If you're anything like me (lord held you), then you just can't resist a movie in which an inordinately large and aggravated animal decides to chew on a bunch of random stupid people. Doesn't matter how many "OMG it's hilarious!" comments I may see on the IMDb boards, nor does it deter me if every genre-friendly film critic stands up and screams "Dude, it's crap!"

If it's a movie about pissed-off animals eating dumb people, I've got 87 minutes to spare.

So a few months back I noticed a strange little label on a few of the more recent "nature sprinting amok" flicks: It was a little black and red skull logo with the phrase "Maneater Series" stuck on there. Oooh, a mystery! What's this "maneater series" of which this DVD case speaks? Where do they come from? Are there other films in the series? Does anyone besides me actually care?

OK, so as far as a very small amount of IMDb / Google research indicates, it looks like there are to be six Maneater Series titles in total. (Or maybe seven.) The suspects? Production company RHI Entertainment, cable network The Sci-Fi Channel, and DVD distributor Genius Products. Let's examine the flicks...

Every single time I see the ads for a new Sci-Fi Channel World Premiere Movie, I'm compelled to chuckle. Not because I dislike the network (quite the opposite, actually) but because in an effort to fill their prime-time weekend airwaves with SOMETHING that's not a rerun, the network often bankrolls / broadcasts a horror movie so silly, so stupid, so amazingly retarded that it simply demands some attention. To illustrate my point, here is a list of "Sci-Fi Originals" from the past several years. (Cinematical.com is not responsible for nasal milk-spewage should you choose to drink milk while reading the following list.) Ready?

Alien Apocalypse, Alien Blood, Alien Express, Alien Hunter, Alien Lockdown, Android Apocalypse, Anonymous Rex, Attack of the Sabretooth, Basilisk: The Serpent King, Boa vs. Python, Cerberus, Chupacabra Terror, Crocodile, Crocodile 2: Death Swamp, Dragon Dynasty, Dragon Fighter, Dragon Storm, Dungeons & Dragons 2, Fire Serpent, Frankenfish, Gargoyles: Wings of Darkness, Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy, House of the Dead 2, Kaw, Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep, Lake Placid 2, Larva, Locusts: The 8th Plague, Mammoth, Man with the Screaming Brain, Man-Thing, Mansquito, Manticore, Minotaur, Octopus, Octopus 2: River of Fear, Pterodactyl, Pumpkinhead 3: Ashes to Ashes, Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, Python, Python 2, Raging Sharks, Raptor Island, Raptor Island 2: Raptor Planet, Reign of the Gargoyles, Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave, S.S. Doomtrooper, Sabretooth, Sasquatch, Sasquatch Hunters, Sasquatch Mountain, Savage Planet, Shapeshifter, Shark Attack, Shark Attack 2, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Shark Zone, Skeleton Man, Snakehead Terror, Snakeman, Species 3, Spiders, Spider 2: Breeding Ground, Voodoo Moon, and of course the classic Webs. And if you've seen every single of one these movies, you are officially a freak. Congrats.

Given the success of 2003's Taken (not only was the series popular with audiences, but it also won the Emmy for outstanding miniseries), it's not exactly a surprise that Steven Spielberg and The Sci-Fi Channel have found another project on which to collaborate. This year's offering is a 12-episode miniseries called Nine Lives, and it sounds extremely disturbing. In the series, grieving people who have lost loved ones apparently pursue "near-death experiences" in a quest to be reunited with the dead, if only briefly. (And I just got chills typing that.) Wow, is that a creepy idea.

Spielberg will serve as executive producer, alongside series writer Les Bohem, who also penned Taken. No information is available yet on when the series will air, but since it's only just begun production, we probably shouldn't expect it to show up before the summer.