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Last Updated: 12:12 AM GMT on July 07, 2009 — Last Comment: 12:28 AM GMT on July 07, 2009

	Voyeurism on the Wunderground

Posted by: bappit, 2:16 AM GMT on July 01, 2009

[Check out my first blog here: "Hurricane Baby Boom".]

A friend of mine loaned me a couple of dvd's he picked up at a pawn shop with the cable movies Category 6: Days of Destruction and Category 7: The End of the World. The latter title was a bonus feature thrown in with 10.5 Apocalypse, an earth-shaking sort of flick. He loaned them to me on the assumption I would try watching them and write something up on my Wunderground blog. First, I should acknowledge that I do not own a television. Therefore I cannot claim to be a representative viewer of the types of cable channels these movies first aired on. My set gave out a few years ago and I decided to get rid of it all, the Curtis Mathes and the satellite subscription. (If you are wondering, I watched the movies on my computer.) That disclaimer out of the way, it is not surprising that my reaction to these shows is: what the heck?

Maybe I am just too old. I watched science fiction and horror movies with relish as a kid. My favorite memory is when my oldest brother had put up a special antenna to bring in the station that was showing The Thing. That was a rare time of peace and cooperation among the four of us brothers. Our parents had gone somewhere and we were really up for the movie, basically already scared by the show we anticipated. We had the TV off until it was time for the show at 8 p.m.--strange as that may sound to the families nowadays that leave the set on all the time even when no one is in the house. At any rate, being the youngest, I was instructed to turn the television on, and at the same instant I turned the knob, the shock wave from an explosion at Dow Chemical across the river at Plaquemine shook the house. It scared us for real big time. I immediately turned the set off thinking I had done something with the television, and my second oldest brother declared with certainty that the antenna had just been struck by lightning.

Of course, people do that sort of thing all the time when something unexpected and frightening happens. Sociologists study the phenomenon. They probably have a term for it. We jump to irrational ideas when spooked--and the shock wave spooked us good. The Thing was a spooky show, too. We turned the tv back on, soon learning about the explosion from a news bulletin. We quickly forgot about that as we watched the scientists stretching out their arms to determine the shape of whatever was under the ice. I suspect it was Matt Dillon's best role ever, playing a giant carnivorous carrot. Oh yeah, James Arness. Now one could say, "What the heck?" after watching a movie like that, but there was a dramatic presence to it--at least in my mind at the time. We also watched Them! with that television antenna. The scene from the movie that sticks with me, of course, is when the little girl smells the formic acid and starts screaming "It's them! It's them!"

Category 6 and Category 7 are also monster movies, and they are therefore obliged to follow the same formula of The Thing and Them!. a) Build a mystery.
b) Reveal the awful truth.
c) Indulge our desire for violence and destruction in a way that relieves any feelings of immediate danger by the end.
One of the things that makes the genre interesting is how the truth is discovered and accepted or, indeed, if it ever is really known. Jacob's Ladder is perhaps the spookiest movie I have ever seen, at least up until the point where they try to reveal the truth. It turns out that the guy was already dead by the time the truth is revealed so really it never is revealed since nothing in the time of the movie ever happened that could have led to the truth being revealed--if that makes sense.

Back to the topic of this blog, the problem with the Saffir-Simpson movies is that there never is a mystery. In fact, the most laughable parts of the stories are the times when they are trying to create suspense. The producers/directors/writers' crimes are heinous: just when we need to have believability, they have people do whacky things. A case in point, in Category 6 they have an intern at the Severe Storms Lab try to find out if anything is happening in northwestern Canada. Ummmmmmmm ... turns out it is snowing, but then they could have found that out anytime they wanted without resorting to unofficial channels. Damn! If weathermen do anything, it is watch the weather. Voyeurs one and all! One of Dr. Neil Frank's favorite lines as a TV weather guy was, "As we watch the weather...".

So these two movies amount to weak, weak soap operas mixed up with some special effects and stupidity in the script. Writer stupidity as a plot device should not be underrated but is hard to do well. Then again, there is real life.

Strikingly enough, real life occurs on the Wunderground blog where would be weathermen (myself included) follow storms and in general act out the roles of scientists in horror movies. We deal with mysteries or supposed mysteries, or perhaps sometimes we tend to invent mysteries for our own delight. Moral ambiguity arises. Is anyone wishcasting here? Any mad scientists creeping around? No one wants destruction--not exactly--but they want excitement and--as in another Neil Frank line "If you like a good mystery ..."--they want to be entertained which Category 6 and Category 7 simply do not do.

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1. JFLORIDA 12:16 AM GMT on July 07, 2009
Hey Bappit! The thing was a good one, I even read the book. I have thought about this for some time and I think you can divide the folks here into four basic categories. 1. The weathermen and those interested in weather phenomena. 2. Those interested in complexity, computer media, simulation and information. 3. First responder and other types that have been in bad situations and in their own way are still working to get it completely right. 4. Destruction dweebs that are not vested in anything really and are basically thrilled by the odd catastrophe as a possibility for escape from a life they have no control over. I think also there are combination of the above in some posters in most situations too.

2. JFLORIDA 12:23 AM GMT on July 07, 2009
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3. MNTornado 12:28 AM GMT on July 07, 2009
Thank you for the review. Based on most movies that I've be the unfortunate victim of watching, your analysis could be applied to many of them. Whether fiction, science fiction, or so called documentary. It seems that Hollywood, or who ever has a hard time finding good writers any more. That's a shame so as a result the best movies I find available are still the ones that are over 30 years old. I've pretty much lost any interest that I used to have in science fiction movies, because there just aren't any good ones being made anymore for the most part. Though my son saw the new Star Trek movie, which I have yet to see myself, and he said that it was pretty good. Maybe when I get a little richer or I'll just wait until it becomes available in DVD. Oh and just one question, when I talk about the movie, The Thing, are you referring to the latest release or the original B&W version?

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