This 1996 Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects film is one of the best DVD's I own. Brought to you by virtue of Warner Home Video it stars Helen Hunt (Mad About You) and Bill Paxton (Aliens, Titanic) as tornado scientists in a race against time to be the first to launch 'Dorothy' , a small weather station in it's own right designed for recording the tornados wind velocity etc. This is all in the hope of eventually designing a early warning system for tornados and to launch 'Dorothy' they have to put it in the twisters' damage path.

This in itself sets up the movie for some great action scenes as you can imagine, although the plot weaves abit thin through the movie the DVD is an action collectors dream that needs to be seen and HEARD time and time again. When I say time and time again you'll know what I mean when you first encounter one of the twister scenes and you have that Dolby Digital system plugged in. If you can image what 5 full 100w channels sound like all going full ball around you , you'll think that you're standing in the middle of a twister, it really has to be heard to be believed.Incidentally a recording of a camel's moan was slowed down and used as the sound of the tornado.

The THX approved transfer itself is presented in both the letterbox (2.35:1) and Pan & Scan. If you ever want to compare just how much picture you lose to the Pan & Scan process then this is the movie. Just have a look at Chapter 8 when both Paxton & Hunt are in the front of her truck. The letterboxed version clearly displays both sitting there talking but the Pan & Scan you can only see one at a time and I'd estimate that roughly about 50% of the picture in this scene alone has been chopped. So the next time someone complains about letterboxing show them this scene and see how astonished they will be.

The filming of this movie was not however without it's problems for e.g. In order to get the background skies looking suitably stormy, the truck cab sequences had to be flooded with high intensity lighting for contrast. As a result, 'Helen Hunt' and Bill Paxton suffered minor retinal burns through much of the filming. Plus Helen Hunt was injured while filming the scene where the truck drives through the corn when the door was forced back into her head. For later shots, the door was wedged open.

I thought the picture quality itself was excellent, I have heard that you can see some pixelisation in a scene or two but to be honest I never noticed them. The colours are very well saturated and the reds outstanding. Overall the picture is clean, sharp and very well produced. As previously stated the Digital sound track rocks but also the Pro Logic downmix is very good in it's own right with good bass but you do lack the direction that digital gives you.

Considering the back flip performed by Steven Spielberg we can count ourself lucky that Twister was released early since Spielberg pulled Jurassic Park, Men In Black and the Lost World for whatever reason. Most believe it's due to DTS but we shall all wait and see. Anyway the movie also contains star bios, the theatrical trailer and scene access. Also included is the french audio and spanish, english and french subtitles. Overall a great movie for special effect fans. Recommended.