Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre Worth Watching?

It's about a chain gang of inmates from a women's prison who come face to face with a prehistoric swamp shark.

Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre was directed by Jim Wynorski (who also directed many other horror comedies including CobraGator, Piranhaconda, Gila! [check out our review of Gila ], The Curse of the Komodo and Komodo vs. Cobra) and stars Traci Lords (from Excision, Crazy Eights and Skinner), Dominique Swain (from Blood Craft, Rottentail, Nazi Overlord, Dead Mary and The Black Room) and Christine Nguyen (from Attack of the Killer Donuts .. yes, you read that right).

You can never truly escape

Some movies you watch just for the name. Shark Exorcist comes to mind. So does Zombeavers. This time around it was Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre that caught my eye while scrolling through Amazon Prime horror movies.

The premise? Ridiculous. The official plot synopsis is "Five escaped prisoners use their guns and wits to battle prehistoric sharks that attack on land". You see, this fracking operation apparently broke open the Earth's crust, letting out some prehistoric sharks who started knocking off people in a swamp, but later start burrowing through land to get at a group of sexy inmates who recently escaped their work detail. They hide out in a cabin which happens to be fully stocked with an armory of machine guns, perfect for shark hunting.

The experience? A mixed bag. The script, the acting, the CGI... all terrible and amazing at the same time. This is a SyFy sharksploitation flick so it was intentionally bad, and if SyFy knows one thing it's how to make bad look good. Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre definitely falls under the So Bad it's Good category. That part was expected and delivered on. But there were a few key areas where this movie drops the ball.

Most of the action is implied, meaning there's very few views of the actual sharks and no real views of the kills. The sharks just kinda run into people and then the camera cuts to generic blood splatter. This movie is all CGI, so it's odd that they decided against making some of the most anticipated scenes.
The pacing is unexpectedly slow for this kind of movie. Sharknado set the wild ride standard for funny shark flicks so there's an expectation for action, but the action scenes are actually few and far between.
There's prisoners, but no women's prison. This is really just another cabin in the woods movie, but with sharks instead of slashers.
Now that I think of it, it doesn't feel right taking a movie like Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre so seriously. It was clearly made for watching with friends while buzzing off a six pack. I just made the mistake of watching it alone with my nerdy little notebook.
If anyone out there wants to drink beers and watch shark movies please email me at besties@allhorror.com