We’re in the middle of the SyFy Channel’s Sharknado Week (the 12th through the 19th), an event that continues to fly the banner of life-threatening sharp-toothed monster-fish even after the Discovery Channel has largely turned over its own SHARK WEEK offerings (July 22nd through 29th this year) to putatively informative feature stories. None of that wimpy speculative journalism for the staff at SyFy, who steadfastly maintain the tradition that has brought us SyFy-original gems like their 2010 Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda (which I watched again yesteday).
Each year some new movies (plus, of course, the classics of past years). Fresh meat this year:
Deep Blue Sea 2, Megalodon, Santa Jaws, Frenzy, Nightmare Shark, 6-Headed Shark Attack, with, as an extra attraction on Sunday, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time!
Teenage sexiness is a virtually obligatory minor theme in the genre. Beyond that, the plots tend to be both intricate and implausible. So far today:
(#1 )
ROBOSHARK [directed by Jeffrey Scott Lando, 2015]. What starts off as a typical day on the streets of Seattle soon becomes a terrifying bloodbath, when a great white shark devours an alien space probe and ROBOSHARK is born. The U.S. military comes after it with guns blazing, but its the power of social media that puts an ambitious newscaster and her tech-savvy daughter ahead of everyone else in the race to stop the destruction. Get ready to dive into a killer good time packed with heart-pounding chases, high-tech battles, laugh-out-loud humor and unforgettable special effects. (Rotten Tomatoes site)
The Space Needle plays a crucial role in the movie.
(#2)
DAM SHARKS! While on a weekend business retreat, a group of young [techie] professionals discover a hoard of killer sharks constructing a dam made of human body parts. The group teams up with local police and a wildlife expert to fight off the sharks and avoid becoming the next addition to the grisly dam. James and Jon Kondelik directed this SyFy Channel original horror comedy [from 2016] (Rotten Tomatoes site)
No one ever really explains how all those sharks ended up in a river far from the ocean. But once you’ve accepted their maniacal instinctive beaverish drive to build dams, why would you care?
(#3) Currently on view, Swamp Shark (2011), also advertised with the slogan “Fresh water. Fresh meat.” A gator festival is involved.
The titles and ad slogans tend to be heavy with language play of many kinds. Which inspired me to toy with some shark/park titles that have (as far as I know) not yet been used:
MacArthur Shark (wet cakes attract schools of marauding sharks)
Paisley Shark (purple rain turns guppies into maneaters)
Jellystone Shark (animated bears fight off fierce geyser sharks)
Barefoot in the Shark (grisly epic of dismemberment)
Sunday, Bloody Sunday in the Shark with George (doomed pointillist ménage a trois on jetskis)
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