The B-Movie Shelf

A young family finds themselves in the Australian Outback, being hunted by a gigantic bloodthirsty wild pig. REVIEW: Creature Features have always been my favorite type of B-Movie, so I always try to make a point of watching new ones when they come out. Boar is, quite honestly, nothing too special if you watch a lot of these types of movies, as it doesn't really do anything different or unique. However, sometimes I'm not looking for something different, sometimes something familiar is exactly what I need. Plus with all the killer shark, snake, spider, crocodile/alligator movies that make up 90% of the creature feature market, the fact that its a gigantic killer boar is enough of a visual change-up from the norm for me to make me fine with the fact that everything else about it feels so familiar. The Boar itself is almost always done with a practical animatronic as well, which looked fantastic and creepy as hell, even if its movements looked a bit too rob...

A team of young eco-terrorists set out to reveal the secrets of an area removed from modern day maps and hidden behind electric fences. However, once they reach the center of the lake, they discover an island that harbors an abandoned facility with a horrific legacy: the island is home to a deadly predator eager to feast on those dumb enough to ignore the warnings. REVIEW: Lake Placid: Legacy is the latest in a long line of SyFy Channel-made TV sequels to the original 1999 creature feature Lake Placid. Luckily I love SyFy-made movies, and their Lake Placid sequels are pretty much my top favorite things they've made, so while I understand that a lot of people may not like the low budget direction the series ultimately went in, I love that shit. This latest entry in the franchise however, is quite different from their other Lake Placid sequels, on many fronts. To start, it has nothing at all to do with any of the other SyFy Lake Placid sequels. This entry comp...

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...

After suspecting that their police officer neighbor is a serial killer, a group of teenage friends spend their summer spying on him and gathering evidence, but as they get closer to discovering the truth, things get dangerous REVIEW: Summer of 84 is the new blast of 80s nostalgia from the creators of Turbo Kid, one of the best movies of 2015 and equally filled with 1980s nostalgia, although done in a much different way. This time around it's a much more grounded thriller, about a group of teen friends in 1984 that think their cop neighbor is responsible for a string of teen murders in town, so they secretly investigate him, in ways that only teens from the 1980s can, to get to the bottom of the mystery. This movie is filled with that exact same Stranger Things/1980s type throwback tone, complete with a synth score. I know a lot of people are taking issue with this movie using so much nostalgia, but that's kind of the entire point of this movie, just like it...

All hell breaks loose when a strange force animates the puppets up for auction at a convention for a series of infamous murders, setting them on a bloody killing spree that's motivated by an evil as old as time. REVIEW: Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich is the latest in a very long long long line of Puppet Master movies, a series that has pretty much Full Moon Entertainment's bread and butter ever since the 80s. For me personally though, I haven't enjoyed a single Puppet Master movie since about the 5th or 6th one back in the mid 90s. Every single one from Retro Puppet Master onwards I've pretty much hated, so initially I had no interest in this project. But then word came that it was being made by different people, and that it would be a fresh reboot unconnected to the larger series. Usually that would be stuff I hate to hear, but in this case it made me glad. Then reviews started coming in that it was actually not only good, but god damn fantastic. ...

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...

In 1983, financially struggling college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret, putting her life in mortal danger.  REVIEW: The House of the Devil, brought to us by horror director Ti West back in 2009, is a very well-done and faithful throwback to the 1970's/1980's devil-cult horror movies of old, which any diehard fan of the horror genre should appreciate. It’s very well-acted, makes excellent use of building the uneasy tension throughout, and it culminates into nail-biting terror in the final half hour when the shit truly hits the fan. My only lone semi-complaint is that this movie does indeed move at a snail's pace and not a whole lot really happens, story-wise, until that final half hour. Personally, that didn't bother me too much, because I really appreciated how it used that time to make us acquainted with the main characte...

Alexandra reluctantly tags along for Slasher Sleepout, an extreme event that is part camping trip, part haunted house, and part escape room. But when the fun turns deadly, Alex has to play the game if she wants to make it out alive. REVIEW: Ruin Me is the latest Shudder Exclusive to go up on the streaming service, and it's strangely below their usual standards. This one feels more like a SyFy Original or an Uncork'd Entertainment movie. It's more of a 'Horror-Lite' type movie, made for people just starting out in the genre as opposed to hardcore horror veterans that the streaming service is aimed at. The plot is certainly interesting enough, and quite similar to another movie that came out over the last couple years, Fear Inc, where the characters don't know what's actually part of this immersive horror-themed game and what's real (if any of it), and the acting is surprisingly good from most of the actors, considering everything else...