The B-Movie Shelf

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company:  The Asylum Runtime: 87 mins Format: BluRay Plot: In the future, a group of refugees flee from a dying Earth only to crash on an exotic planet where they must fight ruthless aliens to survive . Review: Earlier this month I watched and reviewed Asylum's other most recent flick, Age of Dinosaurs and thought it totally raised the bar as far as expectations go on all future Asylum movies, because it was so incredibly good that now that I know they're capable of such a high caliber of entertainment, that anything less then such caliber will simply no longer do. Shortly after I was able to watch and review an early copy of an upcoming Asylum movie, 100 Degrees Below Zero and thought, for lack of subtlety, that it was pretty much utter crap and a gigantic step back in the wrong direction from Age of Dinosaurs. While the trailer for this one had me excited and expecting something more along the lines of Age of Dinosaurs in terms of how I...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company:  The Asylum Runtime: 90 mins Format: Online Streaming Via Space Channel Plot: When a chain of volcanic eruptions rips through Europe, the enormous ash cloud blocks out the sun, plunging the continent into a new ice age. An American couple must find their college-aged kids and get them out of Paris before it freezes over. Review: There's nothing like coming home from a long and hard day at work to find out that an upcoming movie from your favorite B-Movie production company has hit the online interwebs early, for free and legally, via the website for the TV channel Space, Canada's affiliate for SyFy. This great revelation was brought to my attention via the lovely Shannon The Movie Moxie so really, it's just as much because of her that I'm able to bring you this early review of 100 Degrees Below Zero (or just simply 100 Below Zero as some sites call it – not really sure which is the official one, seeing as how Asylum's...

As a pretty big fan of podcasts, I tend to be subscribed to far more then I will ever have any hope of being fully caught up on. However, one of those podcasts that I make sure to always listen to the newest episode of as soon as it goes online is the lovely Saturday B-Movie Reel podcast, which is an offshoot of Tuning into SciFi TV , a podcast about various TV shows and such on the SyFy Channel. The Saturday B-Movie Reel covers pretty much every movie that is a SyFy Channel Original Movie on a weekly basis, plus some older 'vintage' movies from the 70's, 80's, and early 90's about once a month, as well as a 'Could Be SyFy' section where they also cover direct-to-video B-Movies that come out that never aired on SyFy but probably should have. The main host is a pretty cool guy named Kevin Bachelder who genuinely loves these movies and instead of just ripping them apart with savage hate like many podcasters and reviewers do, he actually talks about them w...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company:  Nu Image Runtime: 93 mins Format: DVD Plot: A team of military soldiers and a scientist go after a terrorist group that has seized a deadly virus and is threatening to release it upon populated areas. Review: The plot for Operation Delta Force (a title trying to capitalize on the then-recent Chuck Norris-starring Delta Force) is a simple one we've seen dozens of times before, in dozens of other made-for-TV action movies - When Ernie Hudson fails to protect a deadly new manmade virus from being stolen by a rogue group of soldiers, Jeff Fahey's special ops Delta Squad is called in to work with him to retrieve the virus and kill the bad guys before they can unleash it upon the world. Of course, just like how things always go in movies such as this, Ernie Hudson and Jeff Fahey's characters have bad history between each other, which leads to lots of badly-scripted drama and unwillingness to work together. This movie's on...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company: Genre Co. Runtime: 94 mins Format: BluRay Plot: The police force of a remote Midwestern town search for a killer Santa Claus who is picking off citizens on Christmas Eve. Review: I know this is probably the exact opposite time of year to be doing a review of Silent Night, but I've had it sitting on my computer since December and only just now realized I've never put up it up on the blog yet and I don't really feel like waiting almost a year before I do. Now, this Silent Night is a loose remake of the classic 1980's Christmas horror flick Silent Night, Deadly Night, though apart from the very basic idea of a killer dressed as Santa Clause murdering people on Christmas Eve, this really has nothing at all in common with that movie. Which as it turns out, I was actually really happy about when all was said and done, because this movie turned out to be an excellent stand-alone Christmas horror flick that's a great throw-bac...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company: The Asylum Runtime: 90 mins Format: BluRay Plot: Using breakthrough flesh-regeneration technology, a biotech firm creates a collection of living dinosaurs. But when the creatures escape and terrorize Los Angeles, a retired firefighter must rescue his teenage daughter from the chaos brought on by this new Age of Dinosaurs. Review: Age of Dinosaurs is the movie that Dinosaur Week here on the B-Movie Shelf has been leading up to. Since I had already covered all of my personal collection of some of the more classic dinosaur B-Movies in the past, such as The Carnosaur Trilogy, Raptor , The Eden Formula , and a previous Asylum dino movie 100 Million B.C , I opted to do all recent ones such as Area 407 , The Dinosaur Project , Jurassic Attack, and now Asylum's newest release, Age of Dinosaurs. It's no secret that I've gone on many rants in the last year or so about the over-abundance of killer shark movies in the B-Movie realm in t...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company: Little Dragon Productions Runtime: 83 mins Format: Imported DVD Plot: While returning from a military mission, a helicopter crash lands a commando unit in a dense, remote tropical jungle - a lost world populated by dinosaurs. Now they must find a way out of this isolated valley before becoming prey for the prehistoric predators. Review: Continuing on with my week of dinosaur movie reviews, leading up to the release of Asylum's Age of the Dinosaurs, starting with Area 407 and followed by The Dinosaur Project , we now hit the recently-released Jurassic Attack, also known now as Rise of the Dinosaurs (see below). However, by recently-released I mean everywhere in the world except America. That's right, this movie came out back in February pretty much all over the world, except for us here in Canada and the U.S.. For whatever reason we still don't have it on our shelves at all. At this point, the closest we're going to get ...

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long Company: Moonlighting Films Runtime: 83 mins Format: Imported DVD Plot: A team of explorers go searching in the Congo jungle for proof of the mythical legend Mokele-Mbembe. When their helicopter is brought down in an undiscovered part of the jungle by a flock of strange enormous birds, they discover prehistoric creatures that civilization thought was extinct for millions of years . Review: I know it's not a popular opinion, but I am totally in love with the Found Footage style of filmmaking. I also am (and always have been) totally in love with dinosaurs, so this should be a winning combination for me, but previous experience with this combination has left me a tad cautious here. See, The Dinosaur Project is actually the second movie of 2012 to combine the two together, with the first being Area 407, and that movie turned out to be a pretty large disappointment and mostly utter crap. With that fresh on my mind after having just watched it a fe...

REVIEW BY: Michael Banno Company: Moonlighting Films Runtime: 101 mins Format: BluRay Plot: Death Race 2 explores the origins of the first "Frankenstein" car driver, Carl "Luke" Lucas. After discovering there’s a price on his head for crimes he's committed, his only hope is to survive the dangerous new sport of Death Race against an army of hardened criminals and tricked out cars. Review: I realize I'm doing this a bit backwards. I’ve already given my review of Death Race 3 a few months ago but I wasn’t reviewing for The B-Movie Shelf when Death Race 2 initially came out. Anyway, many of you probably by now know that Death Race is one of my favorite Paul W.S. Anderson movies (along with his Resident Evil series), so when this direct-to-video sequel came out back in January of 2011, it was only natural that I was going to pick this up as a Day 1 BluRay purchase. Now, I love action movies, whether there’s a good story to it or not - as long as I’...