Two Good Movies in a row on Sci Fi

An interesting thing happened last night. (Saturday June 8 2008). Something very rare—unique, in fact. I was watching the Sci Fi channel, as I try to do every Saturday night, because that’s when they show their new “Premier” Sci Fi movie of the week. One has to be a special kind of person to put up with that kind of abuse week after week. I can’t imagine their viewer numbers are very high—less than a thousand I would guess. And that’s because the movies, each made by and/or for the Sci Fi Channel, are the worst movies in the history of television. Every time I think they have reached a new low, they surprise and impress me with something so derivative, so poorly written, acted and directed, and with special effects that are nothing short of an embarrassment in this day and age, that I am forced to reevaluate my definition of crap. (Re: Sturgeon’s Law—“Ninety percent of everything is crap”). There have been a few exceptions, which have risen to barely tolerable, and even one that I quite liked, called, unfortunately, Sasquatch Mountain. It starred Rance Howard, Ron Howard's dad, Lance Henriksen (from one of the Alien movies along with Alien Vs Predator, and who starred in a pretty good TV series the name of which escapes me right now) Michael Worth (who also wrote the screen play) and Craig Wasson the guy who gets framed in Body Double, along with Cerina Vincent, whom I’ve never heard of but is hot and can actually act a little.
But last night, I saw TWO (2) good movies in a row on the Sci Fi Channel. The first was RISE: Blood Hunter (I know, who comes up with these titles? And even more worrisome, to whom are they directed?) It starred Lucy Liu, which seemed to be a major dip in her career, but at least she can act and is cute and stuff. It also had that bald guy who starred in The Shield, a cable cop series that I never watched but which garnered some acclaim. The reason this one was good is because it was coherent. Now, when one watches the Sci Fi channel, one has to redefine the term “good” to fit the source. In this case good is a sliding scale which tops out somewhere around “barely acceptable” by any rational standard. I won’t go into the plot. Suffice it to say it was a vampire movie with what some deluded soul imagined was a twist.
The other movie I had seen before, and liked well enough to sit through again. It was a British feature called Dog Soldiers, (not to be confused with the movie Last of the Dogmen which was a good movie and starred Tom Berenger). Dog Soldiers concerns a squad of Brit soldiers on a training mission to the Highlands of Scotland, which almost instantly goes bad. They run across another group (at least what remains of the camp) with one survivor, a Special Ops, hard-nosed Captain who is badly wounded and terrified. They are being hunted by something and lose two men before they eventually make it to a cottage in the middle of a remote forest, where they meet a young woman who knows a little about what’s going on, and where they become besieged by werewolves. And blah,blah,blah. Pretty well written, acted and directed. A genre-centric story to be sure, but believable, given the premise.
Two in one night. Unbelievable. Actually, I’m watching the Sci Fi Channel right now (my wife’s out of town) and I don’t even know what the movie is. Most Sci Fi movies use the same locations, actors, writers and sets. Both of these good ones did not. Hm-m-m-m-m.