Turbulence

The direct-to-video industry—home of the mockbuster, the top-billed cameo, and the Bulgarian action flick—operates in part by peddling semi-familiar product to undiscriminating viewers, late-night browsers who’ve given up on finding what they want and will settle for something they won’t mind. Low-budget sequels and spin-offs are a safe bet, especially if the property in question is both popular and cultish. But for every Starship Troopers: Hero Of The Federation or The Crow: Wicked Prayer, there are a dozen titles that are trying to capitalize on the haziest sort of name recognition—spin-offs that are several generations removed from the source material and franchises built around barely remembered flops. Turbulence—a forgotten “Die Hard on a…” variation that tanked at the box office in 1997—falls into the latter category. Capital Arts Entertainment, the company that pioneered the direct-to-video sequel business model, picked up the rights to the title for Turbulence 2: Fear Of Flying, in which a group of aviophobics end up on a jetliner hijacked by terrorists—a premise that would work as a hacky parody of ’90s action sequels (tagline: “They took the wrong flight to cure their fear!”) were it not played completely straight. Not to be outdone, 2001’s Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal added Satanic rock music hysteria and a ’Nam-damaged Rutger Hauer to the mix.