10 Syfy Original Horror Movies That Actually Aren't Awful

Syfy Air Date: November 16, 2002.

When a team of scientists use the fossilized DNA of a sabretooth cat to bring the species back from extinction at the behest of an eccentric billionaire, they failed to put together a plan for containment should the animal escape. When the inevitable happens and their sabretooth clone breaks free of its cage, they are forced to bring in expert big game hunter Thatcher (David Keith) to track the missing cat down.

As the beast wreaks havoc on campers and leaves entrails all over a family’s mountain vacation home, Thatcher and head scientist Catherine battle over whether the cat needs to be captured or killed, though the latter’s insistence on keeping her creation alive comes back to bite her in the face.

The reason sabretooth succeeds where so many other Syfy movies fail is that it recognizes that less is sometimes more when budget restraints are in place. The cat itself is a mix of puppetry and computer generated imagery, though the CGI is smartly kept to a minimum and never relied on for snippets longer than a few seconds, not giving you the chance to register how poor the digital effects are.

Director James D. R. Hickox’s was praised for establishing a lot of characters as potential victims and bring creative with their innevitable deaths, and David Keith was also in line for a pat on the back, bringing a respectability to proceedings with his performance as the battle-hardened huntsman