The B-Movie Shelf

Burt Gummer, dying from Graboid poison, and his son Travis must go to a remote arctic research station in Canada's Nunavut Territory, in order to go up against a new batch of Graboids to save Burt's life. REVIEW: The Tremors franchise is one of my all-time favorite movie franchises, right behind Jurassic Park and Star Wars, and is easily my favorite B-Movie franchise. I reviewed all of the other Tremors movies earlier in the year ( Tremors, Tremors 2: Aftershocks , Tremors 3: Back to Perfection , Tremors 4: The Legend Begins , Tremors 5: Bloodlines , and even the short-lived TV series ), so I figured it was long overdue to finally get a review out of this year's newest sequel, Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell. Sadly, this is an entry I honestly have no idea how I feel about it. On the one hand, I loved all the callbacks to previous movies and previous characters - The town of Perfection shows up (albeit, only by showing us one single building that looks far mor...

An obsessed scientist conducts profane experiments in evolution, eventually establishing himself as the self-styled demigod to a race of mutated, half-human abominations.  REVIEW: The Island of Lost Souls from 1932 is, I think, the earliest adaptation of the novel 'The Island of Dr. Moreau'. If you've seen any of the other movie versions, or even that one episode of Sliders from its third season, then you already know what to expect, as it's very similar, but with two small differences - this version doesn't focus on the genetic monsters as much as you'd think, and there's an interesting side plot where the main character's girlfriend, back on the mainland, launches an investigation to find out what happened to him at sea, and she ends up finding the island and taking a crew there to look for her lost boyfriend. It was a nice addition that none of the other versions have. The acting is all great from everyone, with horror legend B...

Two parents do what it takes to keep their children safe in an apocalyptic world overrun by creatures that hunt every sound they can hear. Not a single sound can be made by the family hiding in silence, if they wish to survive. REVIEW: A Quiet Place is easily my favorite horror movie of 2018 so far. The movie starts off with a bang and hardly lets up for the entire runtime, making it zoom by at a great pace, most of which is spent putting you on the edge of your seat the entire time, like an amusement park ride. Horror movies very rarely make me jump anymore, but there were several times during this one I just about came out of my skin. This movie also has a great deal of heart in it as well, making you genuinely care for this family and what happens to them. My only complaint really is with the CGI of the monsters. A couple shots looked ok but for the most part, especially the close-ups, they honestly didn't look much better than SyFy level, which is fine for...

The giant, man-eating Graboids are back and even deadlier than before, terrorizing the inhabitants of a South African wildlife reserve as they attack from below-and above.  REVIEW: Tremors 5: Bloodlines was the first Tremors movie in 11 years, and it seems like it's quite the divisive entry, but I must say that for me, personally, I love the absolute hell out of this one, right up there alongside the first two movies , though perhaps just a small peg below. The main thing everyone seems to hate is the new remodeled designs of the Graboids and Assblasters, but I'm perfectly fine with them. They have an in-movie reason why they look different, and in the case of the Assblaster I actually think this new design is a huge improvement on the original design from Tremors 3: Back to Perfection and the TV Series , which I thought was a really silly and stupid design. I am disappointed this offshoot of them skips the Shrieker phase though, but the new Assblaster a...

A prequel to Tremors , this movie tells us about how the town of Perfection, Nevada became founded and how they defended it against the original Graboids with the help of Burt Gummer's ancestor, Hiram Gummer. REVIEW: For Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, we go back in time to the wild west days, when Perfection was a small mining community called Rejection, and the first batch of Graboids are born, causing havoc. I love wild west horror movies, especially creature feature ones, and I really think that after the last couple Tremors movies and the TV series , this back-to-basics approach was the best angle for them to take. Just like with the original movie, we have only the initial Graboid form here, and honestly that works just great. Going back to keeping it simple and straight forward, but in a time where heavy artillery was not quite as readily available. Michael Gross returns, but this time he's playing his character's ancestor, a very selfish, lazy, anti-gun ...

Perfection Valley, Nevada is a quaint little town. The inhabitants live peaceful, tranquil lives. Most of the time. Perfection is home to the Graboid, El Blanco. El Blanco is a thirty-foot worm creature who hunts prey by sound. It is an endangered species, so as long as El Blanco is around, Perfection can't be bulldozed by any greedy developers. To protect their home, the people of Perfection must co-exist with El Blanco, dealing with him when necessary, as well as other strange situations and creatures that come their way. REVIEW: Back in 2003, long before Kevin Bacon tried (and failed) to get his own out-of-continuity Tremors TV series off the ground, there was another Tremors: The Series that existed. Picking up right where Tremors 3: Back to Perfection left off and continuing with some open plot threads from that movie, we got the short-lived, 13-episode Tremors: The TV Series, which aired on Syfy before they cancelled it, but not before they aired episodes out...

Burt Gummer returns to his hometown of Perfection, Nevada for the first time in years, but the deadliest Graboid evolution yet forces him to save the town he swore to protect.  REVIEW: After two amazing, perfect, movies , Tremors 3: Back to Perfection came along and ruined the streak. Michael Gross returns yet again, this time as the main focus of the movie (and from this point onwards in the franchise) and he remains the shining point of this movie. There are other returning characters from the first movie as well, as this returns to the original town of Perfection from the first movie, and their original actors return to reprise those roles for the first time in 11 years, but none of them, nor any of the new characters, are acted all that well aside from Gross as Gummer. Hell, everything about this one is just... less . The acting, the directing, the story, the level of threat in the movie, and the embarrassingly-bad special effects - all of it is just......

Natives of a small isolated town defend themselves against strange underground creatures that are killing them one by one. REVIEW: My reviews for Tremors and Tremors 2 are being posted together into one post because, well, what’s there to say about Tremors that hasn’t already been said at this point? It’s pretty much the go-to perfect creature feature B-Movie and it's been covered by thousands of people in thousands of other reviews. Awesome unique creature? Check. Great creature effects? Check. Really fun and well-acted characters? Helll yes , double check. Add to that the perfect mix of serious horror/suspense and light-hearted comedy, and throw in some fun as hell chase and attack scenes. Sure, it might be a bit slow at times in the middle, but the mystery of what’s going on (for a first viewing anyway), mixed with the really fun characters, keeps your attention quite well, despite the slower pace. This entire series is pretty much my all-time favorite ...

Shortly after delivering a patient to an understaffed hospital during the graveyard shift, a police officer experiences strange and violent occurrences seemingly linked to a group of mysterious hooded figures REVIEW: The Void is a little horror movie that came to fruition thanks to online crowdfunding campaigns. The creators of this movie, Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, have worked on many infamous Astron-6 productions in the past ( Manborg , Father's Day, and the Bio Cop faux-trailer), and even though Astron-6 did not make this movie, it still feels very much like they could have (which as far as I'm concerned is a great thing, as I love all of Astron-6's productions thus far). These two guys posted up concept art and a basic sales pitch via Twitter and other social media to interest horror fans and then took to crowdfunding in order to get this movie made, and guess how it turned out? Damn fine. Really damn fine. And I'm not one of these people that...

In the year 2045, a Los Angeles Police Department detective and his new Android partner enter the Zone, a forbidden section of the city plagued with an unknown disease. There, they discover the source of the illness and uncover a troubling Government Conspiracy at the center. REVIEW: I'm still anxiously awaiting for my BluRay copy of Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, the third movie in the infamous Mega Shark series , to arrive in the mail, however in the meantime the fine folks at Asylum sent my way a screener of another new movie of theirs to review, Android Cop, set to be released this upcoming Tuesday on February 4th. As you might guess, Android Cop is very much Asylum's glorious return to mockbusters by riffing on the upcoming RoboCop remake. Asylum has landed themselves in plenty of legal troubles over the last couple years because of their mockbusters (The Day The Earth Stopped, Age of Hobbits aka Clash of the Empires , and American Battleship aka American Warships bei...