Editorials > Today's Filmwad Rant: Confessions of a SciFi Saturday Junkie

 It's hard to admit, but they say it helps the healing process. I'm an addict, a fiend, a good-for-nothing pseudo-critic that needs a weekly fix.

 I'm a SciFi Channel Saturday Movie junkie.

 I started when I was young. It was a simpler time, back when movies came in black boxes and the only choice for fun at home was making it a Blockbuster night or flipping through the channels. It was a sort-of godsend when the SciFi Channel debuted in 1992. Sure, there wasn't anything good on, but c'mon…Manimal! And Automan? Remember Automan? 

 But the real meat of the SciFi Channel that would keep me hooked for years to come: the awful, shlocky straight-to-VHS films that no one would ever watch–unless you were a kid at home, bored from too many hours of Nintendo or running around outside. You had classics like Soultaker that would be just idiotic in its execution; Xtro 2: Watch The Skies with Jan Michael Vincent and the granddaddy of them all: MurderCycle.

 It wasn't as nearly as poor or incredible as cable access shows, but SciFi Saturdays were made to look like they were presentable films. As if the Channel got lucky just by acquiring the rights to this "SciFi Channel Original Movie."  

 And how can you not enjoy the mindless fun that is naming the actors who make their living off this trash, like Casper Van Dien, Judd Nelson and the essential B-Movie actor, Bruce Campbell.

 It was weird when Grindhouse came out and everyone started to tow the line of "it's so cheesy, this is a great film" when in fact it was the worst inside joke between two hack directors since George Lucas made Episodes 1 through 3 and Steven Spielberg had to pay him a dollar, since he never thought his good friend George would intentionally crap on his life's dream. 

 But conspiracy theories aside, these films are the closet things we have to grindhouse. Boa vs. Python is going to be awful, you know that. But it'll have insane character clichés and who puts a prison in the Artic Circle?

   SciFi Channel does. It takes the haphazard and insane storytelling that gets butchered and re shot "as a joke" by  hack directors who make a living off rehashing old films just like this.

 But then again, that's a rant for another time.