Q: What do you get when you combine $200,000 of computer gear with a $20 budget?
A: Bill Rebane’s Twister’s Revenge!
That’s a terrible “joke.” Yet it’s better and more logical than those offered by the movie. I can prove it.
Kelly: “They can’t nail us for this. It’s not even our tank! Besides, I think it’s got something to do with habeas electi.”
Bear: “Does that mean we can’t have children?”
The defense rests.
Ostensibly a lighthearted caper in look and feel, Twister’s Revenge! — exclamation point entirely Rebane’s — gives us a setup seemingly straight from an improv’s show participatory “give me a word” portion: Dave (Dean West, Rebane’s Blood Harvest) seeks to rescue his brand-new wife, Sherry (Meredith Orr), from the clutches of kidnappers — and destroy their property while he’s at it — with the help of a talking monster truck (Mr. Twister). Said kidnappers — the greasy, bumbling Kelly, Dutch and Bear (respectively overplayed by David Alan Smith, Jay Gjernes and R. Richardson Luka) — have Sherry tied up with a serial-style load of TNT.
Meanwhile, Dave has his all-American guns and Mr. Twister, which his spouse has secretly outfitted with Knight Rider-style voice technology. Instead of William Daniels, however, Mr. Twister sounds like someone speaking into a desk fan. The intellitruck can calculate probability on the fly, even to the right of the decimal point. While Dave is clearly dressed to imply Indiana Jones, the viewer may infer Harry Anderson.
Watch in amazement as Dave steers Mr. Twister to level an outhouse — chalk-labeled with disturbing aggression as “SHIT HOUSE!” — in which the moronic Bear, a cork-on-fork version of Goonies’ John Matuszak, ducks to evade death by tire. Bear survives, but crawls out covered in feces — an apt metaphor for your experience as a viewer, potentially topped only by him going cross-eyed when kicked in the nuts.
This is, after all, a movie with:
• a morbidly obese bar singer (Liz Gray, Drop Dead Fred’s Namby Pamby) in blue spandex belting inane lyrics, e.g., “I stroke your feathers / While you do-do-do”
• men in that bar wearing gas masks and a bat’s head
• a running gag of Bear’s girlfriend (Tena Murray) fleeing Mr. Twister in fast-motion like a veritable Keystone Kop, struggling to keep her breasts contained with her dress and, at one point, sprinting through a Hardee’s for a sandwich on the go
• an opening-credits misspelling of its DP’s title as “photograpy”
And, hey, did I mention a monster truck that talks? Not unlike Al Adamson’s Carnival Magic, Twister’s Revenge! is Rebane’s amateurishly executed attempt at a comedy for families — specifically, the one sharing the surname Manson. —Rod Lott