Where to watch Blue Tornado
3 Stars
While experimenting with a new flight maneuver, Colonel Alex Long and Phil encounter a mysterious light over a mountain range. Phil becomes transfixed, flies into the light and disappears. Alex barely manages to come back and is in shock. The remains of Philip’s plane are found later. As inquiries are made, Alex suggests that a UFO could have caused the light. The idea is quickly dismissed and Alex is then accused of having caused Phil to crash and making up the story about the light to cover up his mistake. Alex is temporarily grounded until further notice. Upon researching UFO’s, he runs into Isabella, played by Patsy Kensit, who is also doing research on UFO’s. She believes his story but no one else does. After the board is unable to prove Alex caused the crash, he can’t seem to get the nerve to fly again. He’s also outraged that his superiors want to drop the issue as if it never happened. His research with Isabella points to similar UFO sightings around the same mountain range. After another plane goes down in the same area, Alex demands to go back up and find out what happened. So he goes back up, this time with three planes supporting him, and a video camera on his plane. They encounter more lights this time they seem to be circling the planes. After landing, Alex’s superiors finally conclude that the lights are a natural phenomenon. Alex, of course rejects this answer, and decides to climb the mountain where the lights were sighted, to investigate for himself. But will he find any answers?
Have you ever thought that the only thing that could make Top Gun better was an out-of-the-blue alien angle to the plot? Well, then, do I have a movie for you? The title is Blue Tornado; it contains exciting aerial footage and stars television-leading men Dirk Benedict and Ted McGinley as pilots. The charming presence and interplay between the film’s two headliners are fantastic. Antonio Bido (working under the name Tony B. Dodd) fashions an action thriller (shot quickly in Italy) that manages to generate a fair amount of interest as it lunges from aping Top Gun to knocking off Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The movie does slow down during the second act, as the plot mechanics of the script bring the action to a halt. It’s during this section of the movie that the shell-shocked pilot (Benedict) is teamed with (the stunning) Patsy Kensit, and the pair begin a relationship that is based on a shared obsession with discovering the mystery happening in the sky. However, things pick up decisively in the rousing finale when supernatural creatures do materialize. The film’s musical score by the trio of musicians (Fabio Massimo Colasanti, Marco De Angelis, and Elivio Moratto) is outstanding and perfectly captures the tone and intent of the filmmaker’s cinematic vision.
I enjoyed Blue Tornado because I wasn’t exactly sure where the story was going from moment to moment. It’s not often that I’m unable to call plot developments well in advance, but there were a few times I was baffled at the creative choices made by the powers that be. Blue Tornado is all the better because of its peculiar unpredictability and the always steady work of long-time heartthrob Dirk Benedict.
Directed by: Antonio Bido
Written by: Gino Capone, Antonio Bido
Starring: Dirk Benedict, Ted McGinley, Patsy Kensit