''Storm'' is a 1987 Canadian

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

and first feature starring

David Palffy David Palffy is a Canadian film and television actor of Welsh and Hungarian descent, best known for playing Anubis and Sokar on ''Stargate SG-1''. Early life David Palffy attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England. Career Pa ...

and Stan Kane directed by

David Winning David Winning is a Canadian-American film and television director, screenwriter, producer, editor, and occasional actor. Although Winning has worked in numerous film and TV genres, his name is most commonly associated with science fiction, thri ...

. The film was the debut of director Winning. Two college students on a survival weekend in the wilderness cross paths with three aging criminals looking for treasure buried decades earlier. Made in 24 days on a budget of about $70,000 CDN. The original 81-minute film was filmed near

Bragg Creek Bragg Creek is a hamlet in southern Alberta under the jurisdiction of Rocky View County in Division No. 6. Bragg Creek is located west of Calgary (via Highway 8 and Highway 22) at the confluence of the Elbow River and Bragg Creek north of ...

, west of Calgary, in the summer of 1983, with an initial cast and crew of 10 people. It was released by

Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Inc. (formerly known as Warner Home Video and WCI Home Video and sometimes credited as Warner Home Entertainment) is the home video distribution division of Warner Bros. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Vide ...

on September 1, 1988. Director Winning appears in a small cameo as the younger villain.

Cast

as Lowell Stein * Stan Kane as Jim *Tom Schioler as Booker Lewis *

Harry Freedman Harry Freedman (''Henryk Frydmann''), (April 5, 1922 – September 16, 2005) was a Canadians, Canadian composer, English hornist, and music educator of Polish birth. He wrote a significant amount of symphony, symphonic works, including the scores ...

as Burt * Lawrence Elion as Stanley *Stacy Christensen as Cobi * James Hutchison as The Hostage *Sean O'Byrne as Danny

New version

23 minutes of additional material added in 1987 was requested by The Cannon Group, Inc. to bring the film up to feature-length for theatrical distribution in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. This addition met with mixed reviews as ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' author Stephen Godfrey wrote in his “A Storm Warning” article. He said “the scenes are as refreshing as the rest of the film and show Winning’s talent for creating suspense and sympathy. But the structure of the film is now unbalanced; in its original form, Storm was an elaborate tease, a cat-and-mouse game that escalated gradually...” The new segments were filmed in the winter of January 1987 in Bragg Creek and Calgary, Alberta with the original cast.

Distribution and theatrical release

Storm was picked up by

Cannon Films The Cannon Group, Inc. was an American group of companies, including Cannon Films, which produced films from 1967 to 1994. The extensive group also owned, amongst others, a large international cinema chain and a video film company that invested ...

Cannon International for worldwide distribution in December 1986. The Canadian theatrical release was handled separately by Thomas Howe Associates of Vancouver, Canada with a premiere in Calgary November 26, 1987 followed by a Canadian theatrical run. Storm also ran theatrically in Los Angeles in December 1989 to qualify for the Academy Awards and was reviewed positively by the LA Times.

Reception

Kevin Thomas, of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'' called the movie taut, ambitious and darkly comic in a 1989 review. He said the film worked very effectively as a comment on the male psyche and how lethal the mix of fear and aggression can be when men have a need to prove their masculinity for reasons imagined or real. ''

'' writer

Jay Scott Jeffrey Scott Beaven (October 4, 1949 – July 30, 1993), known professionally by his pen name Jay Scott, was a Canadian film critic."Critic Jay Scott, 43 among world's best". ''Toronto Star'', July 31, 1993. Early life Scott was born in Lincol ...

in an August 28, 1985 review called it a remarkable new thriller and a comic combination of

Treasure of the Sierra Madre ''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' (originally titled ''Der Schatz der Sierra Madre'') is a 1927 adventure novel by German author B. Traven, whose identity remains unknown. In the book, two destitute American men in Mexico of the 1920s join a ...

and

Deliverance ''Deliverance'' is a 1972 American survival thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. The screenplay was adapt ...

. Peter Goddard of the ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and pa ...

'' wrote Winning’s sense of movement within a scene is already masterly. He could make ice melting seem exciting.

Fred Haeseker Fred Haeseker was the film critic and entertainment writer at the Calgary Herald from 1979 until 1999. During this time he wrote hundreds or reviews on current releases as well as news about the local filmmaking scene in Calgary; including articles ...

in a November 1987 '' Calgary Herald'' review wrote that it’s a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of time-honored shock effects and rite-of-passage clichés, seen with a sense of humor that is usually missing from the pictures that spawned them.

References

External links

*
''Storm'' trailer
at

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

* {{David Winning 1987 films 1987 drama films Canadian drama films English-language Canadian films Films directed by David Winning Films shot in Alberta Golan-Globus films 1987 directorial debut films 1980s English-language films 1980s Canadian films