# Night of the Twisters (film)

Night of the Twisters is a 1996 made-for-television disaster film that was directed by Timothy Bond. The film premiered on The Family Channel (now Freeform) on February 11, 1996, as the cable channel's first original movie (and appeared on the channel until 2004, under its successor brands Fox Family and ABC Family).
Filmed in Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada, it is based loosely on the 1984 young-adult novel of the same title by Ivy Ruckman, itself a semi-fictionalized account of an outbreak of seven tornadoes that struck Grand Island, Nebraska on June 3, 1980, which killed five people and injured 134 others; the film adaptation, however, is set in the fictional Nebraska town of Blainsworth, which serves as a stand-in for Grand Island. The film centers on a family's struggle to survive a night as a bizarre tornado-producing supercell thunderstorm tracks into and becomes stationary over their town.

## Plot

At 1:16 p.m., in the rural farmland in Dannebrog, Nebraska in the Fall of 1996, Bob Iverson, a storm chaser with the Kansas State Tornado Center relaying information to the National Weather Service on a chase assignment, is driving down a country road to track a supercell thunderstorm. While observing the storm, Bob spots a tornado touching down almost a mile south of his location; he warns a family living nearby, right as their daughter Sarah, arrives home from school, about the oncoming twister, which sends them running into their root cellar before it destroys their farm.
Meanwhile, in Blainsworth, Nebraska (120 miles (190 km) southwest of Dannebrog), aspiring teenage artist Dan Hatch, who is constantly being pushed by his stepfather, Jack, to be an athlete, participates in a bicycle race and damages his bike; Jack pushes Danny into finishing the race nonetheless. Danny falls behind the other racers. He later wins a new bike in a raffle held by a bank. While trying out his new bike, Dan and his best friend Arthur Darlington run into Arthur's two sisters, Stacey (whom Dan is infatuated with) and Ronnie Vae. Dan and Arthur arrive home as the former's mother Laura is making dinner, when she also asks Dan to tend to his baby half-brother, Ryan. Later, Laura's sister, Dan's aunt Jenny, calls to inform her that they were assigned to fill-in shifts as waitresses at the Salty Dawg, a diner where they work. Because Jack will not have enough time to take Laura to work, Jenny volunteers to take her.
At 3:37 p.m., while continuing to track the severe weather creeping toward the town, Bob decides to head southwest into Blainsworth, as Stan, the meteorologist Bob is radioing to, is astonished at the anticyclonic weather pattern for the fall; while there, Bob meets Laura while getting some coffee at the diner. That evening, when Jack arrives home and sits down to watch TV, the show he is watching is interrupted by a KHAS-12 weather update about a tornado warning issued for St. Paul, Dannebrog and rural Howard County for a reported tornado just 14 miles (23 km) northwest of Blainsworth. Jack leaves to check on his mother, Dan's grandmother Belle, who was asleep in her rocking chair when he phoned her. Tornado sirens then blare throughout town, only to cut off as Dan goes to get Ryan from his crib. A tornado then approaches Blainsworth's Capital Heights neighborhood, with the noises emitting from the drains notifying Dan and Arthur of its pending arrival; they and Ryan take cover in the basement bathroom's shower tub as the twister obliterates the Hatch residence.
After Dan and Arthur escape from the basement through the collapsing beams from the first floor, Arthur runs into Stacey and Ronnie Vae, who both survived the twister in the Darlington's home (their parents were out of town on a trip back home to California at the time the storm hit). As Dan struggles to find his own family, Laura and Jenny are trapped inside the diner (as they were taking cover inside, due to Jenny's car malfunctioning when she went to pick up Laura), which also was destroyed by one of the tornadoes. Dan and Stacey then go save Belle, at her farm; the two teenagers find her underneath wooden boards blown onto her from off of the damaged barn near her house (which itself survived intact).
As Dan and Stacey rush in the car to get Belle treated for her injuries, Dan finds Jack on a closed road, with his truck – which was overturned by the tornado, pinning him underneath it – covered in fallen power lines; he pulls Jack out from under the truck (with the help of emergency crews, after an earlier attempt by Dan and Stacey to push the truck to free him nearly injures Jack further), seeing this as an opportunity for his father to see him as reliable. However, Jack just gives a simple thank-you to the fact that Dan saved him. Later that night at the shelter, Dan reveals to Stacey that Jack is only his stepfather and that his real father, pilot Daniel Sr., died in a plane crash when Dan was 6. After he reveals that he feels he is not good enough in Jack's eyes and talks about the good qualities that his stepfather has, Stacey helps Dan consider that the two could try to find common ground.
Eventually, Jack, followed by Dan, who sneaks himself and Ryan into the Jeep loaned to Jack, leave the shelter to look for Laura. As Bob pulls his truck into the driveway of the destroyed house, helping passengers Jenny and Laura along with him searching for Jack, Dan and Ryan, the Jeep also drives up and the family is reunited. Three tornadoes then touch down near them. The group escapes a twister, which picks up a car carrying a family who lived near the Hatches that also tried to outrun the tornado, destroys buildings in its path and hurls a tree branch into the windshield, knocking Jack unconscious and prompting Dan to drive them out of the storm's path. They, along with Bob and Jenny, reach an overpass as the twister blows out the Jeep's back window. As they walk out from under the overpass just as the sun rises on a clear day after the storm passes, Jack admits he is proud of Danny.
One year after the storm, Dan is dating Stacey, Arthur became class president, Bob and Jenny got married and have twins, Jack is supportive of Dan and took up new hobbies after the storm destroyed his shop, and Belle died.

## Cast

* Devon Sawa as Danny Hatch
* John Schneider as Jack Hatch
* Lori Hallier as Laura Hatch
* David Ferry as Bob Iverson
* Helen Hughes as Grandma Belle "Zephyr" Hatch
* Amos Crawley as Arthur Darlington
* Laura Bertram as Stacey Darlington
* Jhene Erwin as Jenny Hatch
* Alex and Thomas Lastewka as Ryan Hatch

## Reception

At the time of the film's release in 1996, Night of the Twisters received positive ratings when it aired on The Family Channel, but received very poor reviews from critics, many of whom criticized the special effects used in the film. The Family Channel continued to air the film until 2004, under its Fox Family and ABC Family brands.

## Availability

Night of the Twisters was released on VHS by GoodTimes Entertainment and MTM Home Video shortly after its television release. As VHS became less popular, the film was re-released on DVD by GT Media in 2006.