Sunday Night Movie: Category 7: The End of the World

Cafe Society
1

I realize that there’s already a thread on this movie, but it’s more about the original novel. This thread is more my weekly MST3King of a movie so bad, it deserves praise.

Like last night’s Category 7: The End of the World. Warning, open spoilers ahead, like anyone cares.

Instead of giving the whole plot, I’ll just concentrate on one character–that played by Randy Quaid. I liked this guy! What a man’s man! He was a tornado seeker, a guy that could stand in New Mexico and accurately predict that a category 5.2635 tornado (yeah, I know) would hit Nebraska within the next 3 hours, 22 minutes, and 14 seconds. And all by sniffing the air. The guy knew his tornados.

Quaid started the movie in traction. His neck was immobilized by one of those tent-frame thingies. He had three broken legs and 17346 broken vertabra. How did he get that way? Well, he was flying at an altitude of 3000 feet. Over a tornado. In Chicago. In his SUV. Thinking he was going to die anyway, he decided to exit the vehicle. Hey, if you gotta go, might as well fly, right? Turned out he landed in Lake Michigan. I’m guessing the highdive earned him a 9.9 by the judges.

But he couldn’t loligag in bed, no. He was needed to sniff out more tornados. Within 2 hours he was walking on a cane in Washington DC. An hour later he was driving through Kansas. Soon he was running through a trailor park, sans cane.

Here was my favorite part: He was in the trailor park, warning everyone about the upcoming tornado, category 16, I think. As victims were whisked off the ground and flung into the heavens, he stood on the street and gave traffic directions, his hair getting slightly mussed by the breeze. “You–go that way! You–get outa here!” While standing there barking orders, a full sized trailor was tumbling through the air straight for him, like an empty milk carton in a hurricane. His partner yelled “Look out!”, and pulled him to safety…

…behind a telephone pole. This, of course, saved his life. Wile E. Coyote would have been proud.

Anyone else see this? Wanna take on Swoozie Kurtz as Church Lady?

And don’t forget, part II is on next week!

2

When I saw the rain of frogs at the dinner party and the apparently related tornado at the Pyramids, I thought, “We’re heading for a disaster of a movie of Biblical proportions.”

3

I…I…don’t know where to start.

Too many to remember, plus I was having to deal with the dry heaves this thing brought on and my attention was elsewhere part of the time, plus I don’t think I even made it a whole hour, like 45 minutes.

Anyway, here’s a couple.

The plane that 2 of the characters were flying. From the outline, it was clearly an SR-71. Except the SR-71 (or its predecessor, the A12) does not have a bubble canopy? WTF? See pics here

The poison arrow frogs just, like, somehow, get loose at a big political shindig? They jump on people and the people die?

Even the title…there is no Category 6, Category 7… Category n hurricane. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale stops at 5. Doesn’t matter if the winds go hypersonic, it is still a Category 5. Doesn’t matter if all the tornadoes in the world merge into it. Doesn’t matter if 50 other hurricanes merge into it.

That’s all I can do for now. Just thinking back over what I saw is making me ill agaiin. Gotta get some fresh air…quick!

4

OK, that was 3, not 2. I told you I don’t feel well!

5

Notice also that they referred to tornados as category n. Shouldn’t that be Fn?

Plot point for those of you who missed it: The Televangelist’s wife decided to capitalize on the storm in Egypt and the poison frogs. Her Evil Lackey released flies in Congress. Create fear right out of Exodus, and drive up those pledges. Towards the end of the movie (this is part I, remember), some terrorists (one of whom looked like Evil Lackey in a ski mask) kidnapped a bunch of teenagers. But only one from every family. Hmm, where do you suppose they’re going with that?

Towards the end, Rocket Babe and Quaid were trapped on a balcony in NYC, while flood waters from the Giant Tsunami raged under them. Rocket Babe dropped a rocket into the water. “Oh no!”, she exclaimed. “That was my last rocket!” Two scenes later, she’s launching it.

Oh, and having studied rocketry, I can deduce it’s a bad idea to launch directly into a tornado. Especially while standing in it.

But hey, tornados, hurricanes, crumbling national monuments, televangelists, tsunamis, poison frogs, terrorists, cheating husbands… Is there anything this movie doesn’t have?

6

Hee, hee. Well, I have been appalled by there being no earthquakes or asteriods yet.

Is someone in Hollywood asleep at the wheel, or are they maybe saving those for Part 2? :rolleyes:

7

Yeah, well, George Washington’s face did fall off. That’s sorta earthquakey.

And yeah, we’ve got 2 more hours coming up.

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There’s a novel?

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Find the answer here.

10

This movie was nominated for worst thing on television on this board last week. Now we have part 2. Can the stupidity continue at such unprecedented levels of duh-ness? We shall see.

11

You did say open “spoilers”, though I’m not sure a work of fiction this bad can be spoiled. I didn’t watch last week. I have no idea how I was drawn into this…this…there are no words. No, wait. Here are some. This has got to be the stupidest movie created in the last ten years. Bar none. This Cat 7 hurricane passes over DC, sucking the evil politician out. If i’m not mistaken, during the eye of the storm, they decide to cut the power to the city in order to bring the temperature down to dissipate the entire hurricane. This is accomplished, within what appears to be approximately 97 seconds. The power grid is shut down, the temperature immediately begins to drop, and the clouds…they disappear. No, really. They just disappear. Right in front of that bubble top SR-71 which has apparently been flying around since last week.

My head hurts

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TED McGINLEY

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Well, see, there’s an important lesson there for all of us … if you’re being attacked by a regular thunderstorm, all you have to do is turn off some of your appliances. A tornado, maybe shut down the power in your house. That should take care of it …

OK, I have to admit, I bailed on this movie about an hour in. It was so stupid I couldn’t focus on it. My attention just kept wandering … there was paint drying on a wall, for example. And I’m a guy who watches Japanese cartoon porn. But at least it has lots of hard-core sex and sexual bondage. Which would have helped Level 7 a LOT.

14

You’re mistaken. It was not to dissapate the entire storm, but to mitigate the effects and lower it from a category 7 to a more manageable category 6. Or possibly even a harmless category 5. (Honestly, NBC, could this movie have been any more ill-timed?) Of course, since the allotted time slot was nearly up, that had to wrap up the plot, and so the storm dissapated entirely within --and I’m serious here – about 5 seconds. Characters emerged from shelters into a world with clear skies, gentle breezes, and not only dry by debris-free streets. DC, you clean up well.

Of course, what they didn’t show was 10 seconds after the credits started, all of the SUVs falling out of the sky. There were abunch of them still up there.

Still, it was an action-packed 2 hours. It rivalled 24 in sheer adrenaline, plot complexity, and jiggly schoolgirls.

15

Thanks for that.