Story Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Syfy is doing a movie about a hurricane dropping man-eating sharks right out of the air. This sounds like a whole new level of silliness, instead of super creature vs. super creature, we have a meeting of creature & natural disaster. Bring your umbrellas.
LOL, and people laughed at the title Sharktopus. Dorothy Gale should be very happy it wasn't a Sharknado that ripped her house up and send her on a journey.
Final verdict: Not as good as SHARKTOPUS or JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK, but much, much better than MEGA PIRANHA. Yes, I am a connoisseur of trashy Syfy monster flicks . . . .
Seems like this was a huge win for Siffy, I don't recall this much buzz among the mundanes about one of their movies before... I saw a few minutes with the sound off, and it was painful even that way, as expected. The actual "sharknado" is probably the stupidest natural phenomenon since the van Allen Belt caught fire.
Sharknado drew 1.369 million viewers and a 0.4 in the 18-49 demo. The demo rating was 29% higher than the average for Syfy's original movies so far this year. The online buzz gave the ratings a bit of a boost, but not as much as expected.
If I ran Syfy, I'd schedule a special "encore showing" of SHARKTOPUS on Saturday, for people who are curious what all the fuss is about.
One question has been haunting me since I first heard about this movie(which would be this morning). Is it actually all that important that the sharks dropping from the sky are man-eaters? I mean aren't all of these sharks basically going to end up as splats on the ground? If we are just supposed to worry about huge objects raining from the sky than anything heavy will do. Walrusnado! Semi-truckcabnato! Sumowrestlernado! And even if they survive the fall what is the worst that can happen? they flail around for a few minutes until they die of exposure while you taunt them because you have legs that can be used to run away from them.
What a rip-off - we didn't even see the "sharknado" until over 1/2-way into the film! And lordy, that has to be some of the worst CGI I have seen in ages! Nice to know that we can just *bomb* tornadoes to stop them! That will save so many lives! And who knew that you could fly a helicopter right up to a tornado!? So what's next? "Sharkcano"? (A volcano made of sharks!) Or how about "Sharktopusnado"!?!? It can't wait for "Sharkpocalypse 2: The Sharkening!" I really wish SyFy would spend this money instead buying up some un-sold and *un-aired* sci-fi pilots like "Day One", "Revolution" (the colony series, not the JJ-Abrams no-electricity series - and they can just rename it, not the first time a pilot has been re-named and re-aired as a "made-for-TV-movie")...or what about "Locke & Key"?
I never even heard of this till last night. Why did Sciffy move their B-Movies from Saturday night? That sucks for me. The best of these movies were Sharktopus and Megashark Versus Giant Octopus. I'd really like to see Sharktopus return in some sequels.
It's sad that "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is no more. (Yeah, I know there's RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic, but I particularly miss the 'Bots and the Satellite host segments which MST3K's successors lack.) Because this is the very stuff that was pure gold for the Best Brains crew! Think about it, this could have been the perfect arrangement. One branch of SyFy finances these schlockfests,, but don't air them "as is". instead, have Best Brains "prepare" them first, riffing them to bits and broadcast THAT version. Being totally "in house", they wouldn't have the "rights" issues that forced them to stop showing certain episodes. I'm sure someone will point out these movies are nort really "produced" by SyFy, not in full, anyway. They probably just negotiate a deal to air them rather than go "straight to DVD", so there could be "rights" issues down the road.. But "pre-riffed" would be about the only thing to make these flicks watchable. I miss Tom Servo and Crow. Sincerely, Bill
My favorite is possibly WAR BIRDS. World War II fighter pilots vs. pterodactyls. Or maybe dragons. It wasn't quite clear. WYVERN is fun, too. And, of course, FLU BIRD HORROR, written by TrekLit's own Tony Daniel.
Most of the movies MST3K riffed on were at least trying to be good in their own failed ways due to lack of money or talent or both. The Syfy/Asylum films are intentionally low-effort which isn't so fun IMO. Obviously, people do seem to enjoy these things but I feel like the butt of the joke watching most of them.
Yeah, riffing on films that are intentionally uber-cheesy isn't as funny as riffing on films that were made in earnest and that turned out cheesy.