The B-Movie Shelf

When the Mega Shark emerges to terrorize the seas once more, the U.S. government comes prepared with a giant mechanical shark to combat the threat, one last time. REVIEW: Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark (an obvious play on the classic Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla) is easily one of my most anticipated B-Movie releases for 2014, so I'm really glad it's being released right at the front of the year so I don't have to wait even longer for it, hahaha. The first movie, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus , a couple choice scenes aside, failed to live up to the full cheesy potential that the title implied; Ultimately it was 'ok', but nowhere near what I was expecting from it. The second movie, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus may have had even lower caliber of CG effects than the previous movie had (which itself was pretty low as it was), but everything else about it was exactly what I had been hoping that the first movie was. Sure, it was beyond stupid but it was a fun kind of stupid a...

A giant mutant spider escapes from a military lab and goes on a rampage through the city of Los Angeles. When a massive military strike fails, it is up to one clever exterminator to kill the creature before its eggs hatch and the city is overran with hundreds of mutant spiders.  REVIEW: I'm a very vocal person when it comes to my annoyance with the overabundance of Shark movies in the B-Movie genre as of late. Surely the majority of them could have still essentially been the exact same movie with a different killer animal, so why not switch it up a bit and get some variety out there? That's why I've been doing my bit to help promote other corners of the killer animal B-Movie market that seem to have a shot at giving the sharks a run for their money. Dinosaur flicks have been putting up a good fight these last couple years with movies like Area 407 , The Dinosaur Project , Jurassic Attack , Age of Dinosaurs , and the upcoming flicks Poseidon Rex, Jurassic Block, and t...

REVIEW BY: Bobby Lepire Company: Oracle Post Runtime: 88 mins Format: DVD Plot: A rescue team is sent to find a missing expedition, which set out to recreate a 1954 lost mission on a forbidden mountain, only to cross paths with a ravenous creature, which is protecting something special. Review: For some reason, it seems like lots of B-Movies open with pointless prologues, and 2011's Killer Mountain from the SyFy Channel is no different, and unfortunately things don’t much improve from there. Opening in 1954 Bhutan, a mountain expedition gets caught in a terrible snowstorm. One dumbass decides to go out into the storm, despite resistance from the others. We are not given any information about their expedition or how long they’ve been trekking, so Charles Wetherby, the aforementioned idiot, leaving in a terrible storm makes no sense to us as viewers. He then gets eaten by the creature of the movie, which is a sort of bug/worm/spider/wyvren thing. The CGI here, as throug...

REVIEW BY: Bobby LePire Company: The Asylum Runtime: 90 mins Format: BluRay Plot: After climbing a giant beanstalk, Jack discovers a land in the clouds populated by evil beasts. When the beasts make their way down to Earth, he must figure out how to get back down and save everyone from the oncoming threat. Review: Generally speaking, I am always stoked to see any film made by those maestros of mockbusting, The Asylum; this time around being no different. As they have done multiple times in the past, they have dipped into the fairy tale well, and Jack the Giant Killer (or simply just The Giant Killer in some parts of the world) is the result - their spin on the Jack And The Beanstalk tale - which was just in time to mockbust the big budget 'Jack The Giant Slayer'. Whereas their theatrically released counterpoint was a medieval fantasy adventure, Asylum's movie is set in the United Kingdom, during an anachronistic pseudo-1950s, which adds a timelessness feel t...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company: The Asylum Runtime: 85 mins Format: Screener Plot: When monsters suddenly appear from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a special team of military deep-sea pilots must take control of giant robots to combat the new threat. Review: The Asylum is one of my favorite low budget production companies, as I've often said in plenty of my previous reviews. I had really high hopes for their line up of movies this year, especially after watching Age of Dinosaurs which I felt was their all-time best movie to date and can't gush about it enough. But then 100 Degrees Below Zero came around and I have to be honest in saying I really really did not care for that one much, and even though I had been anticipating AE: Apocalypse Earth quite a bit, that one too fell a bit short of expectations. It was still decent, but nowhere near as amazing as I had hoped it would be.  Which brings me to Atlantic Rim, Asylum's upcoming mockbuster of Guil...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long COMPANY: Nu Image RUNTIME: 90 mins FORMAT: BluRay PLOT: After a Soviet space station crashes into a New York City subway tunnel, a new species of dangerous venomous spiders is discovered, and soon they start mutating to gigantic proportions and wreak havoc on the city. REVIEW: When Spiders (Spiders 3D for its limited theatrical run) was first announced and we started getting news of it here and there, I was a bit confused as to what kind of movie it was - remake, sequel, or something original? See, back in 2000 and 2001 there were a couple SyFy Channel style B-Movies also titled Spiders and Spiders II: Breeding Grounds. Like this one, they also dealt with genetically-modified mutant killer spiders brought down on something crashing from space, and they too began growing to immense size during the films. I had no idea initially if this was supposed to be a new sequel to that series (with the 3 in 3D being the number of the movie), a remake to the f...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long COMPANY: Cinetel Films RUNTIME: 94 mins FORMAT: DVD PLOT: A genetically-engineered Komodo Dragon and King Cobra have become ginormous creatures hunting people on a remote tropical island. A small group of scientists must stop the creatures before they escape the island and destroy the rest of the world. REVIEW: While Komodo vs Cobra seems to be advertised and constantly referred to as a sequel to Curse of the Komodo , it's actually more correct to look at it as a remake, despite being made not even a year later. It has the exact same plot, filmed in the exact same locations, complete with exact same military subplot with the exact same outcome of said subplot, beat-for-beat and pretty much word-for-word. If, like me, you've already seen Curse of the Komodo then you've already seen this movie, just replace some of the Komodo scenes with a Cobra. There are only three differences - First, the group that happens upon the isla...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long COMPANY: Royal Oaks Entertainment RUNTIME: 92 mins FORMAT: DVD PLOT: A genetically-engineered Komodo Dragon has become a ginormous creature hunting people on a remote tropical island. A small group of scientists must stop the dragon before it escapes the island and destroys the rest of the world. REVIEW: After having watched some of his more recent work, I was in the mood to go back and watch one of Jim Wynorski's previous movies that I hadn't yet seen, and since I love creature features I figured Curse of the Komodo was a good one to start with. Right off the bat I was pretty surprised that the military Special Ops team in the opening minutes were not the main characters like I had initially thought, and that the Doctor they were sent there to evacuate turned out to be the main character, and for once he was not evil, nor did he create the giant Komodo Dragon on purpose - It was a byproduct of his formula for growing larger s...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long COMPANY: New Horizons RUNTIME: 84 mins FORMAT: T.V. PLOT: A low-budget horror movie crew, inept kidnappers, and a reptile expert battle a monstrous anaconda/piranha hybrid in the middle of the Amazon jungle.   REVIEW: Piranhaconda premiered earlier this evening on the SyFy Channel as part of it's ' Most Dangerous Month on Television ' campaign, and I wanted to rush and get this review written and posted while the movie was still fresh in my mind, and right off the bat I have to be honest here - I was not impressed with this one. It was nowhere near as entertaining as Sharktopus or as fun as Dinocroc vs Supergator had been, and it wasn't even as good as Camel Spiders was, all of which have also been made by the same crew of people. A big problem with Piranhaconda is that there's no overlaying plot in the slightest until over halfway through the movie, so a good 70% of the movie is mostly just random generic scene after rando...