Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Super Scientist James Mayfield is observing the rare occurrence of some meteor flashing past the earth when, without warning, a big chunk of this meteor makes a sudden right turn and collides with the earth. Oddly enough the meteor wasn’t big enough to cause one of those Ice Age style blackout situations but it was big enough to slightly knock the earth off its rotation. Now our World Coming to an End disaster movie ‘Polar Storm’ has its launching point that will lead it into abject and total tedium. Simply Outstanding.
While James is in Alaska running for his life from the backlash of the meteor he was scientifically observing, back home his brand new hot wife Cynthia (Holly Dingard) is trying to deal with obnoxious bratty teenaged son Shane (Tyler Johnston). This whole plot point doesn’t have much to do with anything but it does take up some time. Shane has other problems he’s dealing with such as a father he feels is neglecting him for his work and his new hot wife, an asshole at school who is giving him problems and the pretty girl who is with the asshole that he wants for himself.
Then the weird stuff starts happening, like people talking on their cell phones and getting their brains fried. That is plenty weird but The President (Roger Cross), despite a plethora of these strange events and the fact that this comet took out a couple thousands of his citizenry, has calmly assured the populace it’s all good. Doctor Mayfield however thinks the president is an idiot and is blowing smoke up our collective asses. Doctor Mayfield knows that something is terribly wrong with the polar alignment of our planet and that if this continues at the rate it is going, life as we know it will end and he wants The President to tell The People as much. Yeah, that’s a much better idea.
In addition to people with Bluetooth headsets getting their brains fried, which isn’t all that bad a thing truth be told, there is all kinds of catastrophic seismic activity going down and most vehicles have all stopped working but the Gub-Ment is still trying to
cover it up. The Prez, as it turns out, is simply
going by the faulty info that he has been given and
now he needs his Chief of Staff, General Mayfield
(Terry David Mulligan), Dr. Mayfield’s estranged
father, to bring his son on board to fix the shifting
polar caps before we all drown to death. How exactly
are they going to pull this off? Well if you watch
these World Coming to an End Disaster movies like I
watch these movies you can best bet that Nukes will be
involved. Somehow... Some way.
As a professional bad movie watcher you will find various films of the director of this movie, Paul Ziller, littered throughout this website. Some of Mister Ziller’s films that we have seen are pretty damn bad, such as ‘Ba’al: the Storm God’ and then there are those that weren’t so bad at all such as the horror comedy ‘Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon’ or the stupidly entertaining ‘Sea Beast’ and don’t get us started on the mini-classic that is Android Apocalypse. This movie ‘Polar Storm’ isn’t as bad ‘Ba’al: The Storm God’ but falls more in line with another Ziller creature feature in ‘Swarmed’ considering both films are slow moving and lackluster. This film has the added bonus of some seriously suspect science to go along with the tedious boredom it delivers which some lovers of bad science out there just might find entertaining.
For instance, to get the earth back on its proper axis rotation the powers that be have decided we need a bunch of fifty megaton atomic bombs to make this happen, and it needs to be done beneath the sea. Interestingly enough they’ve loaded these bombs on an airplane with the full knowledge that these ‘EM Waves’ have been short circuiting anything that has electronics in it. Note how the plane self-destructs when hit by these waves. Now I’m no man of science but four fifty megaton atomic bombs detonating in the atmosphere can’t be a good thing, but what the hell would I know. It’s actually kind of cool because in lieu of an actual script it they seemed they were making up the fake science as they went along.
Roger Cross should be proud as he follows an impressive list Black presidents; Morgan Freeman in ‘Deep Impact’, Danny Glover in ‘2012’, Tiny Lister in ‘The Fifth Element’ and Terry Crews in ‘Idiocracy’. Of course they all of one thing in common… the world is ending on their watch. Outstanding.
The performances were functional as Jack Coleman made for a good hostile man of science, basically playing an extension of the dude he plays on heroes, Roger Cross came off as sternly presidential, Holly Dingard has a mighty fine set of hips on her and a special shout out to actress Marsha Regis who did bang up work as Pam, Dr. Mayfield’s lifeline of critical bad science info at the control station and I believe she was the only person in this movie that he didn’t yell at.
The science is absurd, the pace is slow, the special effects are low and the story is bland so there it is. It is clear to us that making a disaster feature where the main villain is basically a bunch of crooked lines on a computer screen just doesn’t work all that well.
