Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001)

 

Director: Jorge Montessi

Screenplay: Wade Ferely

Cast: John Mann as Slade Craven, Zak Santiago as Gabriel Mendoza (as Zak Santiago Alam), Monika Schnarre as Erica Black, Sharon Alexander as Mandy Morgan, Gabrielle Anwar as FBI Agent Kate Hayden, Rick Burgess as Kyle Martin, Bernie Coulson as 'Shred', Brenda Crichlow as Mary Wilson, Kendall Cross as Karen David, Nathaniel DeVeaux as Jack Fletcher, Mike Dopud as FBI Agent Dave Barrett, Rutger Hauer as Copilot MacIntosh

Obscurities, One-Offs and Oddities

 

This is getting weirder.

Full Plot Spoilers Throughout

Author's Note: When this review was originally written, I was completely unaware of abuse allegations against Brian "Marilyn Manson" Warner which have been in the news since February 2021. Since the main character is clearly a stand-in for him, this was an unfortunate coincidence, but I feel the review and the film itself can be still appreciated even if there is a tangent on Manson himself, and references to the parallels. Only one line was excised as, even in the early days of the allegations and where history will go on this subject, the comments within it were inaccurate because of the allegations against Manson existing in the first place.

If we can begin a review with a hypothesised exercise, imagine if you have to continue a franchise, particularly any that have been long going or have a very restriction set of expectations that must always be met. You have options between trying to repeat the same as before but "differently", as can be seen in the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes films between 1939 to 1946 which, baring the first two 20th Century Fox produced films being set in his original time period, were all set in the nineteen forties with the advantage of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's source material and a lot of pulp genre tropes. Sometimes you are even more restricted in premises and have no back catalogue to go with. Friday the 13th in the horror genre had to have Jason Voorhees, and thus eventually you get the controversial Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), where they turned a villain already undead by that point into a figure housing a body swapping hell parasite. If the genre has been repeated over and over again, and clichés have developed over initial ideas, you have to think outside the box. Leprechaun as a franchise sent the Irish folklore legend to Las Vegas, which was actually a clever idea. Than to outer space in the sequel, that made less sense, outside of parody, and even before Voorhees got there himself. Hellraiser also went into space, before they even had to start taking original horror scripts and reinterpreting them as their own sequels.

But horror films are one thing, or pulp narratives based around iconic characters like Sherlock Holmes or even the superhero films, especially those that have higher budgets and have the archives of material to work from. Films of any budget and format need to still come up with new content in a production line. What about a genre like the disaster films, where everyone especially if you include TV movies made so many of them? Let us be even more precise, what about the sub-genre of airplane disaster films where a plane is in danger of crashing? We know, unless you fancy a really bleak ending film, a plane in trouble will be landed, and you are restricted in plotting due to the central location being one of these vessels, so what to do with one? No, putting snakes on an airplane, whilst weird, turned out not to be as weird as this premise could be bent into, a genre that even before 2001 has a long history. Where ever since Airport (1970), so many were made and that the parody of these films Airplane! (1980) just lifted its plot, even about the pilots being poisoned by a fish supper, from Zero Hour! (1957), a film made decades earlier to even Airport.

Shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which surely should mean being a honorary Canuxploitation film, we are on the second sequel to the Turbulance films, the original 1997 film a theatrical release but followed by two straight-to-video sequels. Here, instead of who had fish for dinner, we have effectively Die Hard on a plane, the 1988 Die Hard with Bruce Willis, alongside being a big hit, also spawning the idea of films taking its basic premise, a hijacking of a skyscraper by criminals, and setting the scenes in different locations. Most films would stay with just Die Hard on a plane, but Turbulence 3 also thought they could include a Marilyn Manson stand-in, and the figure who is also our Bruce Willis. I have included spoiler warnings from the get-go as it is impossible to try to talk about this film coyly, and reading this review is not the same experience of seeing how this plays out anyway, so I feel less concern talking about this all in full detail.

The amusing touch to the film personally is that, when Sky in the United Kingdom would have even films like this premiere on pay-per-view, I remember advertising for this production. It more than likely never included this plot detail in the synopsis, which does need a tangent for any reader to explain the significance of, for those who was either living in a cave or are significantly young and oblivious to late nineties pop culture. That of Marilyn Manson, real name Brian Warner, is a musician with his titular band became a mainstream crossover group but also a very controversial one. Some who, alongside music openly influenced by Nine Inch Nails and near nu metal, had a stage act included openly Satanic imagery and even ripping pages out of Bibles onstage. Manson was also a scapegoat for the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, which are tastelessly referenced here, where he was even an interviewee in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (2002) because of how much of a target he was. Here, it is obvious the writers are outsiders to heavy metal. Manson's stand in Slade Craven (John Mann) is called a death rock musician whilst a protest sign awaiting him in his introduction calls his music death metal; now, I will not be a gatekeeper and be pedantic, but music naturally tends to separate into genres and sub-genres, and those two are definitely very alien musical genres, the start of the curious genre mixing that transpires.

Craven's own music and look here is also a hodgepodge. Some is Nine Inch Nails, some close to death metal, some Placebo's PVC and Goth obsessed cousin, whilst the score itself is actually drum n bass. Slade Craven and his group are a mishmash themselves - punk, goth, black metal corpse paint, glam rock with a feather boa, and even a cowboy hat. They are also playing a "747 Flying Music Station", his last concert to be streamed online for fans off an airplane in the sky. Strangely relevant two decades later into the 2020s, where streaming concerts online was more commonplace, this however is still back when the internet was still a new thing and films like Halloween: Resurrection (2002) exist, trying to grasp at this new idea with a sense of appealing to a hip new audience. It also leads here with a lot of the film barring its airplane interior scenes being of everyone in separate rooms either watching screens or on receivers communicating to each other, economising as a result. With the airplane eventually hijacked however, with what appears to be Craven going insane originally, leads to a far more sinister concern onboard.

Ultimately this is a disaster film about landing a plane full of Craven's fans, many, rather than crashing and everyone getting killed. The initial structure is a thriller, but it eventually the same that happens in Airplane! will happen, after it is revealed there was an imposter involved, that Craven has to find a way to rescue the plane with outside help. Among those involved are an FBI agent Kate Hayden (Gabrielle Anwar) who was after a hacker Nick Watts (Craig Sheffer), a man of the people in his blue bandanna and shirt combo, arresting him in his apartment as he was hacking into the live feed and deciding to work together when they see what is happening onscreen; the FBI when they get involved; the company streaming the broadcast when things go south; and eventually air traffic control teams. This is an airplane film with a Marilyn Manson stand-in having to save the plane, even with the help of someone with only experience of virtual flight simulators, to land it which is as strange as that sounds.

This is not even when the premise gets bonkers either. Initially it comes off as if this film will demonise this figure of Slade Craven, as a negative personality who has flipped and become destructive. Baring the fact that the live feed increases in viewings when the show goes very wrong, what the real threat is turns to be even more ridiculous. A Satanic cult, with their own easily accessible website, that intend to crash the plane onto a small church in Kansas as they believe it sits on top of a gateway to Hell underneath it. It is a very strange premise, and again spoiling this does not have the same impact as actually watching the film and seeing all these twists be played straight faced. More so because this is a straight-to-video work which has to be economic, and that the one recognisable actor is Rutger Hauer as one of the pilots, with very little screen time but putting in the best acting of the cast as a veteran of many straight-to-video films more normal than this. It is funnier because, like Manson himself being Warner, still a working musician, likewise John Mann as Slade Craven gets to play the regular musician underneath the scary makeup. A musician in the midst of this scenario who has to prove his identity from his income tax, or even praying to God and taking off the occult jewellery to help with having to land the plane himself.

Is this entertaining? Absolutely and in context to this area of cinema, whilst complete cheese, it is competently made compared to many films I have seen. Chilean born director Jorge Montesi was a television and film making veteran beforehand, and would continue onwards to be especially in the former. Writer Wade Ferley only wrote this one script, more known in filmmaking as a camera operator/cinematography/director of photography on a couple of productions, clearly wanting to bring this premise he had to life or getting into this position to write a script with such a goofy yet compelling premise. Cinema has had dumb or ill advised ideas, and whilst I can imagine further interpretations of this premise which could have been funnier or more spectacular - imagine KISS, rather than the film we did get, as a four men action team in a Die Hard knockoff - this was a pleasure. More so because this is a curious genre mix, the result of trying to have to come with a new premise for a sequel, as mentioned in the first paragraph, and one which is actually entertaining. Most of these later premises and sequel plots tend to be bad or not really exploited well, merely curiosities or embarrassments for the most part. I am not surprised as, with cinema as a conveyor belt of product as it is an art form with many variables, you do struggle a great deal to come up with ideas whether good, bad or bonkers. This one is forgotten, but for anyone who does track it down, this could easily be a cult film one day because, without any context of the previous films to weigh it down, it manages to succeed in its weird creative choices for once.