Welcome to Syfy Schlock!, a recurring column devoted to those infamous movies hailing from “The Most Dangerous Night on Television”. Indeed, I’m reliving Syfy née the Sci Fi Channel’s bygone weekend programming, which included some of the most dubiously made creature-features, supernatural slashers, and disaster movies to ever grace the small screen. And if you have even an iota of nostalgia for that now-obsolete age of reckless, low-tier entertainment as I do, then you’ve come to the right place.
While I regret to say I have no theme this month, I am at least pairing a “new to me” movie with a rewatch. And Rock Monster (2008), despite its vague familiarity, is a first-time viewing. The dreadful visual effects I witnessed via commercial back then still haunt me to this day, but as the years have gone by, I believe I’ve softened a bit as a critic. I do try my hardest to find the good in every movie. Even one as generally unremarkable as this.
The late director Declan O’Brien was no stranger to Syfy, although I reckon horror fans would better known him for his Wrong Turn sequels. His Sharktopus movie also has some name recognition out in the real world. Back to Rock Monster: This came out the same year as Cyclops, and both of these O’Brien flicks have hulking giants as the antagonist. However, unlike the Ancient Rome setting of Cyclops, Rock Monster takes place in modern times. A fictionalized version of Ivanovo, to be more specific. For those who don’t know their geography, that’s a little city in Russia.
You might expect Rock Monster to be shot in Canada, like so many other Syfy Originals, but it was actually filmed in Bulgaria. That’s not remotely Russia, but if you’re like me, you wouldn’t know the difference. Or care, really. In this simulation of Ivanovo, though, the residents are just one sword-pull away from facing certain doom. One of four American visitors, Jason (Chad Michael Collins), manages to remove an ominous sword from a stone. His King Arthurian feat, of course, then comes with dire consequences.
From there Rock Monster shifts into a frivolous but sometimes gruesome adventure story, one where the foolish travelers have no choice but to fix their cultural mishap. Jason, an ancestor of the sword’s original wielder, helps lead this subsequent charge against the movie’s namesake. Which, by the way, looks about as crummy as it did seventeen years ago. No worse, no better. Keep in mind, the Rock Monster’s design isn’t objectively bad; the VFX used here are simply godawful. One scene, where the creature grabs someone from behind and continues to munch on their head, made me guffaw. It’s that terrible.
The predictable story and horrid CGI are hard to overlook, but Rock Monster skirts by as low fantasy made on a low budget. It’s strictly for the most tolerant and tasteless folks, such as myself, and anyone would be right to call me “mad” for taking any pleasure in this mess.
Phantom Racer (2009) can only be viewed as an upgrade after Rock Monster. I indeed saw this movie at some point in my adult life, and I remembered it being decent enough. Weirdly, though, there’s nothing I can recall from the Syfy Originals collection that would pair well with it. At least nothing about vengeful ghosts with a driver’s license to kill.
Funny thing: What brought Phantom Racer to mind recently was my discovery about the ’80s/’90s sitcom My Two Dads. I, a self-confessed couch potato from birth, somehow never saw this show growing up, but all along I thought the titular papas were a gay couple. To my shock, though, Greg Evigan and Paul Reiser’s characters were, apparently, two heterosexual men co-parenting a child. That surprise led to my rediscovery of Phantom Racer, a movie in which Evigan plays a Billy Ray Cyrus lookalike and the namesake’s main adversary.
As I’ve mentioned before, Syfy didn’t always produce a lot of ghost stories; their target was often, but not always, tales of science fiction. And I imagine monsters, even the fantastical ones, are probably viewed as more plausible than a rancorous wraith with a score to settle. I can only speak for myself when I say, I do not approach these movies looking for realism. And frankly, I respect Phantom Racer more for not bothering to explain its baddie’s origins with plot-padding, technical babble.
Phantom Racer follows the haunted past of Evigan’s character, a former racecar driver and the object of resentment for one majorly vexed spirit. The same ghost, by the way, was the hero’s rival in life some years ago, and like a lot of people, he can’t let things go. Fast-forward to the present-day, and a bearded, older Evigan and Nicole Eggert’s character, a secret, former flame, fend off this road-raging racer from hell. To raise the stakes—and spoiler alert—the leads are protecting their daughter, one Evigan’s guy had no idea he fathered.
What stuck out about Terry Ingram’s Phantom Racer wasn’t so much its story, which is spirit-channeling The Wraith (1986) like whoa, but really the amount of tangible action and effects put on display. A motorized threat, one in the vein of conceptually related movies The Car (1977) and Wheels of Terror (1990), allows for non-CGI-littered sequences. The stunts here aren’t broaching Fast & Furious levels of absurdity and technique, but seeing an actual car plow into landmarks and run characters off the road is more appreciated than watching another digitally-rendered beastie. The gore-work here is another highlight; seeing Brett Dier’s fodder role receive a grisly waist-chop from the phantasmal car’s trunk was as unexpected as it was delightful.
I’m grateful neither half of this double-feature was especially painful to watch. It’s true that Phantom Racer saved the whole deal, but believe me—and send me some sympathy—when I say I’ve seen worse than Rock Monster.
Stay tuned for more Syfy.
Tales from the Paulside 
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