Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Turn on the TV… Dinoshark

I may be completely wrong, but somehow I get the feeling that somewhere on a wall at SyFy Channel headquarters there is a special dartboard. On it are the names of large, predatory animals like "Shark," "Smilodon," "Giant Squid" and "Dinosaur," and when the company executives run out of ideas they resort to throwing darts to determine what sort of movie they are going to make next. If this is true then it would seem that the filmmakers have been changing things up by throwing two darts at the board and combining whatever creatures are hit. That is the only way I can explain the origin of the forthcoming SyFy films Sharktopus and Dinoshark.

So far Sharktopus has been getting the most buzz around the web (even if it has been done before), but since the film is just in the planning stages it will be a while before it will debut for fans of "so-bad-they're-almost-good" movies. Dinoshark will surface much sooner. It is set to air on March 13, but other than that details on the movie are slim. I have not seen a synopsis of a plot so far, but who really needs one? In an interview with the film's producer, Roger Corman, the veteran b-movie maker, said:

"Global warming causes the glaciers to break apart," Corman explains. "We start the picture with real beautiful shots of the glaciers falling into the ocean. The unborn egg of the Dinoshark that has been frozen for millions of years is released."

I can only imagine what comes next. Boats and people start going missing, our heroes suspect there's a Dinoshark on the loose, no one believes them, the body count continues to rise, etc. High art it's not, but if you love creature features (and I have to admit that I do) you might want to invite over some friends, pop some popcorn and make fun of the b-movie cheesiness that is Dinoshark.

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.