Tidal Wave: No Escape

This was from before it was a thing to purposely make a bad disaster movie.

Back then they tried to make it the best movie they could and the actors gave it their all. To me that makes the goofier moments that much more fun.

It is still a predictable movie without much in the way of suspense, but for a lazy Sunday afternoon or an exhausted weeknight it is entertaining enough.

If you are watching this in the 2020's (or later) and expecting to see lots of destruction from huge waves then you will be disappointed.

Special effects were expensive and complex in 1997, so they had to fill more of the time with people actually acting.

Corbin Bernsen and Julianne Phillips were fun. Gregg Henry's character was a bit over the top with his cane, pimp walk and hair sticking up; but he was entertaining none-the-less.

This definitely made me nostalgic for the disaster of old where they weren't 70% cheaply done CGI and 30% bad acting.

This is a TV movie made back in 1997, and decent for TV for its time. Not a big budget, so one should not have big expectations. What is really comes down to is a man who 'retired' under somewhat of a cloud (John Wahl), and is now being blamed for what is happening. And the man in charge of the Institute is convinced he is responsible, and doesn't want to hear anything different. So John Wahl has to try and clear his name and pin in on the real person who is triggering the tidal waves. And naturally he finds help with a woman associate who he once knew. And she seems the only one who believes him.

This is a mediocre disaster movie that I watched and it wasn't that good. The movie mostly focus on two characters trying to figured out on how is causing these tidal waves and why. This plot is pretty predictable and is not that interesting to learn about. It's not that enjoyable due it mostly focus on characters looking at stuff or the group hunting him down. The characters are mostly bland due to them not having a interesting development and adds nothing to the movie. As for the acting, they try their best, but it doesn't make the movie better. There's only two disaster scenes in the entire movie and they aren't that suspenseful. It happen way too quickly and it doesn't show the danger of it. Also, it uses the same waves throughout the movie due to the budget of it. I do think the sets of the flooding looks decent, but isn't that impressive. And the movie ends pretty blandly.

Tidal Wave: No Escape isn't that impressive at all and would not recommend it.

This is another installment of a genre of movies in which the protagonist and eventual hero is falsely accused at first, usually by being set up. The movie Killer Wave is rather similar. These movies are good enough to watch, but usually have annoying parts to them. It all comes clean in the end, but the authorities that won't listen don't always get the karma they should.

While I was idly flicking through TV channels one afternoon I stumbled upon TIDAL WAVE: NO ESCAPE, a 1997 TV movie starring Corbin Bernsen, I decided to give it a whirl. My interest in the film was mainly generated by my suspicion that the title was a misnomer and I was soon proved correct: it's not spoiling things too much to say that the lead characters DO escape from tidal waves in this film, multiple times too.

As cheesy B-movie go, this one isn't too bad and at least there's plenty of incident to keep you watching. Bernsen (THE DENTIST), playing probably the world's most unlikely Nobel Prize winner, has to figure out the science (it's dodgy) behind some inexplicable tsunami disasters and yet still has time to romance a pretty colleague.

What follows is a mix between low-budget disaster antics and wronged man thriller; the latter is developed because of the lack of budget to focus too much on the disaster side of things, so the writers throw in a human villain and have Bernsen going on the run for much of the time. Saying there, there are some pretty silly CGI-enhanced moments, like when Bernsen attempts to out-drive an incoming tsunami and decides to take a road running parallel to the shore rather than inland.

This is hardly art, but it is a damn sight better than KILLER FLOOD: THE DAY THE DAM BROKE, I have to say. And no, that isn't a down-on-his-luck George Miller of MAD MAX fame directing, just a namesake.