Review of Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012)

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012) is a historical horror/action film, that is produced by The Asylum, a film studio specializing in mockbusters.

Directed by Richard Schenkman (The Man from Earth (2007), The Pompatus of Love (1995)).

Written by Karl T. Hirsch (Green (1998), Clown (2005)), J. Lauren Proctor and Richard Schenkman (Flower Girl (2009), Went to Coney Island on a Mission from God… Be Back by Five (1998)).

Starring: Bill Oberst Jr., Kent Ingleheart, Jason Vail, Debra Crittended, Bernie Ask, Canon Kuipers, Chris Hlozek, Richard Schenkman and others.

Is there really any better way to learn about American history than from a movie that depicts a dead president killing zombies.

Bill Oberst Jr., who is playing Lincoln is really good. The performance would fit just as well in a serious movie. Spielberg’s Lincoln could have him playing the lead role. It wouldn’t be as acclaimed as Daniel Day-Lewis, who is loved by everyone, but he could do it.

It is almost sad that a great performance like this is wasted on a silly B-movie. But I suppose in some oscar-bait piece we wouldn’t get Abe driving his scythe into the skull of a zombie, while yelling „Emancipate this!”.

For the budget the production value is pretty good. You can tell it’s cheap, but it tries to have a style. Which is more than most The Asylum movies have going for them.

The dialogue is also some of the best I’ve heard in an Asylum movie. Sadly, some/most of the actors aren’t really able to deliver it convincingly.

Lincoln gathers a group of people to go and… well, fight zombies, I guess. In this group of people there is a black guy named Mr. Brown. Obviously. The plot is kind of confusing, I don’t know if I must have some previous knowledge of American history, but I seriously doubt that the problem lays there.

As usually Asylum uses CGI in their movies and here we get some CG blood and it is kind of sad that even in a B-movie today, we have to watch the shitty looking CG blood spurting about, since it used one of the main attractions of  B-grade cinema that we got to see some realistic practical effects. I guess it’s easier to put in some cartoon violence afterwards. But judging by the really unconvincing fake facial hair on everybody, I doubt there was a great potential for any special effects artistry.

This is probably the best Asylum movie I’ve seen and not even in the so-bad-it’s-good category, more in the low-budget-we-did-what-we-could pretty competent B-flick. It would be unfair to compare it to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, the blockbuster this is mockbusting.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Of course it’s not a good movie, but as far as The Asylum goes, this was one of the best ones they can offer.

“I feel like going to theater! You’re coming with me John ‘not Wilkes Booth’ Wilkinson!”

Review of 2012: Ice Age (2011)

2012: Ice Age (2011) is a straight-to-video action/sci-fi/disaster film from The Asylum, the movie studio that brought us such great hits as Two-Headed Shark Attack.

Directed by Travis Fort.

Written by Paul Sinor (Dead Men Can’t Dance (1997), Testing the Limits (1998)) and Victoria Dadi (Airline Disaster (2010)).

Starring: Nick Afanasiev, Patrick Labyorteaux, Julie McCullough, Katie Wilson, Kyle Morris, Chacko Vadaketh, Ted Monte and others.

I swear, after this I’m going to take a break from Asylum movie reviews for a while, I just want to get this out of the way and then we’re on to shitty movies from other studios.

This is another one in The Asylum’s „2012 Trilogy” of unrelated movies. Well, no, they’re not completely unrelated, the common factor is ripping-off other disaster movies, this time we have mostly a Day After Tomorrow, minus the budget and everything else that made it goo-, I mean, watchable.

I actually had a chance to learn something from this movie, the CGI department specifically. Some of the effects look decent, like some snow clouds or whatever they were and then others, like the lava explosions, look like shit had a retarded shit-baby, which decided to work on the effects. At least they know it looks bad, since they sort of try to hide it using the advanced technique „shaky-cam”. But, you know, it’s kind of unfair, Asylum’s effects are special, just like some kids, you can’t evaluate them on the same scale.

We follow this family in a car. You know a geeky son, a bitchy daughter, a concerned mother and a busy father. The son is some kind of genius, who helps his geologist father with his work and when his mother sees some planes and asks „Are those military planes?”, the son replies „F-16s” (which they’re not), like it’s common knowledge.  But at other times he is a complete moron. The father talks on the phone to the daughter, who goes to another city at the start of the movie, the connection breaks and the brother says „I wanted to talk to her.”, yeah, well another time, you idiot savant.

The father, played by Patrick Labyorteaux at one point turns into MacGyver. He finds everything he needs in one car trunk, gets some gas and makes a fucking bomb, to blow up cars and clear the road. Woah, what do they teach at the geologist school? Also, while in Supernova Brian Krause had an expression of concern on his face throughout that movie, this time we get our chubby Labyorteaux looks constantly confused.

The problem in this movie is that it becomes very cold outside. People freeze in motion on the streets. Looks like you can expect that at any moment you’ll see Arnold Schwarzenegger painted blue, scream „Chill out!”. But it’s not that cold, since the main characters run around with no coats or gloves on and they don’t look like they’re cold, they look like they’re just caught in a light draft somewhere and think it’s getting chilly. The extras also panic by either just standing around or frolicking while holding suitcases over their heads.

At one point they arrive at someone’s home to find the owner stuck under a metal rack no heavier than a shopping cart. He thanks them by giving them a plane. A fucking plane. And the fat Macgyver knows how to fly a plane. Shit, I wanna be a geologist now. They’re flying on the plane and sum up Asylum’s special effects in two lines of dialogue – „These clouds don’t look normal” – „Nothing looks normal.”.

The dialogue serves this fireproof structure: Mother asks a stupid question, father unsurely answers and the son spits out some idiotic cliché young people thing like „This visibility sucks balls!” Every single line he said made me cringe and hate that little shit.

Overall, it’s not entertaining, but it works as a parody of disaster-flicks, that takes itself completely seriously. It was really bad, though. Not recommended.

“Oh, honey, don’t worry, I’m going to find you, I’ll hug you and I’ll kiss you and I’ll hold you.”
“Uh, dad? I think I got one of them… earections in my pants.”
“Ok, I’ll call you later, our son’s being a creep.”

Review of Battle of Los Angeles (2011)

Battle of Los Angeles (2011) is a sci-fi/action film from The Asylum, a film studio that specializes in mockbusters.

Directed by Mark Atkins (Alien Origin (2012), Halloween Night (2006)).

Written by Mark Atkins (Dragon Crusaders (2011), Princess of Mars (2009)).

Starring: Nia Peeples, Kel Mitchell, Robert Pike Daniel, Theresa June-Tao, Stephen Blackehart, Dylan Vox, Gerald Webb and others.

To be fair, while no one is stupid enough to pick up 200 M.P.H. instead of Fast Five, here they’re just shameless with the title. It starts with the traditional bad CGI expected from The Asylum, we get some explosions, an alien ship, some airplanes, you know, the stuff that makes a movie great.

Soon we are introduced with some military characters, one of them being Robert Pike Daniel, who just shouts the most cliché military dialogue you can possibly write and then backs it up by blowing up an alien ship by shooting it a few times from a revolver. Some time later, he does this again, but this time it doesn’t explode, letting him take a weapon from it and shoot another spaceship.

It isn’t strictly a Battle: Los Angeles rip-off, it’s mostly just various alien-related movies, for example the alien mothership looks a whole lot like the one in District 9. Of course then they have to push it even further and by adding this absurd subplot about this pilot from 1942, who is oddly unphased by all the weird shit around him.

This might be one of Asylum’s better made films, since the action sometimes makes sense, it looks decent, has some nice shots, before they’re ruined by bad CGI, the acting is also bearable. Actually with this one I got the feeling, they knew what they were making and totally embraced it.

There are a bunch of hilarious scenes, for instance, when the military guys encounter an alien, which looks like it’s made out of garbage bins, they throw a grenade at it, yet this being of extreme intelligence throws it back to one of the guys. What does he do? Run? Oh no, he has the great idea of falling to the ground and rolling 10 feet sideways. Then they decide to push a car as a cover, but fail to ignore the fact that the alien is shooting it from the side.

Nia Peeples has the most awesome entrance imaginable: she jumps off a building, free-falls like 15 stories, then lands on a spaceship stabs it with a katana and then just walks away, while it explodes in the background in slow motion. Obviously revolvers and katanas are extremely effective against those spaceships. Someone should try just punching them.

Then another big moment is when the characters reach some kind of shelter, where there’s a captive alien, so the 40’s pilot just walks up to it, let’s out a high-pitched screech, punches a guy in the throat/ear, glass brakes, he jumps in, pulls in two underground-base-military guys, throws out the alien, jumps out, kills two guys with stretchy Mr. Fantastic arms, spits green goo, is decapitated by Peeples’ katana, only to be revealed as a robot, with some orb robot thing in his head, which everyone starts chasing. Now who the fuck came up with this insanity?

The alien itself is some sort of ET-like gentle creature, who groans, which is understood only by Peeples, who now has an eye-patch. Looks cool with her katana. This is a very diverse movie, the 3 leads are an asian chick, a black guy, and the somewhat latino Nia Peeples.

Overall, I really did enjoy this, probably more than Battle: Los Angeles, which I didn’t think was bad either. As far as The Asylum films go, this is definitely the best you can wish for. Completely cheesy, nonsensical and over-the-top, if that’s your thing, recommended.

Pictured: The most awesome sight, you probably don’t care to see.

Review of 2012: Supernova (2009)

2012: Supernova (2009) is a straight-to-video sci-fi/action/disaster film from The Asylum, a film company specializing primarily in mockbusters.

Directed by Anthony Fankhauser (Gacy House (2010), Shadow People (2011)).

Written by Jon Macy (Merlin and the War of the Dragons (2008), In the Blink of an Eye (2009)), Anthony Fankhauser (Tsunami Beach Club (2008)) and Jon Willis III.

Starring: Brian Krause, Heather McComb, Najarra Townsend, Allura Lee, Alan Poe, Londale Theus, Stephen Schneider and others.

We open to a view of CG outer space, which doesn’t instantly strike your eye as something horrible, since there’s nothing real it interacts with, so it looks like a pretty decent video game cutscene.

The movie stars Brian Krause, who most people, including me know from the TV series Charmed and if you’ve watched it, you can notice he doesn’t have much of a range or screen presence, but still, he’s a pretty big name and a good actor. By The Asylum standards. He is sort of ok, the problem is that he has only one mode – concerned.

I was almost excited that this thing won’t waste any time on exposition, the main characters – Krause, his wife and daughter  just appear and a minute later they’re on the run from someone. Then it slows down for some exposition, but as luck would have it, it’s some nonsensical bullshit. In Asylum movies the plot itself is a MacGuffin.

Somewhere along the way Krause is split up from his wife and daughter. He goes on to do… something in a… „space” facility place. I don’t know.  Krause is multiple times attacked by someone in space facility and I figured it out who it was and even forgot about it and then they brought it back at the end as this major „twist”.

The wife and daughter go home, but are forced to leave on their own separate journey to… somewhere. Yeah, I didn’t pay much attention. And, by the way, the wife and daughter look like they have a very small age difference. She must have been 12 at most when she had her. Krause, you dirty man! This plotline is far more interesting than the boring scenes with Krause’s concerned face and his oddball fellow scientists. Interesting stuff actually happens, they encounter a pervert farmer guy and run from the catastrophe destroying everything, you know, the sort of thing that made 2012 entertaining… and the pervert farmer.

The title suggests it being a rip-off of 2012, but they made 3 different movies under the „2012” title and though they do bear resemblance to various specific movies, the „2012” is just their way of saying „generic  disaster movie”.

Honestly some of the action could be considered half-decent for their budget, but it’s not like it is an „action-packed” movie, we have to sit through painful scenes where they try to pretend it’s not a some low-budget crap sci-fi disaster flick with cliché characters, plot you don’t even want to understand and cringeworthy emotional moments. It follows a strict structure of „action scene – bogus science talk – action – short dramatic scene (probably involving bogus science) – action – bogus science”,  at the end of the day it’s a „nonsensical science-packed” movie.

Overall, it’s a shitty Asylum movie, which is the reason why I watched it, but what I hoped for was some B-grade entertainment value, but what I got was boring bullshit, with some decent action spliced in, that still didn’t make it worth it. Not recommended.

Review of 200 M.P.H. (2011)

200 M.P.H. (2011) is a straight-to-video action/sports/drama movie by The Asylum, a film company specializing primarily in mockbusters.

Directed by Cole S. McKay (Star Hunter (1996), 3 Musketeers (2011)).

Written by Thunder Levin (Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood! (2008), American Warship (2012)).

Starring: Jaz Martin, Hennely Jimenez, Darren Anthony Thomas, Paul Logan, AnnaMaria Demara, Tommy Nash, Janet Tracy Keijser and others.

So here’s The Asylum trying their luck in recreating the magic of the Fast & Furious series. Great, a bad knock-off of movies that I really don’t like in the first place.

A guy parks in a driveway and his brother comes out and says „it’s like an 80,000 dollar car”, no, please be more specific and then he proceeds to list exact specifics of the car. This happens a lot, if a character knows shit about cars, he better list some specs from Wikipedia. This doesn’t make the guys look cool at all, they seem more like nerds. They are less the guy with a greasy engine in his hand and more the guy telling you Star Trek trivia.

I don’t know shit about cars, so I relied on this movie to educate me. Now I know that I would be considered a cool person if my car could do „0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds”. I am willing to bet half of the shit they’re saying is total rubbish.

Ok, so finally we get to some racing. What’s going on? Why is it on fast forward? Oh, god, no, they sped up the footage. They could’ve put it in at normal speed and put like a little note to pop up on screen, that says „now use fast forward x2, because we didn’t know we were supposed to shoot at lower framerate”.

The characters are something. Our main guy is… well… uh, if you found Paul Walker bland, you haven’t seen this guy. His mother is a stripper, but you know who else is a stripper? His girlfriend. Yeah, talk about Oedipal syndrome, huh? At one point he walks into a strip-club and his mother just greets him topless and he’s like „geez, mom”, like it’s some kind of twisted sitcom called „Mom’s a Stripper!” There’s also this corrupt cop, spouting macho lines like „Did I stutter?” and homoerotic poetry like „No, this is me, the man with your balls in my hand!”, which sort of left me feeling unsure if it was meant as a metaphor. Then there’s a chick who does her best Michelle Rodriguez, which made me cringe. I like my Michelle Rodriguez done by Michelle Rodriguez.

No Asylum movie is complete without bad CGI, so here we get a CG car crash. So the main guy’s brother dies during a race and you know what? Boo-fucking-hoo, should I really feel sorry for an illegal street-racer dying? You go out at night and drive like a madman with you’re douchy sports-car, you’re kind of asking for it. The only reason why I felt a bit sorry, was because he was the only character, that I didn’t hate,

At one point a chick crashes her motorbike off-screen, does a roll on the ground and just keeps running. That’s some Catwoman trick right there. The car chases are at times pretty decent, but then they’re destroyed by some sped-up shots and cut-aways to CG-cars.  I must also mention a scene, where the corrupt cop is chasing the main guy, suddenly there’s a CG helicopter after those two cars and it’s not even in the air, it’s like 10 meters of the ground and then it disappears and is never refered to.

This movie is shit, which I totally didn’t expect from a movie produced by The Asylum, directed by some stunt-man and written by a guy, who’s  name is Thunder. Sounded like this is going to be some quality material.

Overall, this is one of the worst The Asylum movies I’ve  seen, it has its over-the-top moments, that are unintentionally hilarious, but mostly it just drags. I hated it, not recommended.

Pictured: A review from Rotten Tomatoes, which is written by a guy, who sounds like every character from this movie. A dorky douchebag.

Review of 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

2-Headed Shark Attack (2012) is a straight-to-video action/horror/sci-fi film, a The Asylum movie, which isn’t a mockbuster, but features a… 2-headed shark.

Directed by Christopher Ray (Almighty Thor (2011), Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus (2010)).

Written by Edward DeRuiter (3 Musketeers (2011)) and H. Perry Horton (A Haunting in Salem (2011)).

Starring: Carmen Electra, Charlie O’Connell, Brooke Hogan, Gerald Webb, Geoff Ward, Tihirah Taliaferro and others.

I love that some movies are so unpretentious that their titles make clear what kind of movie you’re about to see. 2-Headed Shark Attack totally doesn’t make it seem like a complete B-grade trash. And it doesn’t sound like there’s going to be a giant 2-Headed CG shark.

Soon we meet a bunch of college students on a boat and the shark, somehow the absurd CG shark manages to still be more believable than the stupid, over-the-top student characters. We get Hulk Hogan’s daughter as our protagonist and maybe the years on reality television and the other shitty actors help, but she’s kind of ok here, I found her relatively likable, but that is not saying much. There’s even the token nerd, who, as all nerds, knows various useful science facts and, of course, all the other guys find this incredibly hilarious and laugh at him.

Then we get Carmen Elektra giving one of the worst performances of her career and that is saying something, most of the movie she just sunbathes, she’s basically there to look hot as always. Which she does, although now more in a “milf” sort of way. When out of nowhere a scene calls for her to act concerned and it seems she’s never had this emotion before, so the weird expression on her face and frustration in the eyes, makes it really hard to watch and you wish she’d just go back to getting a tan.

They made a clear choice not to endanger their actors by making them be too close to the cartoon shark (with some equally bad practical close-ups of it), so at times they even make people in bad CGI. If you thought TRON: Legacy was tapping into the uncanny valley, don’t worry, this doesn’t have that effect, this comes nowhere near to looking anything human.

20 minutes in you’ve seen a shitload of chicks in bikinis and I began to suspect how they were cast. They were chosen for their natural intelligence, which, with the exception of the one nerdy guy, instantly brings good looks with it. Then suddenly the black chick stereotype with huge knockers says: “You’s a bitch!” and I start doubting my theory.

They pull out this great idea of everything for the 2-headed shark being double, which leads to the nerd coming up with an idea how to save them. Oh, no way, I never thought he’d be there for a reason! I thought they only put him there to disrupt the bunch of very good-looking people. “Who’s laughing now, good looking guys, who don’t know… science? This would be better if they weren’t all dead…”

Overall, it’s a stupid monster-flick, where a bunch of “teenagers” are killed by a huge 2-headed shark, which is 2-headed and has two-fucking-heads! Other than the shark, there’s nothing to the movie, it does take itself a little too seriously, but then again, it’s not trying to spoof this type of movies, but actually is one. Even if you are someone who thinks the title sounds epic, not recommended.

“Don’t worry guys, I’m ok, luckily this head of the shark has pizza slices for teeth!”

Review of Paranormal Entity (2009)

Paranormal Entity (2009) is a straight-to-video horror/mystery/thriller film from The Asylum, a film studio focusing on making “mockbusters”, lower budget versions of mainstream movies.

Directed by Shane Van Dyke (6 Guns (2010), Titanic II (2010)).

Written by Shane Van Dyke (Street Racer (2008), The Day the Earth Stopped (2008)).

Starring: Shane Van Dyke, Erin Marie Hogan, Fia Perera and Norman Saleet.

Although I can’t imagine in this situation, I can see someone looking at a bunch of DVDs at a supermarket and being like “Hey, I want to see some horror, I heard about that ghost movie… um, Paranormal something. Activity? What’s this? Paranormal Entity? That’s it!”, honestly, I think these people deserve their fate.

However, this is one case, where even after watching it, a lot of people might not realize it wasn’t the real thing. Although, Paranormal Activity is a far superior film, the budget of Entity might have been about the same.

Outright the movie starts by saying what happens to the characters in the end. Not a great idea, unless the way we get there is more important and interesting. But they could’ve just added another sentence saying what happens before that. Or they could have condensed it to a single sentence “A family lives in a haunted house until some of them die and shit.” That could even be the tagline.

So we have a mother who doesn’t like what is going on, a son who films the stuff that is going on and a daughter, that has a big rack, which is probably why she was cast in the Katie Fetherstone part. At least the son isn’t a douchebag like Mica.

The acting is ok, not Oscar stuff, but not Troll 2 either. And for some reason there’s a lot of emotional stuff and not enough cheap thrills. I think the movie at times forges it’s an Asylum production. That is not to say there’s not some cool moments, there’s a decent scene involving footprints, this ghost is like Paranormal Activity 3 ghost, not very subtle. At one point the guy goes looking for his sister in the night, after some crazy shit has happened, he sees the ladder to the attic is down and is like “Hey, sister, you there? Oh, you’re not answering? That’s fine I’ll come up anyway, it’s not like the ghost could be fucking with me in the middle of the night.” But his sister is up there. In her underwear. Then in another scene something happens to her in the shower and they rush in, the brother has the camera and all. And just for the sake of it, he lingers a bit on her naked breasts. Way to make me feel weird about looking at boobs.

Then there’s a doctor they’re waiting for and I wonder how is a doctor going to help them. There’s something written by the ghost on their coffee table. Dr. Lauren finally arrives and he turns out to be an exorcist or something. I don’t question he’s a PhD though, because when he sees the word “maron” on the table, he instantly knows it’s meaning and that it is a germanic word.

After the doctor’s arrival it all goes to hell and we see some more nakedness from the sister and all, and it is pretty cool, the ending I mean, not the nakedness. Well, that’s cool too, but… I’ll stop now.

Overall, it’s a decent watch, it’s not great, it’s not awful, it just is. I really hoped for a shitload of jumpscares or something, but was disappointed. It was just mediocre. I don’t know what to do with this. Not recommended, because it lacks what The Asylum’s movies are worth watching for and it lacks the real suspense and scares Paranormal Activityoffers.

Forget about the ghost, creepy exorcist in a turtleneck is more of a problem now.

Review of I Am Omega (2007)

I Am Omega (2007) is a direct-to-DVD zombie apocalypse/action/drama film, produced by The Asylum, a company specializing in mockbusters. It may also be considered a unoffical adaptation of the novel I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson.

Directed by Griff Furst (Lake Placid 3 (2010), Wolvesbayne (2009)), yes, also the director of the previously reviewed 100 Million BC (2008).

Written by Geoff Meed (Universal Soldiers (2007), 6 Guns (2010)), who works mostly as an actor and plays the main villain of this film.

Starring: Mark Dacascos, Geoff Meed, Jennifer Lee Wiggins, Ryan Lloyd.

You might be wondering about the title, it’s just a combination of two other adaptations the same novel. One is The Omega Man (1971) and the other is I Am Legend (2007), which this movie is trying to cash in on, but I wouldn’t call it a total rip-off. It even came out a month before the Will Smith version.

The script is the worst part of the movie, because the plot is incredibly thin. There’s no explanation for the zombie plague, it spends a lot of time on showing the main character being alone and doing things without explaining them either. That part actually sort of calls back to the novel. He also keeps hallucinating. Then it continues on with the main story which doesn’t make much sense when logic is applied. For example, the main character decides to blow up a whole city for no real reason by using unconvincing amount of explosives.

The acting is decent, Mark Dacascos isn’t the most expressive actor, but he does know martial arts and is a fairly acceptable action hero, being at his best when beating up zombies using a nunchaku and worst when unconvincingly delivering the cliché lines, written by the easily best actor (not much of an accomplishment there) in the movie, Geoff Meed. Meed is playing this buff asshole military guy (with a very peculiar motivation and a strange idea on about its execution), which seems like something Ron Perlman would play in a bigger movie. Both Wiggins and Lloyd are ok.

Since it is a The Asylum production my expectations were very low, but it actually turned out to be not anywhere near as bad as I thought it would, it is a low-budget film, so I can forgive the zombie make-up not being that great or the awful CG explosions, but there’s also good things. The cinematography is rather beautiful, at times even it being shot in HD video looks really impressive and it has some of these things that work in B-movies, like fist or nunchaku fights with zombies, it also does enough practical effects and the CG backdrops aren’t painful to see.

It is not a good movie, but I did for some reason enjoy it. With The Asylum you expect these entertaining, so-bad-it’s-good films, but in this there isn’t much action until about a halfway in. It lingers on the loneliness and the borderline insanity of the main character, seemingly trying to actually add substance to a B-movie plot.

I do recommend this if an I Am Legend’s mockbuster version sounds interesting to you. It is a very mediocre movie. Watch at your own risk. And if you want to see a better, more faithful adaptation of the novel, watch The Last Man On Earth (1964).

"Hey, man, want to buy my long-sleeve authentic zombie shirt?"

Review of 100 Million BC (2008)

100 Million BC (2008) is a direct-to-DVD sci-fi/action film from the infamous film studio The Asylum, which specializes in low-budget mockbusters.

Directed by Griff Furst (I Am Omega, Swamp Shark).

Written by Paul Bales (2010: Moby Dick, Sherlock Holmes (no, not the Robert Downey Jr. one)).

Starring: Michael Gross, Christopher Atkins, Dean Kreyling, Marie Westbrook, Stephen Blackehart and others.

Oh, Asylum, you bastard child of cheap CGI and bad actors, how much pain does your movies inflict on humanity.

To be fair, I don’t hate The Asylum just because they’re trying to get some cash from being associated with better movies. I understand they want to make cheap sci-fi/horror/action films with awful special effects and a compilation of has-beens and C-grade actors and ripping off Hollywood movies is just their gimmick. This is a company that produces a lot of “so bad it’s good” movies, so I don’t have a problem with that.

This one definitely is in the “bad” teritory, but doesn’t quite reach the little spot of “good” at the bottom of the barrel.

Despite what you might think hearing the title, the characters actually travel to the year 70,000,000 BC to rescue a research team.

This rescue mission is led by Dr. Frank Reno played by Michael Gross. It was so sad to see him in this, but I guess you can’t live just on Tremors fame. He does a good job, but sadly he’s not as bad-ass as I’m used to seeing him.

Christopher Atkins was ok, and the others of the research team were bearable, but there was one hilariously bad performance. That was Stephen Blackehart. I haven’t seen him in any other movies, but I’ve seen some of his demo reels with clips of him in different stuff and it seems that his main thing is doing bad accents and passing it as acting. And in this one he is this hardcore military guy, who enjoys saying “fuck” to make everything he says intense. It’s incredibly funny and painful to watch at the same time.

Of course that is nothing compared to how torturing is the sight of CG dinosaurs and green-screen effects. I could make a cardboard cut-out of a velociraptor and run around with it behind the characters and it would look less out-of-place than these abominations they’ve created. On the other hand they don’t seem pretentious about it and I think they fully realize how bad it looks, also it’s pretty much a part of the mockbuster charm. Still with this I can let it go and pretend the CG stuff is actually there with a lot less difficulty, than Michael Bay tries to stuff his cartoonish transformers down my throat as something realistic looking.

I would recommend watching this with a bunch of friends, while heavily drinking, there’s plenty to laugh about. But it’s not a good movie in any possible way, I found it entertaining only until they return back to present. So yeah, not recommended, it is awful, but definitely not one of the worst movies ever.

Oh, and this movie has the funniest FAQ section on IMDb.com I’ve ever read. For example: “Is time travel safe? Yes, unless you are black.” You can find it here.

Honestly, this is the best looking thing in the movie.