[Sax]

I guess I could call it nostalgia, or a guilty pleasure - when my parents first got cable in the early 1980's, I think I watched that movie a dozen times. As a kid, I dug it.

How many movies fall into that pattern though - spend the first half assembling a rag-tag team of misfits, and spend the second half killing them all off (except the one main character and his lady who you just know will make it.) There's probably dozens.

[BenLurkin]

Yes. Stock plots are a successful species.

I think the Sci-Fi uses a computerized stock plot generator for its made for TV films.

The variables must go something like this: 1)name a monster, 2)name a setting 3) name a natural disaster to complicate things going into the third act.