The B-Movie Shelf

Zombie animals rise up yet again in a new animal preserve, threatening those who work there, and the world! REVIEW: The first Zoombies is one of my personal favorite Asylum movies, right behind Age of Dinosaurs , Triassic World , and 6-Headed Shark Attack , so suffice to say I was pretty excited when Asylum sent me a screener copy of Zoombies 2 to review, which up until about a week ago I didn't even know was coming out. For the most part, this movie is entirely stand alone from the first movie, save for one short scene towards the end that ties it directly in (I won't spoil that scene here, but it was definitely an unexpected and fun one). This movie takes place at a entirely different animal preserve from the first, and deals with poachers that break in to hunt the animals, except one of the poison darts they use isn't poison but the formula discovered in the first movie, unleashing the animal zombie virus upon this place, causing the surviving poache...

A group of scientists at a research facility based on Antarctica battle a breed of sharks that have invaded Antarctic waters. REVIEW: Ice Sharks, from 2016, is another of the more really fun 'The Asylum' movies, and one of the rare ones I hadn't seen before, so it was a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed it as much as I did and had me questioning myself on how I could have gone so long without checking it out. I loved that the action took place out in the middle of the arctic on a sinking research platform, it was a nice change from the usual ‘summer coastal town’ setting that most of these types of movies are set at, and even though the CGI was spotty in a few places, that’s to be expected from The Asylum. What surprised me is that the CGI actually looked pretty damn decent a lot of the time other than those few moments. It also included a really good pace filled with lots of different and fun (also occasionally gory!) attack and chase scenes, ...

As mass of solar storms causes tsunamis, volcanoes, and flooding, a city-dwelling family attempts to flee to the relative safety of a group of high-elevation caves several miles away.  REVIEW: There's two things that Asylum pumps out faster than you can blink - mockbusters and Natural Disaster movies, with the generically-titled End of the World being the latest of the latter. If you've seen one Asylum-made Natural Disaster movie you've pretty much seen them all, as they're all essentially the exact same movie just with different actors and a few minor details different - a family that doesn't quite all get along, of which one member is a scientist warning about the impending disaster with nobody listening to them, have to make their way through destroyed cities to reunite with one another, with disasters happening every few minutes, and then eventually get to a safe zone. They are pretty much all literally the exact same. Luckily this is one of the ones...

An alien race, intent on decimating mankind and repopulating the Earth, brainwashes humans to carry out acts of destruction. With the military powerless, humanity's only hope lies in an untested, hi-tech mech-bot. REVIEW: Hornet is an upcoming movie by The Asylum due out on December 18th, obviously made to be a mockbuster on the Transformers: Bumblebee movie. Amazon Prime Video in Canada has been releasing almost the entire Asylum catalog on their service bit by bit over the last week (so, pretty much early Christmas to someone like me!) and among the ones uploaded, much to my surprise, was an early release for Hornet! The plot is simple enough, although a tad bit unbelievable (then again, which Asylum movie isn't? Hahaha). When aliens invade the Earth and start brainwashing people into a mindless rage zombie-like state, it's up to a group of University students to use their secret project - a fully-working semi-self-conscious giant robot called Hornet - to help...

Against the background of the D-Day invasion, a US military unit must rescue a brilliant British scientist, who is held captive by the most dangerous SS guards deep in enemy territory, however the mission turns ugly when the Allied soldiers battle with horrific experiments created by the Nazis. REVIEW: Nazi Overlord is The Asylum's newest release, obviously mockbusting (as they do so well) on the recent theatrical horror movie Overlord. The first hour of this movie is a chore to get through. Some of the acting is ok as far as Asylum's work goes but some of it is also downright brutal, and nothing interesting really happens for that first hour outside of a couple quick moments, which makes spending all that meandering time with some of these actors all the worse. The first hour could have easily been covered in a 20-30 minute time span and the pacing would have felt much better for it, and it would have given us more than a scant 20-odd minutes on the actual a...

What is supposed to be a marriage boot camp on a remote island turns into the ultimate test for survival when a 6-headed shark starts attacking the beach. Trapped with minimal weapons they try to fight off the shark, but quickly discover that no one is safe in the water or on land.  REVIEW: 6-Headed Shark Attack is the latest in a series made by The Asylum of multi-headed killer sharks. While I loved the first two movies in this series, 2-Headed Shark Attack and 3-Headed Shark Attack , the previous movie, 5-Headed Shark Attack , I found was a big disappointment. It was very...plain..., the characters were forgettable, and there was nothing interesting about it at all other than the visual aesthetic of the shark having five heads. Luckily this new one, 6-Headed Shark Attack, injects the fun that was missing from the previous movie back into the franchise. This one not only brought back fun, inventive, shark attack and kill scenes but also entertaining characte...

A black ops reconnaissance team is sent to investigate the crash of an unidentified aircraft. When they arrive, they find strange markings and residue visible only in infrared. As the team gets deeper in and tries to figure out the source of the markings, they discover that they are being hunted by an alien expedition to Earth.  REVIEW: Alien Predator is Asylum's latest mockbuster, obviously cashing in on the recent release of The Predator , although also acting just as much as a mockbuster of the original Predator movie, which I have no problems with at all as anybody who knows even a little about me knows that I love Asylum movies. They're my bread and butter when it comes to low budget direct-to-video B-Movies. With this one, an alien ship crashes in the jungle and after the first team sent in to assess the situation disappears, a second team goes in to find out what the hell is going on. While the acting is about what you would expect from Asylum fare, the ...

A military vessel on the search for an unidentified submersible finds themselves face to face with a giant shark, forced to use only what they have on board to defend themselves from the monstrous beast. REVIEW: Megalodon is Asylum's latest mockbuster, made to cash in on the success of the big budget theatrical The Meg , as they always so expertly do. This actually isn't the first Megalodon-themed movie that The Asylum has released; They've already got an unrelated series of four movies dealing with the title creature battling various different other giant monsters in each one - Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus , Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus , Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark , and Mega Shark vs Kolossus. The first thing I noticed is that while some of the CGI here is atrociously bad, even by Asylum's very low standards, some of it is also quite impressive. The Megalodon shark itself looking quite good and far better than their design of it used for the Mega Shark ...

Fin has to go back in time to rejoin his shark-battling friends to save the future by stopping the random Sharknados that are mysteriously popping up at major historical events throughout history. REVIEW: After five movies in five years , and a massively surprising pop culture phenomenon, it all comes down to this one last movie by The Asylum and the SyFy Channel, The Last Sharknado: It's About Time. Much of my issues with Sharknado 6 are actually pretty much the same issues I had with Sharknado 5: Global Swarming - Most of the jokes I didn't find funny, the plot is all over the place, they throw way too much random stuff into the script just to see what sticks and most of it doesn't, the special effects (which, to be fair, have never been good to begin with) are pretty much the worst they've been in the entire franchise, and it just moves from pretty much one random action scene directly into the next with very little (or none at all, in some cases) d...

Even though I reviewed the very first Sharknado movie way back when it first came out, I never reviewed any of the others on here. And even though Guest Reviewer Michael Banno sent in his review for Part 2 , there's never been any reviews for any of the other movies on here in any capacity since then. Seeing as how the 6th (!!!) and final movie airs on TV on the SyFy Channel (Space, here in Canada) tomorrow night, I figured this was a great time to put up a few of my quick thoughts on each and every movie in the franchise up to this point, and just collect them all together in one big post. When a freak hurricane swamps Los Angeles, nature's deadliest killer rules sea, land, and air as thousands of sharks terrorize the waterlogged populace.  REVIEW: This very first Sharknado is the one that started it all. I have to admit, even as a long-time fan of these types of movies, I never expected this to catch on the way it did with mainstream audiences and become the pop c...

After an alien spacecraft destroys Washington, D.C., the residents of a small town must fight off a unit of alien soldiers on the hunt for the President of the United States and the mysterious device he's carrying after his escape chopper crash lands nearby. REVIEW: Alien Siege is the first 2018 Asylum-released movie that I haven’t really liked. The acting is about average for an Asylum production, with some actors doing better than others but nobody really being painfully bad like in some Asylum productions, and the CG special effects for the alien spaceships look fantastic by their standards, and the directing itself is serviceable for this type of low budget fare. Unfortunately, that's where the things I enjoy end. Even though the acting was serviceable, the characters themselves are written to be so incredibly flat and boring that it makes it difficult to follow them for the movie's runtime and actually care about anything that's happening to t...

As Abraham Lincoln labors over the Gettysburg address, the importance of which he is fully aware, he learns that a menace from his past has returned, threatening to tear the already fractured nation to pieces. He must journey behind enemy lines to face an foe far more fearsome than the Confederate army: the walking dead. REVIEW: The Asylum is normally a pretty solid source of fun, campy, entertaining low budget B-Movies and Mockbusters (low budget rip-offs of big budget theatrical movies), to the point where they're actually my favorite low budget company, and Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies, their obvious mockbuster on the much-more popular Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is no exception. Actually, if anything, this was one of Asylum's best efforts at the time of release in 2012; It has great gore, exciting well-shot action scenes, realistic-looking set pieces and locations for the time period it was set in, above-average acting by their standards, catchy mus...

"Found Footage" of a lost military expedition to the jungle that spends several days under attack by an unknown extraterrestrial force, eventually coming to a discovery that exposes the shocking origins of life on earth. REVIEW: As far as Found Footage movies by The Asylum goes, Alien Origin from 2012 is probably their best one, although it’s still far from perfect. This one is surprisingly well-acted, and where almost every other Asylum-made Found Footage movie takes place in a single house or building, this one is wide open with quite a large scope spanning a town/military base, jungles, cave systems, half-crumbled Mayan temples, and more. I really loved the visual variety to the set pieces. I also really enjoyed the uneasy creepy feeling and tension they portrayed quite well whenever there was a quick glimpse of the UFO, or when they find the skeletal remains of an alien in the caves. My one big complaint though, and it does bring the score down for me...

Dinosaurs are back, used as the perfect animals to grow human organs for transplants. But in doing so, scientists have made them all but indestructible, leaving humans scrambling to fight back when the creatures escape their enclosures in a research lab. REVIEW: It's no secret that I'm an unabashed Asylum fanboy. Their movies are my bread and butter for reviews. That's not to say I blindly love everything they do, I have no issues saying when I hate a movie they've put out (most of 2016 and 2017's releases, sadly). With that said, Triassic World is their latest in a homerun year for me with their titles, having loved every single 2018 release so far. Age of Dinosaurs from 2013 is my personal top favorite Asylum movie to date, so I was already really looking forward to getting to review their next dinosaur movie as it was because of that, and Triassic World met my expectations on pretty much every level.  The CG special effects looked great for ...

Passengers and crew on an international flight are attacked by unseen forces that threaten all aboard. As they fight to stay alive, they start to realize that these are actually the spirits of murdered girls determined to stop their killer on board who will do anything to remain free.  REVIEW: Even though Age of Dinosaurs and Zoombies are probably still my personal top favorite Asylum movies, Flight 666 is quite possibly The Asylum's best-made film to date. I probably still wouldn't recommend it to people that are not already Asylum fans or SyFy Original Movie type of fans, but for those that are like me and really genuinely love these types of low budget movies this one really impressed me. The directing was great, with the background music right up there alongside it, always setting the mood perfectly. The acting from everyone in this was top notch stuff for Asylum and never once took me out, and the special effects were quite well-done. Not only that, ...

When Rumpelstiltskin teams up with a new villain to try to take over Earth once and for all, The Avengers Grimm must track him down through time and realms in order to defeat him. REVIEW: Asylum's recent Avengers: Infinity War mockbuster, Avengers Grimm: Time Wars, finally 100% confirms that, despite the continuity issues in Sinister Squad , that movie is in fact a direct continuation of the first Avengers Grimm , as this movie not only directly references it, but also has Alice and Mad Hatter returning from that movie to team up with Snow White and the other Super Princesses from Avengers Grimm to take on Rumpelstiltskin yet again, along with a new villain, the ruthless Queen of Atlantis. Rumple is, yet again for the third time, played by someone different, Eric Feltes, and he plays him as almost the perfect combination of how Casper Van Dien played him in Avengers Grimm and Johnny Rey Diaz played him in Sinister Squad. Not quite as well as either of  them m...

When a supernatural cult threatens Earth, Alice must assemble a team of fairy tale villains to face the literal forces of Death. REVIEW: Sinister Squad is not only The Asylum's 2016 mockbuster of Suicide Squad, it's also a spin-off of their earlier movie Avengers Grimm .  At least, I think it is. It uses the same idea of classic fairy tale characters operating in our world and even throws in a few mentions of things from that movie, such as the Magic Mirror shard, and it does have a couple returning characters from that movie such as Rumpelstiltskin and The Wolf, however they are played by different actors and have completely different personalities than they had in Avengers Grimm, so even after two watches of Sinister Squad, I'm still unclear as to if this is supposed to be a proper spin-off or just an unrelated movie made by the same people using the same concept. In some ways it seems to go the extra mile to add in little details of continuity between t...