IMDb user comments for
Cyclone (1978)

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13 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Gross, but entertaining!, 9 December 2004

Author: dmd822 from Holland

Certainly an intense and at times campy little cult gem from Rene Cardon Jr. I'm a fan of the disaster film. Coming into this ,I wasn't quite prepared for some of what I saw. It has an interesting cast of European cult films, including Olga Karlatos from ZOMBIE. Just think of your standard disaster film with some shocking exploitation scenes. A friend told me after viewing that the filmmakers used real corpses to feed the sharks! Don't know if those folks donated there bodies to science, but even so its an entertaining obscurity. Warning to anyone with a weak stomach as this is quite out there in some scenes,in the gross-out department. As well as anybody who might own a poodle, you might like to turn away in 1 scene. All that said, CYCLONE, is much better than Cardonas other more known disaster film, SURVIVE.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Like "Alive", only ... Fake and with Sharks!, 11 February 2008

Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls

You'd have to be a truly unscrupulous and slightly decadent Mexican trash-director in order to take a real-life human tragedy, like that of the plane crash in the Andes, and maximally exploit its storyline and horrific elements. René Cardona Sr. already directed a fairly truthful and impressive re-enactment of the real disaster in 1976 ("Survive!), but apparently his own son was jealous at the money-making concept and decided to make pretty much exactly the same film, only set in a *slightly* warmer climate and with a handful of sharks thrown in for additional menace. The result is a preposterous and severely unpleasant film that falsely aspires to be an intense drama, but actually it's just shameless excuse to depict the mental downfall of people and slowly build up towards cannibalism for the sake of survival. "Cyclone" opens with cheerful postcard images of a sunny holiday resort where tourists make boat excursions near the coastline. Then the calamity displayed in the title brutally interrupts the holiday spirit and, for several long minutes, Cardona Jr. simply edits together a compilation of random National Geographic documentary images to illustrate the harshness of the cyclone. Castaways from a tourist excursion and a fisherman's boat, as well as survivors of a sea-crashed plane gather together in a tiny sloop and face several long days of hunger, mental & physical exhaustion, desiccation, hopelessness and of course the inevitably increasing feelings of mutual hatred and competition. If all this painful human suffering isn't enough yet, the waters are also infested with bloodthirsty tiger sharks. After nearly a dozen days of despair, some of the survivors see no other option than to feed on the flesh of the deceased, but this socially sensitive suggestion really tears the group apart. Like I said, "Cyclone" is an incredibly unpleasant viewing experience and it hardly appeals to any cinematic target group. The film is far too heavy-toned for horror fanatics but simultaneously it's too uneven to please disaster-film freaks and too repulsive for admirers of dramas. The characters are bleak and the script draws their personalities rather inconsistently. Carroll Baker's character, for example, is initially portrayed as a real bitch that protects her poodle from the burning sun rather than to rescue fellow human beings, but when the climax approaches she suddenly transformed into one of the most amiable people on board. Same problem with Arthur Kennedy's priest character! At first he's comprehensive and helpful, but later it actually seems as if he wants to prevent people from saving themselves. Do not, repeat NOT, raise your expectations too much regarding the shark sub plot. The exact same shark footage is shown no less than four times and, if my memory serves me well, these scenes also already featured in Cardona's other sea-adventure "Tintorera". The last half hour of this extremely overlong (120minutes) exploitation ordeal is literally disgusting and actually discouraging for those who were still expecting a happy ending. The gore and bloodshed is shocking, indeed, but you can't possibly neglect the many moments of boredom and the overall execution of "Cyclone" is downright tasteless and sick.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Not as much fun as the other Cardona movies I've seen, 24 September 2005

Author: bensonmum2 from Tennessee

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Cyclone's plot features a group of people stranded at sea after a cyclone rolls through leaving them with little water or food. The movie examines the lengths these people will go through to survive. I have now seen three films directed by Rene Cardona, Jr. and Cyclone is easily my least favorite. While it has its moments of weirdness, overall it is neither as sleazy as Tintorera nor as bizarre as The Treasure of the Amazon. For the most part, it's just plain dull and nowhere near as fun as the other two Cardona movies I mentioned. Add to that some bad acting, bad special effects, bad gore, and a bad script and you've got the makings for a bad movie.

Animal lovers beware. Cyclone features one scene in particular that is as cruel a scene as I've ever seen. I realize that the animal probably wasn't hurt, but I found it repulsive nonetheless.

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Grim but certainly not dull..., 4 September 2007

Author: pljewkes from Boston, MA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Rene Cardon's grim, but not entirely terrible rip-off of JAWS, HURRICANE, AIRPORT, etc. A plane crashes and the survivors are rescued by a pleasure boat. There's too many people on board, so...it's gross and very silly. Nevermind the fact that the production values stink, it's actually kind of bizarre wondering why the great Arthur Kennedy is in this thing. Is this the same multi-Oscar nominated actor from SOME CAME RUNNING, TRIAL and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA?!? Carroll Baker appears as well(and is way too old at this point to be seen in a bathing suit). Clearly these faded stars needed a paycheck. The best that can be said is that it's better than Cardon's SURVIVE! Lionel Stander is in it too.

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3 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Disaster movie meets Jaws..., 10 January 2002

Author: fando

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Very entretaining and fast paced. Very Claustrophobic and if not realistic exactly, with a great deal of awareness that those situations are prone to happen, specially nowadays, with all the terrorism and plane crashes going on.

Actually, I consider Rene Cardona the main figure of this so called genre. I don't know, but all the disaster movies I've seen made after he made his, seem to me like rip offs. They all pick on the same scenarios and the guidelines are essentially the same. It even has the same "message" as almost every other disaster movie, as that is always team work the only thing that can save those involved from their distresses. There always has to be the sacrifice factor, very dramatic ( which, in the case of this movie * Spoiler* is a dog which is used for, uh...certain kind of perishable supply). I think that Renee Cardona, like Ruggero Deodato with Cannibal Holocaust, or Wes Craven with Last House on the Left, set real bold standards towards a more realistic approach for cinema art, which little by little made the public more aware that certain things could happen, and where criticized without a future view as sensationalist trash. Even though Cardona is mexican, the saga of "disaster" movies he made were mostly italian-mexican coproductions. This one features music by Riz Ortolani, which is excellent, somehow resembling that on " Crash" David Cronenberg's movie.

I recommend everybody this movie, and " Los Sobrevivientes de los andes" ( which Disney ripped off as "Alive" in a depressing way), along with " Traficantes de Pánico" and " Carlos el Terrorista" (both about terrorism, the second one being a movie without dialogue, very "sui generis"). there's a non disaster movie from him not included in this database's index for this director called " Los placeres ocultos" in which I'd like to have more details; for what a saw in the trailer some years ago, looks very disturbing but still good for those willing to sit through.

All of them proudly mexican made.

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0 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Hilarious, 28 November 2005

Author: edgaracolby from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I saw the DVD of this one last week -- the sight of Carrol Baker tearing at her clothes during the rain storm, that awful guy from "Hart to Hart" and a bunch of other Euro-trash actors made this a joyride of a cannibal movie. I really liked the cheesed-out score from Riz Ortolani and the fate of the little black dog. I also have to give props to this movie for featuring real sharks that are fed bundles of clothes with meat in them for the attack scenes!! I couldn't believe it! The production is very third world feeling -- just a gloss of danger to it all.

Get the new DVD (from Synapse) -- it looks great and has a bunch of stuff not on the other versions.

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