Video Rewind- Blown Away

With the onset of spring it's not unusual for severe storms to pop up from time to time and for a majority of the country we're hit with tornados. Luckily I've never been a victim of one but have come pretty close.

The closest a lot of us will ever come to a tornado is the one which transports Dorothy to Oz in "The Wizard of Oz" but during the disaster craze of the mid '90's tornados were literally coming from the sky in 1996.

It started on Valentine's Day when the TV movie, "Night of the Twisters" was shown on The Family Channel. This movie was based on the book by Ivy Ruckman and was about a stepfather and stepson who are at odds which each other in a small Nebraska town.

John Schneider starred as Jack Hatch, who was on the verge of losing his business and disappointed that his stepson Dan (Devon Sawa) wasn't the jock he used to be. Of course Dan has other things on his mind and the fact there's a baby in the house doesn't make life any better for him.

The movie takes place in the fall (when it's a ripe time for tornados) and with an unusual weather pattern towns north of the small town are hit first. It takes all day for the storm to hit the small town, but in the beginning a family (mother, father and daughter) has to seek refuge when a tornado drops from the sky a few feet away from their house.

It's a good thing a meteorologist happens to be close by so he can warn the family. The family's pretty dense since they couldn't see it coming.

So life goes on and finally the tornado hits the town (its funny their Canadian accents weren't blown away) and the family's scattered in different parts of the city doing their bad acting.

But a couple of days before "Twister" hit theaters, a poor man's version was shown on TV called "Tornado!" which also had equally bad acting and a plot almost like "Twister."

Ernie Hudson starred as a scientist who has hopes of releasing his tornadometer into the air but those pesky winds never seem to be in the area. His government funding is about to be cut off by Samantha Callen (Shannon Sturges) known in Washington as the "hatchet lady" since she has no problem cutting off funds.