TWISTER

Taller than The Towering Inferno, more palsying than Earthquake, louder than Krakatoa on top of Godzilla Meets Megalon (and more straightfaced), Twister is the Gone With the Wind of the Bursting Plaster School of verbal visuals. Slavering to be filmed, it packs more carnage into a larger frame than any disaster epic since the heavy weather at Mount Ararat. Tornadoes--over 150!--strike the heartland states in one massive storm of unparalleled ferocity. Hopping and skipping everywhere at once, Bickham whips his celluloidal characters through sultry greens and whirling funnels that burst black and lightning-choked from rear-projections and move horrendously over dozens of towns, trees on their boles spinning skyward like dervish angels, streets rearranging themselves as if transported to distant cities, swathes of countryside polished utterly smooth and weedless. There's a large juiceless role for Mayor Charlton Heston of Thatcher, Ohio, as he directs recovery operations and wins back his unfaithful wife, and another for beleaguered stormfighter Steve McQueen, still another for Michael Caine as a hack writer who's lost his muse to bourbon and boredom. A floodflushing frenzy before ""the clear skies had begun to bring a feeling of some kind of returning normalcy. . . .