Tornado1943

There may be a twister at the beginning and end of this juicy melodrama but, in-between, the disasters are more of an explosive nature (the underground gas and human emotive kinds, both). Chester Morris plays a working-class tough guy who gradually rises from working as a grunt in a small town's coal mine to being its superintendent. Finally, he ends up owning the whole enterprise outright. But things get awfully complicated on the way up, not least because he marries a beautiful singer (Nancy Kelly) who's as greedy, grasping and unfaithful as they come. When he made TORNADO, Morris was in the middle of fourteen movies playing the character for which he's best remembered, reformed-thief-turned-wisecracking-private-eye Boston Blackie. His leading lady here, Nancy Kelly, was a former child star who would find her greatest fame playing the mother of a homicidal child in THE BAD SEED. It was a change-of-pace assignment for director William Berke. He made a number of "B" westerns before switching over to jungle adventures with titles like SAVAGE DRUMS and several "Jungle Jim" flicks starring ex-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller. - Dennis Harvey