Sharknado and other Creature/Weather fusion movies

A Guardian piece today drew my attention to the existence of "Sharknado", and it also crops up on Total Film's list of the worst promo posters of the Cannes Festival.

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/cannes-2013-s-worst-funniest-movie-posters

Sharknado, obviously, stands out.

Shark movies lend themselves effortlessly to terrible movie publicity; remember Sand Sharks and Sharktopus amongst a million others? They also lend themselves to terrible films like Jaws IV: the Revenge, and John Barrowman's pussy eating dialogue fest Shark Attack 3: The Megaladon. But I think Sharknado ratchets up the idiocy level another notch, The Asylum taking a natural phenomenon that we've just seen in Oklahoma is quite deadly enough without throwing a load of Great Whites into the mix. And how do the sharks themselves survive being whipped around at 200mph in a fairly non watery environment? All that torn up wood and weatherboard must clog their gills.

Starring Tara Reid, whose career since American Pie seems to have been a mirror image of Alyson Hannigan's, it looks like the Asylum have come up with a (straight to) DVD cover before they came up with the actual film. But, it does make wonder what other weather - creature fusion movies could there be? "Pirana Hail"? "Jellyfog"? "Panthronimbulus"? "A Light Drizzle of Killer Ants"?

I like the idea of Jellyfog in particular; imagine the terror of feeling the deadly sting of a Queensland box jellyfish or irukanji down the back of your neck as you walk to work in an autumn fog.

If I could draw, I could come up with the one-sheet myself.

Doomsday

I bought Doomsday a while back, another "off to Cash Converters" £1.50 spent on a DVD, a DVD sold for god only knows what desperate purpose.

Profiting out of misery. That's what me and Cash Converters do.

Anyway, Doomsday is a film that crops us often enough on Sy Fy and I watch out of the corner of my eye, cut price Angelina Jolie  - but more attractive and less haggard - and former Lara Croft Rhona Mitra throwing some eye patched shapes while coping with Bob Hoskins using the same voice he did in thar Paul Hardcastle song that wasn't "19".

"Fink of the maaahney! Imagine what you caaan do wiv it!"

That one.

The film is from the same team that came up with the far superior Dog Soldiers and The Descent, and large chunks of the cast of those two films are lurking about here in minor to middling roles, leaving Mitra, Hoskins, Doctor Bashir from Deep Space 9, concrete voiced professional Scotsman David O'Hara and Malcolm "Mark of Quality Cinema" McDowell upfront. Sean Pertwee also gets to do his trademark dying before half time shtick.

The film is terrible. It is also brilliant. It is a blatant Mad Max rip off, not only of 2, but 3. The acting is bobbins, the script mainly terrible apart from some decent off beat humour and the plot largely an irrelavance compared to the odd, jarring but decently different jolt from chain saw custom buggy mayhem to Excalibur style sword maiming and a lengthy section that seems to exist only for Adrian Lester to show off his martial arts moves.

But to me, the whole sequence in the cannibal emo stadium makes the movie worthwhile; fantastically soundtracked by Adam and the Ants, Fine Young Cannibals (you'll never hear me say that again) and Siouxsie and the Banshees, a mohawked future death punk serves up crispy fried Pertwee to his minions while yelling great stuff about catching, cooking and eating his enemies. Fishnetted pole dancers strut and sway, and a busty lady in a bad tribal facial tattoo does some serious leering.

It ought to be worse than Tina Turner doing her "Welcome to Thunderdome" chain mail bra routine with Angry Anderson not singing the Scott and Charlene wedding song, but it isn't; the sequence works really well. Which makes me wonder, with the brains behind the movie that there were, the film isn't a whole lot better than it is.