Cyclone (aka El Ciclón or Terror Storm) is a 1978 Mexican survival horror flick directed by René Cardona Jr., which sets a bunch of doomed airplane survivors adrift on the ocean—only to discover that when nature doesn’t finish you off, desperate hunger and cannibalism will. If you’re looking for Hitchcock’s Lifeboat with a splash of soap opera melodrama and a shark or two, then congratulations, you’ve stumbled upon Cyclone — a film where tension is as thin as the rationed water and the plot holes are bigger than the ocean itself.
The film’s premise is simple enough: a Caribbean cyclone crashes a plane, a fishing trawler, and a tour boat all into a watery grave. Survivors from these three disasters (somehow all washed together) are now stuck floating in the open sea, forced to battle sharks, dehydration, starvation, and each other. Spoiler alert: the sharks are the least of their problems.
If you’re hoping for subtle character development, forget it. Here, the passengers are little more than cardboard cutouts with desperate expressions, bickering endlessly about who gets the last sip of water or whose dog makes the tastiest dinner. Carroll Baker’s Sheila is a classic damsel whose biggest crisis is deciding if she’ll eat the dog first or the next unlucky tourist to croak. Lionel Stander plays Taylor, the selfish, water-hoarding jackass who’s about as likable as a shark fin in your bathtub. Speaking of sharks, these toothy fiends get surprisingly little screen time considering their poster-worthy presence in the title Terror Storm. When they do appear, it’s usually to munch on a conveniently drifting corpse, because nothing says “Mexican survival horror” like shark appetizers served with a side of tragic inevitability.
Plot-wise, Cyclone trudges along with all the urgency of a sailboat in a calm sea. The survivors kill the occasional dog for dinner, barter over a dwindling water supply, and—of course—gradually resort to cannibalism. The film tries to flirt with moral quandaries but mostly flounders, like the boat itself, in a sea of clichés. A lady gives birth in the middle of this aquatic nightmare, which could have been a poignant moment if the film remembered to treat it as anything other than an obligatory plot point.
The “thrilling” moments involve the glass-bottom boat shattering—because, naturally, that’s when everything goes belly up. Chaos ensues, people thrash around like extras in a shark attack video, and half the cast is promptly devoured. The survivors’ faces contort in what you assume is terror but might just be confusion about why they signed up for this.
And then, just when you think the carnage might never end, a couple of seaplanes show up to scoop up the last remnants, leaving the audience wondering if the real horror was sitting through the endless scenes of complaining and recycling the same water bottle shots.
The cast, including Arthur Kennedy as the priest and Hugo Stiglitz as the pilot, try their best but are hamstrung by wooden dialogue and laughably bad special effects. The cyclone itself? More like a gentle breeze with a bad attitude. The production values occasionally veer into the charmingly cheap, reminding viewers this is a late-’70s Mexican horror flick that didn’t have the budget or script to compete with Hollywood’s aquatic thrillers.
In the end, Cyclone is a boatload of disappointment masquerading as a survival thriller. It fails spectacularly to build tension, scares, or even believable character arcs. But if you’re in the mood for a bizarre blend of melodrama, slow-burning dread, and shark-infested waters where the real beast is human selfishness, this storm might just be your thing.
Grab your life vest, but maybe leave your expectations on dry land.
