Academic

Sharktopus?

By Tung Yin

"Sharktopus" was on the SyFy channel last night.  As you might guess from the title, it's about some kind of horrible half-shark, half-octopus creature.  Here's an appropriately cheesy trailer, which just about captures everything about the movie.  I mean, it's got the head/mouth of a shark and the body of an octopus, and the military engineered it as an aquatic weapon.  What could possibly go wrong?

I caught the last 40 minutes or so of this after the end of the Oregon-Arizona State football game. I remember having been burned once by stupid SyFy movies, so I did not have high expectations for this.

Everything you might suspect was true -- the sharktopus looked ridiculous, like a giant version of those mylar balloons at the supermarket.  The acting was horrendous, with Eric Roberts having completed his descent from once brilliant gifted thespian to self-parody.  The dialogue was atrocious, and the blood and gore was over the top; lots of heads exploded. 

Despite all that, it was curiously watchable for a late Saturday night with nothing else on.  I think I now have a sense of what the original audience for "Plan 9 From Outer Space" felt like.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on September 26, 2010 (boomark / email).