The B-Movie Shelf

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...

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 ...

When a young boy accidentally triggers the universe's most lethal hunters' return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can prevent the end of the human race. REVIEW: I grew up watching the Predator movies (alongside the Alien movies and, later in life, the Alien vs Predator movies) and for the most part I've loved most of them. Even spent a large chunk of my teenage years reading all the novels and a fair number of the comics and graphic novels. I just can't get enough of these awesome intergalactic hunters, so it goes without saying I was pretty excited for a new movie from the get go. Unfortunately I was no prepared for just how bad this movie was going to be. To start, I do not like any of these characters at all. Olivia Munn was ok for the most part, but I hated literally everyone else, as they were too annoying to be likeable. For the first bit of the movie I was like ‘Ok, this isn't bad. Not great but n...

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...

"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...

A double bill of 1950s-style B-movie shorts from writer/director Christopher R. Mihm, the king of "new old, good bad" movies! In "X: The Fiend from Beyond Space", on a decades-long mission to Alpha Centauri, the crew of the spaceship Endeavor are awakened from LD-sleep to find themselves in orbit around a rogue planet. Finding nothing but a seemingly dead alien on the planet's surface, the Captain decides to bring it aboard for further study. But, the crew quickly realize the creature is not dead... and it's very hungry.  In "The Wall People", following the death of his wife, scientist Barney Collins finds solace in his new role as a single dad to his only son. However, when the boy disappears from his bed under mysterious circumstances, Barney loses his grip on reality and becomes a shut in. Eight years later, he resurfaces with a wild theory: his son has been taken by an otherworldly entity that steals sleeping children through ...

Like with 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , and 2014 this is my Annual list of my personal favorite B-Movie releases of 2015. I know it's SUPER late (Like, two years late), but I had actually given up on doing reviews for awhile and then when I got back into it I kind of forgot all about this list. Now, there is still plenty of movies from that year that I haven't yet seen, plus it's been a couple years after the fact now, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself and what I could dig up that came out that year. Also, this list is solely based off what has hit home video formats and Video On Demand services in 2015, so movies that aired on TV stations like Lifetime or the SyFy Channel that year, but never came out on DVD, BluRay, and VOD services until 2016 or later, does not count for this. I want this as a list of movies that you could potentially pick...

Five film students are producing a documentary about the local zoo when suddenly the animals go berserk: The reason is a light ball flying by in the sky and crashing in the horizon. Convinced that they've just witnessed a meteor crashing, the students follow the trajectory to document the event with their camera. In a forest area they discover a burned crater. Since it's too dark to film they decide to spend the night in their van. The next morning one of them is missing. The remaining students find first a trail of blood and then the torn up pieces of what used to be their friend. Soon they realize that something is hunting them - something that's not from this world.  REVIEW: Found Footage horror movies is a sub-genre that gets a lot of hate from almost all sides, but personally I can't get enough of them and I love doing reviews for them. Unfortunately, it's also the sub-genre that you really have no idea whatsoever what you're in store for...

Three young conspiracy theorists attempt to uncover the mysteries of Area 51, the government's secret location rumored to have hosted encounters with alien beings. What they find at this hidden facility exposes unimaginable secrets.   REVIEW: Oren Peli should be a familiar name to most people reading this review. He’s the mastermind behind the Found Footage frightfest that is the original Paranormal Activity, in addition to the short-lived but fun ABC Channel Found Footage horror TV show The River, and the god-awful Chernobyl Diaries. Back in 2009, shortly after the first Paranormal Activity came out in a wide release, Oren Peli set to work on another similar type of movie, only instead of covering a haunted house and the demon-tormented couple living in it, this new movie, the generically-titled Area 51, followed a group of teenagers that, after one has an abduction experience, decide that they’re going to sneak into the top secret and heavily-guarded Area 51 ...

A documentary crew follows an elite unit of soldiers in the wake of an alien invasion. REVIEW: Alien Outpost, also known as Mankind's Last Stand in parts of the world for it's upcoming home video release, came out this past Friday on the usual Video-on-Demand locations such as Itunes, Vudu, and the like, and the trailer looked so interesting to me I had to order a digital copy and check it out as soon as I got home from work that day. Now, the original title that some people may know it under from news articles in the past was Outpost 37, but I feel that, for once, the name change is actually beneficial and Alien Outpost is the much better title. Usually I find last minute B-Movie title changes to be annoying in that they always change it from something great to something 'meh', but Outpost 37 was so plain and generic and didn't really help portray what kind of movie it is, so in that regard I feel Alien Outpost was a well-needed upgrade. This one was bro...

Like with 2011 , 2012 , and then 2013 this is my Annual list of my personal favorite B-Movie releases of the last year. There is still plenty of movies from this past year that I haven't yet seen, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself. Also, this list is solely based off what has hit home video formats and Video On Demand services in 2014, so movies that aired on TV stations like Lifetime or the SyFy Channel this year, but never came out on DVD, BluRay, and VOD services yet, does not count for this. I want this as a list of movies that you could potentially pick up yourself or have easy access to legally obtaining. Likewise, some of these movies may have aired on TV in previous years, but didn't actually get released on home video formats or VOD until 2014, thus I count them as 2014 movies for that reason. The following list won'...