02.28.10 NINE BADASS HYBRID MONSTERS THAT DESERVE THEIR OWN SYFY ORIGINAL MOVIE

Written by Matt Ufford

Depending on your interest in film, you might not have heard of Roger Corman. He’s going to get an honorary Oscar this year, largely because the tireless director/producer helped launch the careers of Hollywood luminaries like Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Robert De Niro, and Sylvester Stallone, among others.

More notably for our purposes, Corman is producing the Syfy original movies Dinoshark and the unrelated Sharktopus, neither of which should be confused with his 2004 work Dinocroc, or, for that matter, the other 400 films — mostly B-movies — Corman has made during his career. Clearly, this is a man who knows and understands the appeal of a hypothetical monster comprised of two or more badass animals.

But there are still so many possibilities that have yet to be made into low-budget Syfy original movies with terrible CGI animation! Why, I went through Corman’s IMDb page, and not one movie had the word “bear” in the title. HOW CAN YOU WORK IN THE MEDIUM OF BADASS HYBRID MONSTER MOVIES WITHOUT ANY BEAR-BASED MONSTERS?

So let’s correct that. Here are nine totally badass hybrid monsters that deserve to star in their own B-movies. Some are bear-related; some are not. Some of these you might have seen around the Internet before; others were pulled from the ether of my mind. And I’m not just being poetic when I say that; I huff a lot of ether.

1. BEARSHARKTOPUS!

Why is Roger Corman wasting his time with Sharktopus when he could be making BEARsharktopus? Sharktopus is always going to be plagued with the weakness of JAWS, in that the danger is limited to the water. But Bearsharktopus? THERE IS NO HIDING FROM BEARSHARKTOPUS.

2. GREAT WHITE ’69 MUSTANG!

Part great white shark, part 1969 Mustang Fastback, this is either the fastest car in the sea or the deadliest fish on the road. And look, it’s driven by Steve McQueen!

3. WOLFOENIX!

When I was a kid, I read a book called David and the Phoenix. It’s about a boy who befriends the phoenix before the mythical bird is reborn in its pyre. I still recall a scene where David and the phoenix get ice cream, and the phoenix talks about how much he likes strawberry ice cream as opposed to chocolate or vanilla.

Do you think Wolfoenix eats strawberry ice cream? HELL NO. Wolfoenix would eat David and crap him onto a waffle cone.

4. BEARODACTYL!

(original cartoon by the terrific Matthew Inman)

I used to think flying sharks were the scariest creatures in my imagination. And now I know why: because flying bears with reptilian wings are TOO TERRIFYING TO IMAGINE. Holy crap, how could you possibly stop bearodactyls? I think gorillas with Stinger missiles would be our best hope, but those apes can barely learn sign language. I’m not sure I’m ready to trust them with surface-to-air missiles.

5. CTHULHUNICORN!

H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu is widely respected by Internet denizens as the biggest, baddest, most terrifying monster ever created, but he has yet to really break into the mainstream consciousness. Why? I suspect it’s because he’s TOO scary, so I gave him some big blue eyes and a unicorn’s horn. Now he’s practically cuddly!

6. BEAROTAUR!

Oh, that is one medieval nightmare of a killing machine. Fast like a horse, powerful like a bear, armed with a morning star, and not even slightly relaxed by a stroll on the beach.

7. TRAMPIRE!

Everyone knows that Charlie Chaplin died decades ago… OR DID HE?!? Maybe he was bitten by the blood-sucking undead, and now he lives on in the perpetual darkness of Michael Mann movies, sneaking up on his victims while ominous piano music plays.

Hmmm… In retrospect, I should have gone with the slutty kind of “tramp” and not the silent film character.

8. PIGEONSHARK!

Pigeons are already crawling with disease and flying around our cities, unafraid of pedestrian traffic. What if they had a TASTE FOR FLESH?!?!? Sure, it might seem great when they start eating the old people and hobos who ordinarily feed pigeons, but what happens when the hobos and old people are all gone? Then they come for us! And if the pigeonsharks don’t get you, the typhoid and black plague they spread will!

9. CHIM-PAND-EAGLE!

I take back what I said about bearodactyls being unstoppable. This is the hero who could stop them.