The B-Movie Shelf

The Leprechaun from the original movie returns when a group of sorority girls unwillingly awakens him when they begin renovations on the farm house. REVIEW: I was weary of Leprechaun Returns upon the initial trailer. After all, Warwick Davis, the actor who played the Leprechaun in every other movie (minus the 100% unrelated Leprechaun Origins) was not returning for this one (although his reasoning is totally understandable) and on top of that it was being made by the SyFy Channel, and although I love their cheesy summer B-Movies, they aren't exactly who I think of when I think of resurrecting a beloved horror franchise and having it be worth it (their Pumpkinhead sequels, anyone? Urgh ). However, I really had nothing to worry about as this turned out to easily be one of the best entries in the series, if not the best. Leprechaun has always been a franchise where the idea itself was better than any of the actual movies. The first movie is so-so at best, with Leprech...

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, ...

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 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 ...

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...

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...

Giant crocodiles go head to head with giant anacondas. The new town Sheriff must find a way to destroy the two species' before they kill the whole town. REVIEW: SyFy's Lake Placid sequel series is one of my favorite Made-for-TV movie franchises. Their Anaconda sequels however, I really don’t like much. Lake Placid vs Anaconda, sadly, falls closer in line with the Anaconda sequels for me than their Lake Placid ones. Lake Placid vs Anaconda is definitely more Lake Placid-centric, with Anaconda ties to it, then an even mix. It even has Yancy Butler returning again from Lake Placid 3 and 4 (this time being upgraded to town Sheriff because nobody else wanted the job after the events of the last several movies - ha!) and Robert Englund is also back again, somehow surviving his death in the previous Lake Placid movie. On the Anaconda characters side, there are no returning characters but we do have the daughter of John Rhys-Davies' character taking his place...

Reba the poacher is back, now an E.P.A. Agent. Black Lake has turned into a crocodile sanctuary, surrounded by an electric fence. When the fence gets left open one night, a high-school field trip bus unknowingly enters the park. It's up to Reba and the new town Sheriff to save the kids from becoming crocodile chow. REVIEW: When it comes to SyFy Channel B-Movies, I'm hard-pressed to find a franchise I enjoy more than the Lake Placid one. The second movie is one of my all-time personal favorite SyFy Originals, and even though the third movie was a big step down from it, it still manages to be a fun time in the end, despite the issues I have with aspects of it. Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (hahahaha, yeah...right...) easily beats both of them in my eyes and remains my personal favorite entry in this series of TV sequels. This one has Yancy Butler returning from the third movie, being the only character at this point to continue on to a future installment...

A game warden moves his family to Lake Placid, twice the site of deadly crocodile attacks. Locals assure him the crocs are gone, but his mischievous young son finds a few baby crocs and begins feeding them. Over a year they grow into very big adults and start attacking the game warden's family and nearby town. REVIEW: Lake Placid 3 picks up a short time after Part 2 (though no mention as to why there's a new Sheriff or what happened to John Schneider's sheriff character from that movie), and has SyFy regular Colin Ferguson playing a relative of Betty White and Cloris Leachman's characters, arriving in town with his wife and young son to clean out the house on the lake that was previously occupied by both older ladies, and to get it on the market to sell. Compared to John Schneider from Part 2, he's pretty generic and boring as a lead, but luckily alongside him in the movie is the far-more entertaining Michael Ironside as the new town Sheriff and the...

Man-eating crocodiles return to the lake, protecting their nest and wreaking havoc on the locals. REVIEW: Unlike SyFy's Anaconda sequels, SyFy's Lake Placid 2 and its following sequels are actually a hell of a lot of fun, and are among my favorite of the SyFy Original Movies. While we do get a mention Betty White's character and the fact that she fed and raised a couple crocodiles, there's not only no other mention of anything from the first movie but the events themselves seem to have been totally forgotten about by the town's residents and have been regulated to being nothing more than mere urban legend (how that could happen in such a short time period makes no sense to me), which definitely annoys me, along with a few piss poor horrible CG shots here and there, but those issues aside, Lake Placid 2 was a blast. Joining Cloris Leachman in this  is Smallville and Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider as the new town Sheriff trying to stop th...

There is a new species occupying the ocean: the 5-Headed Shark is all heads and teeth. Shaped like a demented starfish, this monster terrorizes the open ocean before invading the beaches of Puerto Rico, endangering a once peaceful beach-side paradise.  REVIEW: The first two movies in this series, 2-Headed Shark Attack and 3-Headed Shark Attack are among my top favorite Asylum movies. Unfortunately, 5-Headed Shark Attack was a huge step down. The first two movies were each pretty unique and did some good stuff to set themselves out from the hundreds (or close to it) of other SyFy Channel/Asylum shark movies. They were the first to go the multi-headed route, they had pretty good plots, used interesting locations (a small island atoll and a research station in the ocean), and they actually had some decent plot twists and unexpected deaths. This one though doesn't really have any of that, and other than the fact that the shark has multiple heads it's pretty much the...

In the middle of Antarctica, a highly maximum security prison called New Alcatraz is fully operational. When a mining crew inside the prison runs across a strange rock formation. What they don't know is that a giant, violent prehistoric snake is inside the formation. After it breaks out of the formation, the snake goes on a killing rampage inside the prison.To get help, scientists and a group of soldiers must eliminate the snake before it takes over the prison, leaving the humans on the bottom of the chain. REVIEW: God, I miss the early 2000s/late 90s for these cheap Creature Feature flicks. Sure, we still get them from time to time, but not nearly in the quantity that we did, and usually not nearly as much fun as these were. I keep finding myself revisiting these older ones way more often than I do most recent ones.While Boa, also called New Alcatraz in parts of the world, may a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to Creature Feature B-Movies of that time, it is more...

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...