Syfy looks to have a few decent things coming down the pike, too. I, for one, am excited to watch Joe Rogan question everything. Anyway, I was met this morning with an e-mail from the good Dr. Norris Camacho entitled "OK SHARKNADO" and, if I could have, I would have ripped into it like a kid into a giant birthday present. Sadly, I was looking at my phone so I just had to tap it. There is no satisfaction in tapping your screen. I was about to read a SHARKNADO post, for effs sake. Give me some kind of exploding sound effect when I open that e-mail! Camacho tackled the summation of the plot in such a manner, that we decided to turn it into the conversation found below. Now, please enjoy our thoughts on SHARKNADO:
THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS
Dr. Norris Camacho: Opening sequence: piratical sharkfin fishing off the coast of Mexico, Japanese businessman doesn't like the soup he samples. All downhill from there. Handsome Mexican ship capitan is killed soon after. BY A SHARK!
Thacktor: I loved this scene. I spent the entire time wondering how these two idiots were going to do something to create the Sharknado. I mean, they had a BOAT FULL OF SHARKS! Was this the concentration of sharks necessary to attract a water spout of teeth? Nevermind that the ocean is full of them, THEY WERE ALL ON A BOAT! Sadly, this was just fantastic filler.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Opening credits: Ian Ziering looks good for a dude who's 49. Is friends with a guy of indeterminate origin...either Australian or from Wisconsin with a gravelly drawl/speech impediment.
Thacktor: Whatever Ian Ziering is on is working and I want to take all of it. All. Of. It.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Then the dad from Home Alone is in a bar with a bikini model waitress who has some kind of shark bite scar on her leg and this is called FORESHADOWING. And there is a hurricane coming in from the west to hit LA, which is kind of impossible.
Thacktor: Oh man, I couldn't wait to hear what kind of dark backstory bikini model waitress had. You knew it'd make Batman look like he complains too much.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Beach gets dark, then one girl surfer gets brave. She meets Ian Ziering in the water. They race back to shore on waves that appear out of nowhere. Ziering sees first SHARK. Just a regular one in water.
Thacktor: And girl surfer has the gall to call him "grandpa." What a bitch. IZ doesn't look a day over 35. I think that's why he didn't say anything until...well I don't want to spoil it.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Tattooed lifeguard who looks like Vinny Jones sees nothing.
Girl surfer gets completely eaten before Ziering yells "shark! get off the beach! out of the water!"
Thacktor: He's too far away, though! There's no way anyone can hear him over the carefree LA beach scene.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Tattooed lifeguard watches another person get eaten in a fountain of blood. Bikini waitress with scar drops tray of drinks, screams, and runs away down flight of stairs where her breasts bounce suggestively.
Thacktor: Are they bouncing suggestively or are they bouncing demandingly? I say the latter because I literally couldn't look anywhere else in fear that they would get angry.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Meanwhile sharks attack guy on jetski instead of guy on inert surfboard. Guy on surfboard rescues him.
Thacktor: Yeah, that part really sets up what kind of man IZ really is. He's the kind of man that'll kick a shark's ass anytime, anywhere. He gives 0 fucks about a shark.
Dr. Norris Camacho: First guy with limb chomped off seen. Lifeguards ignore him to help possible Australian guy with all limbs.
Instantly, it's later. Everyone's drinking in the bar and reminiscing with the dad from "Home Alone."
Thacktor: "Hey, you guys remember that time with all the sharks?"
Dr. Norris Camacho: 90210 (Ziering) calls Tara Reid and they fight. She dismisses him because there's only like 2 feet of flood rain in her yard. She's not very smart. HINT: they are divorced and share custody of a daughter.
Thacktor: OK, Tara, first off THERE IS A HURRICANE COMING AT CALIFORNIA! Not only is this relatively impossible, but you have 2 feet of flooding in your yard with more rain coming. AND YOUR HOUSE IS ON A HILL! Ziering gotta be true to Ziering's heart, and Ziering's heart loves cold, stupid women who speak in monotone.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Fake Aussie Dude is snarky and tries to horn in on 90210's chick.
Thacktor: Fake Aussie Dude had a line for everything in this movie. He's constantly at the ready with snark, even in life and death situations. I like him!
Dr. Norris Camacho: 90210 suddenly decides to close the bar after a deadly shark attack and hours of serious flooding and an imminent hurricane. Seconds later, all the front windows are broken by a tsunami that carries a shark in with it. Stripper waitress stabs it with a pool cue. Everyone's still calm.
Thacktor: I'm gonna need a spinoff series starring stripper waitress.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Bar regulars grab guns. Dad from Home Alone grabs a barstool. Everyone else in California stampedes and a ferris wheel blows off its hinges and rolls while the drunk guy kills a shark with his barstool. WHO LOOKS DUMB NOW?
Fake Aussie puts a scuba tank in a shark's mouth and tells 90210 to shoot it. He does and it blows up. Never seen that before.
Thacktor: Did you notice that everything explodes in this movie? It's at this point that I wonder if 90210's character went to the great pyramid and pissed on a sarcophagus. He's taking the brunt of all that is shark for the entire movie. It's almost as if he's...cursed.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Somehow, ferris wheel is able to break through a six-story building as it rolls. Nice architecture work, LA.
Thacktor: Earthquake? No problem. Shaky carnival ride at 40 MPH? OH SHIT WE'RE GOING DOWN!
Dr. Norris Camacho: Stoic shot of 90210 and fake Aussie in which 90210 reveals LA was not meant for such a great deal of flooding. And he has a daughter. Stripper GF does not like this revelation, but wants to go with him to save her, of course.
Thacktor: She's really rolling with 90210's revelations well so far. "Wife?!?! NO WAY I CAN'T...well I guess that's cool. DAUGHTER?!?!?! YOU PROCREATED WITH YOUR SPOUSE...well, yeah. I can see that happening and I just want you to be happy. So long as you don't have a son stashed away somewh..."
Dr. Norris Camacho: Drunk Home Alone dad is passed out in car and says funny thing.
Thacktor: Something something attic with Fuller...burp...fart...KEVIN!
Dr. Norris Camacho: Driving scene with storms and floods and edgy music.
Thacktor: I really loved the driving scenes in this movie. Watching each actor pull and push on the steering wheel in a non-convincing manner should be a supercut on YouTube within the hour.
Dr. Norris Camacho: First sighting of sharks in streets. No one seems really surprised at this point. Then they lose sight of it in the brown muddy water and there is a commercial.
Thacktor: Mandatory Shark Week line in there, too. That's how Nova knows what's up, she's got a Discovery Channel degree in Marine Biology.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Suddenly they realize it's UNDER THE CAR. No shark has ever gotten under a vehicle. Drunk guy says to get to Beverly Hills because there are hills. Some awkward sexual harassment ensues.
Thacktor: Also, drunk guy LIVES in Beverly Hills. He just likes to slum it at 90210's bar. But 90210 IS THE BEVERLY HILLS ZIP CODE!
Dr. Norris Camacho: Then there are some insider LA traffic problem jokes, etc.
Thacktor: I hate the 405.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Then a seawall washes out 10 feet in front of them but they are not affected. There are sharks in the irrigation/drainage ditches swimming really fast and 90210 is gonna fix it.
Thacktor: "It's like Old Faithful" This gives us a sense of the timing of the waves. They go in intervals. "We're gonna need faith to get through that." No, never mind. The previous line was there to set up that horrible followup.
Dr. Norris Camacho: He urges all to get to higher ground. There is a lady with a dog in her car and she can't figure out how to open her car's back door. Eventually the barstool comes in handy and the dog is rescued heroically only to be eaten by sharks, along with drunk Home Alone Dad and some other guy.
Thacktor: The dog and the woman both made it out of there. Only Home Alone dad was consumed by sharks. I hear sharks have no time for people that leave their kids on multiple family trips.
Dr. Norris Camacho: The survivors get back in the car. 90210 is bereft, but being a surfer he knows how waves work and so he manages to drive through all the waves breaking through only certain sections of the seawall.
Thacktor: See, waves are predictable. If only people knew that like amateur surfer 90210 does.
Dr. Norris Camacho: They drive for a while and listen to the radio report sharks falling from the sky, but they're still calm. They pull up to Tara Reid's house to rescue her but she refuses help. Then a shark shoots up out of the sewer drain and the stripper waitress shoots it to prove that they're not lying about the danger.
Thacktor: That's a massive undersell, Doc. The waitress, Nova, reacts like a highly trained special ops soldier. This is a shark that shoots 20 feet in the air out of a manhole (giggle) and she nonchalantly racks her 12 gauge and blows it the damn hell away. That's when she issues my favorite line, "By the way, I'm not a stripper." YEAH!
Dr. Norris Camacho: 90210 bursts into the house to get his daughter and it turns out she's like the same age as his stripper/waitress girlfriend. The stepdad steps up hardcore and fronts 90210 and then gets immediately eaten by a shark that swims into his house.
Thacktor: And boy did they do this well. You had to hate the boyfriend. He calls Reid his "Girlfriend" and that's still 90210's house. That's the big thing, this guy is dating his recent ex, living in his house and telling him when to pay alimony - all the while telling 90210 what a deadbeat he is. This is the most satisfying shark meal of the entire movie. I wish they could have eaten him 20 more times. Oh wait, that's the amount of times I backed up the DVR to watch it again.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Tara Reid and the 25 year-old daughter scream hysterically. 90210 and the fake Aussie eventually drive it away with a big glass aquarium and stripper waitress kills it with a shotgun. So far she's the only one who is able to kill sharks, it seems.
Thacktor: She's the only one with a shotgun? I think that's why. Also, note the Aussie's line when they're wading in boyfriend stew, "It looks like that time of the month..." AUSSIE ZINGER, BRAH! HIGH FIVE FOR THE PERIOD JOKE!
Dr. Norris Camacho: They decide to go somewhere safe: the desert.
Thacktor: Hey, there's no water there. But I think all these rules are out when sharks are able to STAY ALIVE OUT OF THE WATER AFTER BEING FLUNG MILES OFFSHORE!
Dr. Norris Camacho: OK, so house flooded up to halfway up the stairs but driveway is fine.Water pressure bursts out first floor windows, but car escapes. Cool.
Thacktor: Also, their house is the only one that crumbles. The. Only. One.
Dr. Norris Camacho: People escape in car, listen to news. Sharks everywhere, torrential rain, etc.
Thacktor: DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER! MASS HYSTERIA!
Dr. Norris Camacho: Car stops. 90210 reaches dilemma: help kids in stranded school bus or help own kid? Tara Reid tells him to fuck those other kids, but he won't listen.
Thacktor: Reid hates 90210 because he's too selfless. Wow.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Bus is floating in canal, kids are scared as shit, driver looks like Ben Franklin. Staccato music, then 90210 rappels off side of bridge to floating schoolbus. Kids cheer. He asks for rope. Rescues kids. BADASS.
Thacktor: He tells the kids to "just keep looking up." Good luck with that. This rescue had to have taken 5 hours with the poor man's Phillip Seymour Hoffman being last.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Shot of sharks swarming. Time lapse. Suddenly there are about 50 sharks around the bus. The driver is from a landlocked state and so it's ironic. 90210 grabs the last string up and is almost eaten! Can't believe they almost let that happen. 90210 gets up safe and stripper waitress hugs him emotionally while dumb ex-wife Tara Reid looks on confusedly.
Thacktor: She's weighing her options, I think. Her boyfriend's dead and now some 10 is throwing game at her ex. Tara's having a bad day. Meanwhile, fake PSH dodges the bullet-time Hollywood sign being thrown at him. How in the hell did that survive a hurricane for as long as it did? "My mom always told me Hollywood would kill me." THEN IT LITERALLY DOES WHEN HE IS GROUND INTO THE PAVEMENT FOR AN EXCRUCIATINGLY LONG TIME BY THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN! THIS MOVIE DELIVERS ALL OF THE GOODS!
Dr. Norris Camacho: Ian Ziering is wearing gloves for some reason. More rain in downtown LA. There are now sharks everywhere, including the freeways that aren't in water. They all run out of the car and it blows up but the city of LA skyline is still there so who knows what happened.
Thacktor: The number one rule of a b-movie: if you smell gas, shit is about to explode.
Dr. Norris Camacho: 90210's GF and daughter make a tough friendship in the bait shop while Tara Reid looks for drugs. She gets some kind of box of tea instead that turns out to be band-aids.
Thacktor: You make it sound like Reid was trying to score meth. Maybe she was, who am I to judge?
Dr. Norris Camacho: Fake Aussie decides they can just steal a military-grade Hum-Vee after they buy bread and bananas. Tara Reid puts a bandage on 90210's wounded hand. They speed through a police checkpoint. "Police are chasing us!" says Tara Reid. They use the garishly cartoonish NITROUS BUTTON to outrun the cops. Guitars wail.
Thacktor: To me, that's the most far-fetched part of the film. Shark apocalypse? Yeah, that's happening and the police care that you ran a traffic stop? So much that they take resources away from the rescue effort to chase you down? I also like how the nitrous let them escape the cop on a straightaway. I mean, he's still back there within site but he just gives up. "These dickheads have nitrous? Fuck it, I'm done." Commit to the chase or don't, man!
Dr. Norris Camacho: They stop at Van Nuys Airport as water spout containing sharks approaches and Fake Aussie says "it's time to leave Kansas, mate." He shuts the hangar door, but doesn't lock it.
Thacktor: It's ok to call it a Sharknado, Doc. Also, 90210's son is in the airport because he's at "flight school." He's not in the service, he's just going to "flight school."
Dr. Norris Camacho: Stripper is rummaging for supplies and hears noise. It turns out to be humans, not sharks. A person who doubted their predicament gets sucked up through a skylight while the rest of them hide in a closet. The sun comes out and all the planes are miraculously unscathed. "What's the fastest way to get out of here?" asks Tara Reid as they stare at a helicopter.
Thacktor: I, for one, am not getting in the helicopter.
Dr. Norris Camacho: 90210 is tired of running and decides to make a stand so they go to a hardware store to get weapons. Fake Aussie gives meteorology lesson on why bombs made from compressed air tanks, road flares, and smoke detectors can stop a tornado. "No, it's too dangerous" says Tara Reid. Meanwhile 90210 has awkward moment with daughter at the most inopportune time as she plays her Game Boy.
Thacktor: See, Doc, these "tornados" are made when cool and hot air do stuff to make swirly death. If we can blow it up with a tiny bomb, though...
Dr. Norris Camacho: 90210's son is turned on by the stripper's shark bite scar and tries to make a move on her. She gives a chilling Sam Quint speech about how she got the scar.
Thacktor: SEE I TOLD YOU HER BACKSTORY WAS DARK! She was the only survivor of a massive shark attack that TOOK HER GRANDFATHER AND 4 OTHER MEN OVER THE COURSE OF 12 HOURS! She's got issues. Sexy, sexy issues.
Dr. Norris Camacho: They make two wheelbarrows full of bombs in about five minutes and head to the chopper. The stripper is somehow chosen to be the copilot, and the fake Aussie takes a couple of bombs away in the Hum-Vee for plan B. 90210's shotgun jams so he starts shooting the sharks that swarm around the chopper with his pistol from several hundred yards below. "We're gonna need a bigger chopper" says the stripper. They fly straight into the twister and drop a bomb that destroys the tornado.
Thacktor: Nova wasn't chosen, she volunteered. Remember, she hates sharks. The entire species. She's out to avenge her grandfather and perfect legs. Also, she likes 90210 v 2.0.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Back at the airport, a shark flies in and bites the Aussie's foot. "The tornado's coming this way" warns Tara Reid.
Thacktor: She's observant.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Nova destroys another tornado, but not the right one. a news reporter gets hit by a shark on TV and scares some people. 90210 has somehow fixed his shotgun. A kid with them gets eaten by sharks. They run to a retirement home where old people have been nonchalantly swimming as sharks drop into the pool. 90210 pours gas into the pool and sets it on fire and the flammable water explodes.
Thacktor: The pool was just waiting to explode. It's a total fire hazard.
Dr. Norris Camacho: His son and stripper girlfriend eventually find the large tornado that is killing everyone. She bombs it but the explosion is ineffective.
Thacktor: This is the most realistic part of the film with the exception of the fact that they are FLYING A HELICOPTER 10 FEET FROM WHAT WE ARE TOLD IS AN F4 TORNADO! No. You don't do that.
Dr. Norris Camacho: They are somehow out of bombs despite only using three of the hundred or so that were in the wheelbarrows. A shark bites the skids of the chopper. She stabs it but falls off and into the mouth of another shark.
Thacktor: I honestly thought they had killed her off here and was really impressed with the boldness of that scriptwriting move. Then this next thing happens.
Dr. Norris Camacho: The chopper goes down but the son is okay. 90210 decides to FINISH THIS and gets into the Hum-Vee full of bombs and drives towards the tornado.
Thacktor: I wanted 90210 to go full-blown Hummer Kamikaze on the Sharknado but...
Dr. Norris Camacho: He lights a bomb, puts it on the stack of other bombs, hits the NITROUS button, makes a "hang ten" hand motion and jumps out of the vehicle.
Thacktor: How else would you drive a Hummer into a SHARKNADO? They did miss the perfect opportunity for a CSI Miami one-liner here. "Hey Sharks, here's the most explosive Hummer you'll ever get." YEAAAHHOOOOWWWWWW!
Dr. Norris Camacho: It's sucked up into the tornado and explodes, destroying it. Sharks rain down. He pushes his daughter to safety as a shark flies at her, fires up his chainsaw, and jumps into its open mouth.
Thacktor: And then we get the homage to Ace Ventura 2.
Dr. Norris Camacho: Seconds later we hear the chainsaw and see him cutting his way out of the shark's belly. And guess what? NOVA WAS INSIDE THE SAME SHARK.
Thacktor: And she's somehow unharmed by her chainsaw wielding companion. She is, however, just unconscious and neither dead nor dismembered despite being taken out by TWO sharks in midair.
Dr. Norris Camacho: The son gives her CPR and she's fine too. "I really hate sharks," she says. They fall in love since 90210 and Tara Reid seem like they're back together.
Thacktor: It's a solid match. The sequel will be called "Must Hate Sharks" and be about their blossoming romance/quest to cleanse the planet of all aquatic carnivores.
Dr. Norris Camacho: The sky clears and they actually have the audacity to put "fin" on the screen. Epic.
Thacktor: Fin. And it turned red. Did we miss anything? Put it in the comments.