Saturday night's all right for frightening on Syfy

The networks can't get anybody to watch on Saturday night anymore. They've abandoned it to reruns.

So be grateful one courageous cable channel dares to debut original movies! Shot in global locales! Starring names you know and love! With action to keep you on the edge of your seat!

Because, really, how can you turn away from a giant dinosaur shark leaping from the water to chomp a flying helicopter?

"Dinoshark" is just one of the two dozen exclamation-point flicks premiering yearly in Syfy's Saturday Original Movies franchise. If you missed its March 13 debut (encore Saturday at 3 p.m.), maybe you caught one of Syfy's previous 175 titles like "Frankenfish" or "Mansquito."

Or maybe you didn't. Maybe you wouldn't.

But why be snobby? If some call it schlock, "we like to call it escapist entertainment," says Thomas Vitale, Syfy's executive vice president for programming and original movies.

There's certainly no profound realism in the Syfy premiere, "Mega Piranha" (Saturday at 9 p.m.), which - do you really need a plot synopsis? - stars "Brady Bunch" eldest Barry Williams and '80s pop tart Tiffany.

"Saturday night is a night when you want to order a pizza, pop open a beverage, and sit back and have some fun with the movies," says Vitale, who loves this stuff. "Look at what broadcast programming used to be on Saturday nights - sitcoms and fluffy escapist shows like 'Fantasy Island.' "

Indeed, a Syfy Original Movie might well be a "rather delightful little sci-fi squib," as 2004's "Dragon Storm" was described by star John Rhys-Davies (in an IGN.com interview). A veteran of blockbusters like "The Lord of the Rings," Rhys-Davies takes these low-budget, high-concept quickies for what they are. Apparently, so do lots of us. "Dinoshark" drew more than 2 million viewers, a number that would make The CW, for example, very happy. (It beats "Gossip Girl" and "90210.")

That viewership matches the per-film budget of around $2 million, less than a typical hourlong network episode. "But they're all shot on 35 mm film," Vitale stresses, "and mastered in HD, and we use CGI, and they're shot all over the world." That doesn't mean Paris. It means Mexico or Bulgaria.

Syfy's Original Movie formula goes something like this.

1. START WITH A HIGH CONCEPT

Stories you can grasp in a sentence or even just the title. "Ice Spiders" = giant arachnids attack ski resort. "Bloodsuckers" = vampires in space. "Dinoshark" and "Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York" = self-explanatory.

2. HIRE FAMILIAR ACTORS - BUT NOT EXPENSIVE ONES

That means bygone tube stars (Williams, John Schneider), genre faves (Michael Ironside, Yancy Butler), elevated supporting players (Jeremy London of "7th Heaven") and slumming movie names (Eric Roberts in "Yeti").

3. MAINTAIN INTERNAL PLOT LOGIC

OK, this may not be obvious when a prehistoric shark eats modern-day tourists on Puerto Vallarta beaches. (And boats. And helicopters.) But "we are very concerned about making sure the plots don't have loopholes and the story makes sense," Vitale says. "Once you accept the outlandishness of the initial premise" - you knew there was a catch - "everything must flow from there."

Roger Corman's new shop of horrors

While Syfy's monsters, disasters and demons fill Saturday's TV void, they also fill a movie void. Remember gathering round the VCR to mock cheesy direct-to-video flicks? Before that, teens frequented now defunct drive-in theaters like the Westbury and the Sunrise talking back to "The Wasp Woman" and "Death Race 2000."

Those titles came from Roger Corman, the legendary exploitation movie mogul, who was just awarded an honorary Oscar for his 50 years of flicks at budget studios like New World and American International Pictures. Now running New Horizons, he's making Syfy films like "Dinoshark" and "Sharktopus."

"I made a movie a few years ago called 'Dinocroc,' " Corman says by phone from the L.A. office he shares with his wife and longtime producing partner, Julie. "Syfy bought it, and it got one of their highest ratings of the year. Then I did a picture called 'Supergator.' On the basis of those two, they called and said they had the title 'Dinoshark,' and would we make it? Well. We know how to make it."

Hollywood history suggests there's something to be said for penny-pinching budgets and breakneck shooting schedules. Corman's earlier titles include dozens of cult classics, including "A Bucket of Blood," "The Little Shop of Horrors" and "The Wild Angels." His thrifty cinema shop trained young (i.e., cheap) directors like James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard, plus actors like Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro.

Corman paired rising talent with veteran names like Vincent Price and Boris Karloff. For "Sharktopus," he has onetime Oscar nominee Eric Roberts (1985's "Runaway Train"). Though he may have had misgivings about the title, Corman admits, "the script is actually good. It's not comedy. It's not camp. It's action science-fiction horror with a little bit of humor. Good actors like Eric will come back" - he did Corman's 2008 "Cyclops" - "because they know we're not taking a far-out subject and treating it seriously."

SYFY'S MOST-WATCHED SATURDAY ORIGINAL MOVIES

1. "Lake Placid 2" (April 2007, 3.12 million viewers) - John Schneider, Cloris Leachman; 40-foot crocodiles run amok.

2. "Pterodactyl" (August 2005, 3.10 million) - Coolio, Cameron Daddo; flying reptiles attack soldiers hunting terrorists.

3. "Dragon Storm" (January 2004, 3.03 million) - John Rhys-Davies, Maxwell Caulfield; medieval meteor shower unleashes dragons.

SYFY'S FAVORITE MOVIE THINGS

Giant creatures - "Mega Piranha" (premieres Saturday), "Mongolian Death Worm" (May 8), "Frankenfish"

Monster hybrids - "Dinoshark" (encores Saturday), "Mothman" (April 24), "Sharktopus" (this fall), "Mansquito"

Disasters - "NYC: Tornado Terror," "Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York"

Apocalypse - "Alien Apocalypse," "Android Apocalypse," "Stonehenge Apocalypse" (later this year)

Fantasy/demons - "Witchville" (May 22), "Rise of the Gargoyles," "Wraiths of Roanoke"

Remakes/sequels - "Children of the Corn," "Highlander: The Source," "House of the Dead 2"

When all else fails: sharks - "Sharks in Venice," "Malibu Shark Attack"