Sharknado 2 and other awful movies on SyFy

SyFy has really hung its hat on awful movies with Sharknado being the only ever breakout from the pack of its shitty movies. Now Sharknado 2 is about to be unveiled to SyFy so I thought this would be a good chance to discuss the shitty movies the network has on every Saturday.

Last year with the Sharknado trailer tearing it up on the Internet, I was hooked on the trailer. The actual movie itself just felt long and awful, but not so bad its good. It felt so bad its bad.

However, 'Ghost Shark' was so bad that its good with an even more laughable premise. Ghost shark. At some point the characters figured out a ghost shark doesn't need to be in the ocean, it can use any body of water... such as a flooded basement and not just that, but eventually it leaped out of a glass of water. It was hilarious.

Right now I've had a SyFy spider movie a thon on in the background and there have been 2 awful, awful movies. One of which stared Lance Hendrickson, the other stared Vanessa Williams.

The third 'Infestation' to my surprise was a gem of a bad movie that had a lot of intentional comedy and horrific moments. Who did it star? I recognized no one except for Hoshi from Star Trek Enterprise for a whole 5 minutes. It had mutated twists and laughable moments instead of SyFy's normal 'big creatures.'

Any movies that have stuck out for you? Discuss.

I remember one about a American Indian ritual that raised dinosaur skeletons to life or something like that.

The Terminators. That one was ace, but for all of the wrong reasons.

For some reason I most vividly remember: Arachnoquake and Magma: Volcanic Disaster. Intentionally shit titles seem to be mandatory for this genre.

Reign of the Gargoyles I remember being fairly decent, although there was fight scene in a graveyard where the amount of Nazi cannon fodder was hilarious as the heroes just gunned them down without much of an effort. It had a few memorable stand offs actually.

Another one I thought was actually good, minus some lame effects here and there, was one apparently called Frost Giant/Arctic Predator. I mean, no it wasn't great, but it was good for a channel film. Internet says release date is 2010, though I thought I saw it in 08 or so. Has the exact plot I remember though, reading.


Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon was downright fucking retarded, however. A few funny moments though, including very laughable effects and hilariously moronic characters. There's also a guy who breaks both of his legs, stumbles around a snowy mountain unarmed and without food for two days, gets shot in the eye/head with a flare gun and is knocked out, and STILL LIVES. Although he gets left behind by the rest of the group he was with.

Eh, I enjoyed the original Sharknado alright, but I gotta say, on the whole, I'm just not a fan of the whole Syfy approach. Don't get me wrong, I love a good "so bad it's good" type-movie, but there's just something lost when you try to do it on purpose. Like, with a good "so bad its good" movie, there needs to be real effort behind it, like someone really had a vision of an amazing film and worked their ass off to bring that vision to life, but had no clue what they were doing and failed. Sounds kinda cruel, but I enjoy a movie like that a thousand times more than I'll enjoy a movie that was purposely made without any effort whatsoever. It's just... seems wrong when the people making the film are in on the joke, like then they can just use that fact to just not give a crap.

A really good "bad" movie is "Zombie Strippers". You'll have fun watching Jenna Jameson rip people apart :D

"Zombie Strippers", "Hobo with a Shotgun", "Lesbian Vampire Killers", if I had to name a few recent ones.

Older stuff, I'd have to write a short novel here, mainly about horror movies. "Frankenhooker", "Brain Damage" (and anything else by Frank Henenlotter), "Re-Animator" series, early Cronenberg movies, "Death Machine"...

What the hell is SyFy?

Anyway, one really bad movie I remember seeing was Street Fighter (and its two sequels). Most of the time, all I did was laugh.

Belial said:

"Zombie Strippers", "Hobo with a Shotgun", "Lesbian Vampire Killers", if I had to name a few recent ones.

Older stuff, I'd have to write a short novel here, mainly about horror movies. "Frankenhooker", "Brain Damage" (and anything else by Frank Henenlotter), "Re-Animator" series, early Cronenberg movies, "Death Machine"...

I actually liked Frankenhooker.

MFG38 said:

What the hell is SyFy?

Anyway, one really bad movie I remember seeing was Street Fighter (and its two sequels). Most of the time, all I did was laugh.

SyFy = Sci-Fi Channel

SyFy is a pathetic hollow shell of what once was now.

They can't even spell right.

They should StarGate SG-1 Reruns again.


Also, "Hobo With a Shotgun" was fucking Gold in every department. The only channel I can ever imagine it being on, though, would have to be IFC. Censoring the film for any other channel would make it unintelligible, although it'd probably be pretty funny.

Say what you will about David Lynch's "Dune," (I personally love it, despite its flaws), but what little I saw of the Sy-Fy version was miserably amateur and ugly, although not in the so-bad-it's-good way.

Crasger said:

SyFy is a pathetic hollow shell of what once was now.

So is the History Channel. I loved when they used to play academic documentaries about all types of history, back in the day. Now its just reality TV shows.

Sci-Fi was my favorite channel back when they used to have new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. That's a long time ago.

Then it moved on to Comedy Central.

On a side note, Comedy Central has always been awesome.

Funny thing for me was, SyFy had fallen out of grace for me so long ago, when I heard about the name change, it didn't even really faze me. Oh sure it was stupid, but really it was only the latest in a long, long string of stupid decisions. Don't misunderstand, I do remember the channel's glory days, but the writing was on the wall long ago. I friggin' loved MST3K, the Star Trek and X-Files rerurns, etc. But for me, the first sign something was seriously wrong over there was when they picked up Sliders for its final two seasons, and... well, let's just say things got real ugly real quick. I don't know how many people even remember Sliders, but that used to be one of my favorite shows, even back when I was a kid and had little tolerance for anything on TV that wasn't a cartoon. I mean, it was everything I thought science fiction should be - start out with a simple premise, a single gimmick that allows for all kinds of interesting stories to be told. "We have a device that lets us visit parallel worlds." Now, we can look at, "What would the world be like if this single event had been different?" It made for tons of very interesting and creative episodes, with lots of very creative stories. Then Syfy took it over, and they turned into a generic, "We've got to stop these evil aliens who want to take over the multiverse," kind of show. Well, they weren't really aliens, but for the purposes of the show, they might as well have been. They almost entirely ditched the premise to turn it into this generic action show about stopping the bad guys. That was the moment I lost faith in Syfy - they might as well have made the name change right then and there.

Truth be told, though, I can't really say I was ever really surprised - science fiction is such a niche genre, I figured it wouldn't take them long to start selling out to the lowest common denominator. I like the concept of devoting a channel to science fiction, but always knew there weren't really enough geeks like me to maintain an audience by focusing on quality science fiction programming. It's one of those things - I've always known the vast majority prefers mindless crap, so it's one of television's greatest weaknesses that devoting yourself to quality is always going to be shooting yourself in the foot. Oh well.

Kontra Kommando said:

So is the History Channel. I loved when they used to play academic documentaries about all types of history, back in the day. Now its just reality TV shows.

Well, you know, "whatever sells" is the mentality of these networks these days.

Actually, it was always their mentality.

People just complain about it more these days.
Although, there has been a noticeable decline-- must be because TV is a dying platform.

Sci-Fi went downhill for me when they stopped running Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica. Those shows were the bomb. Don't even get me started on the days when they actually showed Star Trek, from any generation at all.

Nowadays it's mostly a decent channel to watch while intoxicated and make fun of all the original movies. The characters are very archetypal and there are always multiple attractive females who usually shoot guns at some point. Of course, the CGI is always something of a spectacle as it awkwardly interacts with the live-actors. It's all in good fun and it does expand your imagination a little sometimes.

Hmm, here are some I vaguely remember: Children of the Corn, Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God, Painkiller Jane, Yeti, the Anacondas series, Mansquito, some others.

I remember writing down some amazing character dialogue that was just so cheesy it was actually grandiose. Man, I have to dig my old notebooks up.