When I was a kid one of my favorite ways to while away a Saturday was watching the “Creature Double Feature” on channel 56 out of Boston (Remember the good ol’ days of VHF and UHF?). Two monster movies aired back to back was visual candy to a kid, or at least to me. Syfy remembers things like that as well as monster movie double bills at the drive-in. It is in that spirit that they give us really fun, hokey and amusing Saturday night monster movies once a month. Roger Corman is arguably the king of American b-movies in general and hokey yet fun monster movies in particular. He’s been working with Syfy lately to bring back some of that Saturday monster movie fun with Dinoshark premiering on March 13th. Keeping things selachimorpha Corman is now producing Sharktopus for Syfy and the channel has just announced that Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Eric Roberts will star.
Already the talk of the Internet, Sharktopus is about a research scientist (Roberts) and his talented daughter who develop a secret military weapon – a hybrid shark/octopus that can be controlled by electrical implants. But when the controls break down, the monster goes on a killing rampage at the resort beaches of Mexico.
Eric Roberts received Golden Globe nominations for his starring roles in King of the Gypsies (1978) and Star 80 (1983). He was nominated for the 1985 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the escaped convict Buck in the film Runaway Train. In 1987, he won the Theatre World Award for his Broadway debut performance in Burn This. Roberts’s other starring roles included Raggedy Man, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Nobody’s Fool, Final Analysis and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. He appeared in The Dark Knight as Sal Maroni, a Gotham City Mafia boss who hires The Joker (Heath Ledger) to kill Batman (Christian Bale).
Roger Corman, who just received an Honorary 2010 Oscar, is the legendary director and producer of numerous low-budget cult classics, among them It Conquered the World, Teenage Doll, The Little Shop of Horrors, House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Premature Burial, The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death, The Wild Angels and The Trip.
Corman is also credited with opening the door to a number of young filmmakers including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme and Ron Howard.
Sharktopus is produced by Roger Corman and Julie Corman, and directed by Declan O’Brien (Wrong Turn 3, Cyclops, Monster Ark, Rock Monster).