Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Shark Horror Films

 

 

Poster art – Shark Bait (2022)

 

For instant horror, just add sharks!

Also just add sharks for an instant Top 10 Shark Horror Films!

Although to be honest, once you get past my top shark horror film, shark horror tends to be well, schlock.

 

1 – Jaws (the original and still the best shark horror film, although even the Jaws franchise couldn’t escape shark schlock in the sequels)

After Jaws in the top spot, I rank them alphabetically because there’s not much difference between them.

2 – 47 Meters Down (with at least one sequel – with those mutated cave sharks)

3 – Bait (the one with the tsunami sharks – in Australia!)

4 – Deep Blue Sea (genetically engineered brainy sharks – with a sequel!)

5 – Great White (res ipsa loquitur)

6 – The Meg (megalodon shark horror)

7 – Open Water (based on a true story from Australia – with at least two sequels)

8 – The Reef (another film set in Australia)

9 – The Shallows (a great white so filled with rage against humans that it doesn’t even care about a juicy whale carcass)

10 – Shark Night (where humans are the real villain, wanting to feed other humans to sharks – same shtick as Dangerous Animals in 2025)

 

SPECIAL MENTION: ALLIGATOR & CROCODILE HORROR – CRAWL & ROGUE

 

While nowhere near as prolific as shark horror films – which always seem to have a few films breach each year – I have almost as much as soft spot for alligator and crocodile horror films. I’d nominate Crawl as my favorite for the former and Rogue as my favorite for the latter.

 

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 Fantasy Books (Special Mention: Cult & Pulp) (9) Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim

Cover art from Killing Pretty, seventh book in the series

 

 

 

(9) RICHARD KADREY –

SANDMAN SLIM (2009 – 2021)

 

How could I resist a hero – or anti-hero – named Stark? No simple revenant clawing his way out of the grave – James Stark or the titular Sandman Slim is a revenant who claws his way like a badass out of hell. Literally. The first book (and series) had me at hell – I have a soft spot for heroes back from the dead, or even better, gone to hell and back. Stark is a naturally talented magician (not wizard, because wizarding is for wimps like Harry Potter) in the secret magical underworld of Los Angeles and falls afoul of one of his colleagues, who sends him straight to hell, before stealing the keys to the universe to return to our world for revenge on those who dealt out his damnation. And that’s just where the first book starts!

The other books in the series up the ante even more – from hell coming to Los Angeles and Los Angeles going to hell…

The series might well be described as dark fantasy noir or occult detective fiction, sharply written with an engaging cast of characters, not least Sandman Slim himself (whom I can’t help but picture as author Richard Kadrey). If you read contemporary fantasy, you must read Sandman Slim. Where the hell is the screen adaptation?

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Heart of Starkness – Eightfold Path 7: I believe in the god of doubt (zen catholicism)

OldWorldGods – divine gallery free art sample

 

 

I believe in the god of doubt –

the sound of one hand clapping,

a tree falling in a forest,

a finger pointing at the moon,

your face before you were born,

the goose in a bottle,

and three pounds of flax

(zen catholicism)

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my horns won’t fit through the door!