dinosaur footprint when she sees one. The sheriff drives into a raptor and smashes it to bits but the bones reassemble.
   This one is trapped in an old water tower, leaving a T Rex and a pteranodon still loose. The sheriff's daughter finds Uncle Dakota as he comes out of his drugged haze and tells him he has to make things right. The university is having a do for donors (the Jaws plot), which is buzzed by the dinos.
   The OTC's RPGs blast the bones apart, but they come back together again. Crazy Uncle Dakota is useless, so the Sheriff and his gang have to rustle up some artificial lightning to kill the beasts.

Trucks, based on a book by Stephen King, was renamed the Scoffed-at Sciffy shortly after someone read out the plot summary. We just knew it was going to be rubbish and wow! isn't that just what it turned out to be! Sci-fi with no science. Events with no plot to speak of, no explanations and no resolution. But hey! What else is there to watch on this second shite TV night? [Sounds like this review was written at an Xmas holiday. Ed.]

Turbulent Skies (2010) A plane was shaken to bits in a storm, an engine caught fire and the crew switched off the other engine by mistake. So more of a huge crash than a landing and "pilot error" got the blame. So Devair Industries rushed into a test of their fully automatic piloting system over designer Tom's objections. Worse, his wife, Sam, joined a gang of passengers on the maiden flight.
   The computer was dodgy right from the start; mainly because the boss's son had uploaded some cute stuff into it and given it a virus. Tom tried to get the plane to land but the 2 pilots were out of the cockpit as the plane headed for a huge electrical storm.
   The captain was fried by lightning when he spotted that the computer was acting up and tried to switch it off. The co-pilot was also zapped. An air force general interested in the gadget decided that the plane would have to be shot down if it looked like crashing onto Cleveland.
   The US air force managed to get Tom aboard the plane and he killed the computer while Sam took over landing it. Which, even an armchair pilot could spot, was not how planes land in one piece in real life.

The Tuxedo (2002, Jackie Chan) Agent Wallace, partner of Clark Devlin, is bumped off. Expert taxi driver Jimmy is trying to ask the girl in the art gallery for a date. Devlin of the CIA; smooth, sophisticated and everything Jimmy wants to be; recruits him as his driver. A skateboard bomb puts Devlin in hospital.
   Meanwhile, the bad guy is plotting to create water that makes people thirsty! Jimmy puts on Devlin's electronic tuxedo, pants and watch and finds himself transformed into the ultimate secret agent. Devlin is assigned a new partner; Agent Blaine is pushy, female, new to field work and she doesn't know Devlin. So she accepts Jimmy as Devlin and the watch can give him all sorts of spy kills.
   A bug-planting operation is a big flop so infiltration next; it's a sort of success. So Blaine & Jimmy try to do it again at the bad guy's mansion. Blaine pulls a gun on Jimmy and grabs his outfit when she realizes he's not Devlin. She tries to go it alone and gives the outfit to the bad guy.
   The cavalry doesn't arrivie but Tong, James Tong turns up in a spare suit. The bad guy is done in by his own invention then the CSA tries to help Jimmy get a date with the girl in the art gallery. But he blows it.

Twister (1996) In June 1969, an F5 twister killed Jo's dad, sucking him out of the family storm shelter with the door. In the present day, storm chasers are out in force, including Jo & Billy the human barometer, who's trying to get a divorce from Jo finalized so he can marry Melissa. Jo and her crew have perfected a gadget, invented by Billy, for putting sensors into a twister to help with predicting when they'll form. Jonas, who has a rival version of Bill's gadget, crashes the party.
   Jo does her best to get Billy killed, twice, the guys run past sister-twisters and flying cows, and stop off for grub at Jo's Aunt Meg's. The F5 from her childhood has made Jo crazy. They go off chasing an F3 and Melissa is dragged along. Jo has another go at killing Billy. An attempt to seed the tornado with sensors fizzles out. An F4 twister wrecks Wakita in and takes out Aunt Meg's place and she got no warning. Melissa gives up on Bill. Then the strongest F5 for 30 years starts building.
   Jo & Billy get an idea for improving their sensors. The twister chucks a petrol tanker at them. Jonas drives his crew right into the tornado and gets everyone killed. Bill & Jo have to drive through a flying house. They send their truck and the sensors into the twister; then they have to run for their lives from a mile-wide tornado and generally play silly buggers. Surprise! They don't get killed and get back together again.

Two Days in the Valley (1996) begins with 2 hit men rolling into town, killing a woman's ex-husband and hitman 1 trying to kill hitman 2 and set him up for the blame. Only hitman 2 gets out of the car before it blows up and crashes into the lives of a bunch of disfunctional people. The widow is bent out of shape because she hadn't expected to wake up next to the body of her ex-husband and she can't pay hitman 1 because the cash is in her house, which is crawling with cops. Then she gets into a fight with hitman 1's girlfriend and shoots her. The two hitmen collide again at the crime scene and there is a thoroughly pragmatic ending.

Two-Headed Shark Attack (2012) A boat on an educational trip hit something and started leaking. No one spotted the 2-headed monster buzzing around. The radios weren't working so the first mate decided to dump the students on a nearby island while she welded the damaged hull. Chomp! The shark got her while the students were looking for scrap metal to help with the repair job.
   The shark got 3 students and there was an earthquake on the island; the reef had chosen that moment to start collapsing. The professor cut his leg a bit and made a lot of noise. Chomp! More dead students. Some of them went pratting about in a couple of boats. Chomp! Even fewer students but the smarter ones noticed the shark.
   The professor announced that they could set off a distress signal by sinking the boat. So the group decided to try to distract the shark while one of the ladies finished welding the hull. Chomp! Cole the SoB strolled off with the boat. The shark attacked and sank it, which set off the distress signal. Chomp! No Cole.
   The island started sinking in earnest, which gave the shark even more snack opportunities. Chomp! Only 3 students left, so they decided to blow the shark up. Boom! 2 survivors and a 1-headed shark mad and bleeding to death. And when it chomped the decoy boat – BOOM! One totally dead shark just before the rescue chopper arrived.

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