For all the excitement networks tried to whip up for its new shows, the highlight of the TV Critics Association summer press tour was a poolside premiere of “Sharknado 2: The Second One” (Syfy, 9 p.m.) — an epic of pure cheese, a bad movie delight and something that its network now knows is a surefire hit.
Thus the premiere was full of floating shark balloons, shark pillows on couches, ominous paintings of sharks on the pool bottom, lots of nifty couches fashioned after 50s’ car fins and the requisite drinks, burgers, popcorn and candy.
“What did you do for the first ‘Sharknado’ premiere?'” I asked the movie’s star Ian Zierling as we moved along the hotdog line.
“Hid our heads under a rock,” he replied.
Indeed, there was nothing to be proud about being in one of the long line of Syfy B-movie horror films. If you were a star it meant a certain kind of dead end for a career. The network had featured all kind of monster movie mash-ups involving menaces like the Sharktopus, Crocosaurus, Dinocroc and Frankenfish.
What made last year’s “Sharknado” (Syfy, 7 p.m.) such a sensation? My own theory is that it was shown on a Thursday night instead of the usual Saturday night, where most movies go do die of neglect. More people watch TV on Thursdays, and flipping through the dial on a typical summer night otherwise filled with reruns or bad filler, this stood out and people tweeted about it.
It was the tweets that got people’s attention – it didn’t win a big rating necessarily, though certainly bigger than usual. But to networks, tweets are somehow as important as ratings, so they were very excited and branded it a sensation.
Of course, everyone at TCA loved “Sharknado” because, we were surprised to find, its director was a guy we recognized as being a fellow TCA member! Yeah, Anthony C. Ferrante attended the semi-annual conferences as a scribe for a horror website. And yet, last January, he was being interviewed by members in adjoining chairs about his success as big time cable director.
And that was just a month before he embarked on the (slightly) bigger budget sequel, set this time in New York and featuring some of the same cast — Ziering with an even bigger chainsaw stunt, Tara Reid single-handedly fighting off a shark, as well as Vivica A. Fox, Kari Wuhrer, mark McGrath, Judd Hirsch as well as Robert Klein as the mayor.
Ferrante’s theory on “Sharknado”s success is that it didn’t include scientists or army personnel trying to explain the phenomenon. What were sharks doing in a tornado anyway? With the action level high on a movie so silly, there was no time or reason to try to justify it.
What’s clear is that it was a lot of fun, knew it was dwelling in the bad movie realm and reveling in it. That’s necessarily amped up in the sequel with a crazy plane sequence to begin the action and scenes like the Statue of Liberty’s head rolling down the street threatening people.
Because Syfy is owned by Universal/NBC, there is probably too much network synergy going on. Al Roker and Matt Lauer seriously threaten losing any credibility every time they get on the screen for sharknado updates, which is a lot. There are also plenty of updates from the NBC owned Weather Channel.
But there’s a relentless low budget sense of fun in the tradition of Roger Corman (whose modern day entry in the field comes late with this Saturday’s “Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda” on Syfy).
Ferrante and his team know what they’re doing is a goof, and yet they have enough respect for B-movie traditions to respect its expectations. When there’s an untimely snowstorm while shooting at CitiField, they simply write it into the plot (extreme weather!). And special effects have apparently advanced to such a degree it’s within reach of B-movie makers who, with their imagination, create spectacular deaths as the big budgets.
Nobody expects a forever franchise out of this thing. We needn’t be overwhelmed by “Transformer” styled endless sequels. But for now, “Sharknado” fills the surprise summertime cable movie bill in a way “High School Musical” once did. And whether or not it’s a sensation, the tweets will tell.