10 Syfy Original Horror Movies That Actually Aren't Awful

Syfy Air Date: October 9 2004

After a number of brutal attacks in the swamps of Louisiana leave the local cops mystified, medical examiner Sam Rivers and marine biologist Mary Callahan travel to the bayou to investigate.

After discovering the mangled body of a fisherman, the duo learn that a group of genetically engineered Chinese snakeheads are responsible for the mayhem and soon find themselves trapped inside a local’s houseboat besieged by the voracious predators.

Not many Syfy original movies can make this claim, but Frankenfish was actually based on a true story. Well, very loosely based on a true story, anyway. The idyllic town of Crofton made nation news in the United States back in 2002 when a Northern Snakehead fish was discovered in a local pond, having escaped from nearby Asian live food market. Six adult snakeheads and more than one thousand juvenile fish were found and destroyed when authorities flooded the pond with chemicals.

This was not the first film to take inspiration from these events, though it is definitely the most watchable. Director Mark Dippe (Spawn) happily embraces B-movie clichés and manages to elicit a surprising number of genuine scares from a premise far less spectacular than most of the movies that appear on the Syfy channel. Frankenfish is essentially Tremors on a houseboat, which is a lot more entertaining than it sounds.