Cover coming soon |
6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
An airplane goes down in the ocean during a storm and a few survivors find refuge on a small tour boat. Swept out to sea, these people slowly starve to death in the hot sun with barely any food or clean water. With no place to turn, the boat survivors resort to cannibalism to stay alive...that is ..until the rescue planes come to pick them up and the man eating sharks decide its time to eat as well.
Starring: Arthur Kennedy, Carroll Baker, Lionel Stander, Andrés García (I), Hugo StiglitzThriller | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
BDinfo verified. Spanish tracks are only on the separate "Spanish" version of the film on disc. 2 separate hidden "lossy" tracks.
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
For his second film of 1978, director Rene Cardona Jr. gets away from the unsatisfying mysteries of “The Bermuda Triangle,” and tries to latch on to the disaster movie trend with “Cyclone.” Of course, he’s a little past the peak of the subgenre’s popularity during the 1970s, but Cardona Jr. comes armed with a small-scale overview of human suffering, taking a second bite of the Andes Mountain Disaster after overseeing 1976’s “Survive!” Instead of revisiting high-altitude danger, “Cyclone” visits the vastness of the ocean, tracking the physical exhaustion and thinning patience of characters lost at sea. Cardona Jr. doesn’t have enough cash for the Irwin Allen treatment, but he creates passable misery with the picture, which has some fine moments of agitation contained within a bizarrely long run time.
For the English version of "Cyclone," the AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) presentation has been sourced from a 35mm archival print. The material is in rough shape, with scratches, speckling, and blotches present. More persistent is damage at the right and left sides of the frame, which resemble blue lightning patterns, and this run throughout the viewing experience. Colors are excellent, capturing the blueness of the ocean and boat paint choices. More varied hues emerge with costuming and greenery. Detail is strong, surveying the gradual decline of the cast, with their ratty hair and tattered costumes. Facial surfaces offer rough stubble and decay. Ocean tours provide deep distances. Delineation is acceptable. Grain is film-like.
The 1.0 DTS-HD MA mix secures dialogue exchanges, working with dubbed emphasis to communicate panic and agony. Shouting matches aren't distortive. Scoring cues are repetitive, but deep synth for shark scenes and funkier surface music is appreciable, with decent instrumentation. Sound effects are acceptable, providing compelling chaos during the opening storm sequence.
"Cyclone" could easily lose 20 minutes from the run time, creating a more direct understanding of pressure on characters who can't bear to face their horrifying reality. Some activity on the mainland is followed, but the movie primarily sticks with the ocean survivors, tracking their mental disintegration as hope is lost and hunger pains are impossible to ignore. It's not a peppy picture, and it's not the epic Cardona Jr. aims to create, but "Cyclone" has intriguing darkness to help it compete in the marketplace, with a few lurid touches to hold attention. It's certainly the best film to come out of Cardona Jr.'s "Cozumel Trilogy" (which includes "The Bermuda Triangle" and "Tintorera: Tiger Shark"), with a more measured understanding of calamity and community unrest, with the director using what he learned on "Survive!" to deliver a slightly different overview of human endurance.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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