The Asylum is a studio with close ties to bad movies. It is one of the biggest forces behind modern
b-movies. They have carved out a place
in the mainstream by releasing mockbusters and movies such as the Sharknado franchise. People know their movies. People watch there movies. The Asylum has released movies of many
different types over their long history.
Not many people watch outside of the mainstream movies, however. They don’t know about these other areas that
The Asylum has worked in.
I want to look at the different types of movies that The
Asylum releases. There are movies that
people might not know about because they only know the two main kinds of output
from the studio. Some of these types
might cross into one another depending on the specific movie, but there are clear
cut movie types that The Asylum puts out.
Let’s start with the biggest and most well-known.
Mockbusters
The bread and butter of The Asylum is their long line of
mockbuster films. The term mockbuster covers
movie rip-offs of blockbuster films meant to make a quick buck. They tend to be titled to cause confusion for
people seeking something to watch. Say
you were thinking of watching Pacific Rim. You scroll through Netflix looking for
it. You stumble upon Atlantic Rim, thinking it’s the same
thing. You turn it on and discover that
you turned on an Asylum knock-off.
That’s what a mockbuster is.
I’ve covered mockbusters throughout the Sunday “Bad”
Movies. Not all of them were Asylum. Metal
Man was a knock-off of Iron Man. It wasn’t Asylum. I’ve seen a few Asylum mockbusters over the
three years I’ve been writing these posts.
It all started with Rise of the
Zombies, which was a knock-off of The
Walking Dead. There were people hiding
in a prison while zombies walked around outside. It’s a basic riff on the third season of the
television show. It was even originally
titled Dead Walking.
I’m a fan of mockbusters and rip-offs. I agree that they are cheap maneuvers to cash
in on people who pay little attention to what they are trying to watch. But something about them gets me
curious. I want to see how they rip off
the material. That and the fact that
there are actual decent ones out there that do their own thing. The
Avengers Grimm was The Asylum’s take on the Avengers movies. Instead of
putting superheroes together in a team to fight a supervillain, the movie took
fairy tale heroines and had them fight against Rumpelstiltskin. This one choice actually made the mockbuster
as interesting as the blockbuster it was ripping off. It is an action movie led by a team of
women. This is something that few of the
big studios in Hollywood are willing to do.
That’s why I like mockbusters.
Sometimes they come at me with something like that.
Animal Attack Movies
Back when I watched 2-Headed
Shark Attack, I covered this concept.
Animal attack movies are pretty straight forward. There are animals and the animals attack
humans. Many of these movies play out
like slashers; a group of people gets picked off one by one through vicious
animal attacks. Sometimes there are
marine animals. Sometimes the animals
are insects. All that an animal attack
movie needs is an animal that attacks. It
could be hamsters. Whatever floats your
boat.
I’ve already mentioned that the Sharknado franchise is what helped to make The Asylum a popular
studio. But what about other animal
attack movies that they’ve released? 2-Headed Shark Attack got covered near
the beginning of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
I covered the sequel, 3-Headed
Shark Attack earlier this year.
Those two movies took your typical shark attack movie formula and put
the Asylum stamp on them. There were
more heads on the sharks, female scientists and welders, Danny Trejo and Carmen
Electra, and bad effects.
Animal attack movies can be very entertaining and very
good. Steven Spielberg made his career
on an animal attack movie. Jaws is seen as the birth of the typical
summer blockbuster. It’s a movie about a
shark attacking people and the trio of men who head out to stop it. It may be the best animal attack movie to
have ever been made, and it’s a movie that I enjoy every time I watch it. Actually, scratch that. Spielberg topped that with Jurassic Park. I love Jurassic
Park.
Weather Movies
These movies tend to be disaster movies. There is something about weather that feels bigger
than other destructive forces in movies.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes have created disastrous
situations in movies for years. In a
weather movie, the villain is weather.
There might be a human villain, undermining the actions of the
protagonist(s), but weather is the biggest threat. In many cases, these movies have ensemble
casts. The reasoning behind it might be
to get different perspectives on how the weather is affecting the world. Or it could just be to get some interesting
characters into the situation.
Some of the biggest movies in this category include Twister (my personal favourite), Dante’s Peak, The Day After Tomorrow, and San
Andreas. I named those movies
because they cover different types of weather.
Respectively, those are tornadoes, volcanoes, cold, and
earthquakes. The Asylum has been known
to get into weather movies. Sharknado was a cross between an animal
attack movie and a weather movie. It
featured shark tornadoes. They’ve made
other weather movies as well. Metal Tornado and 500MPH Storm have tackled tornadoes even more for them. They seem to be obsessed with tornadoes,
actually.
It’s easy to enjoy a weather based movie. As I’ve already said, they tend to have
ensemble casts. This gives a wide
variety of characters. If you don’t like
the hero, you can like their significant other.
If that’s not who you want to root for, there’s the nerdy guy. There’s the cool guy, the goofball, and the
jerk as well. Every audience member will
have someone to entertain them. They
will have someone to worry about when the storm rolls in. The effects are the other thing to enjoy with
a weather movie. Studios try to bring
their A game with these movies. They
make the natural disasters look the best they can (which isn’t great for The
Asylum). They try to make them look like
a real threat, while also being fun.
Faith Films
In 2008, The Asylum branched out into religion. They took the typical Asylum fare
(mockbusters) and made them family friendly and faith based. It was a niche audience that the studio was
trying to capture with this venture. It
never quite took off. According to their
website, they’ve only put out 9 movies under this brand, the last one in
2013. It looks like The Asylum gave up
on Faith Films.
The first six movies released by Faith Films were related to
religion. The most notable was the 2008
mockbuster Sunday School Musical, if
only because it ripped off High School
Musical. Following these movies were
three family films centered on animals.
There haven’t been any movies released by Faith Films since 2013’s Alone for Christmas. I haven’t seen any of the Faith Films
productions.
Religion based films are tough to talk about. It is impossible to narrow them down to a
specific type. There are movies about
religious experiences and movies about the bible. There are movies that tell a religious story
in a non-religious way. And there are
movies that use religion to tell a different story. Religion plays a large part in horror with
angels and demons and possessions and such.
There are many directions to go with religion. Each has their good and bad moments.
Sex Comedies
There is a whole subsection in the filmography of The Asylum
devoted to sex comedies. These are
movies normally geared towards young men.
They feature busty women in minimal clothing, many times getting naked. There aren’t too many special effects, though
they have crossed into other genre territory and required effects. That said, they primarily survive on laughs
and titillation. That’s what sex
comedies are.
The Asylum has been pumping these things out regularly for a
few years. Movies like MILF and 18 Year Old Virgin play up the sexual aspects in their titles,
giving people a quick idea of what the movie is. One that I’ve covered, and the only one I’ve
seen thus far, is The Coed and the Zombie
Stoner. It took sorority girls and
mixed them in with zombies and stoner humour.
The Asylum was trying to capture a few demographics with that one.
Sex comedies can end up being great, and a representation of
their generation. Porky’s was the pinnacle of sex comedies for years, and might still
hold the title. The late 1990s saw the American Pie franchise take the sex
comedy torch and run with it. Sex Drive attempted to take that place
in 2008, but is mostly forgotten now.
For teenage males, sex comedies are a fixture in their lives. I grew up with the American Pie movies and Eurotrip
in my life. I’m not sure what the
sex comedies of this generation are. The
Asylum is pumping them out, though, so that could be where to find them.
These five types of movies cover most of what The Asylum has
produced during their twenty year existence.
David Michael Latt has produced great movies for each of those
categories, and some stinkers along the way.
The Asylum has also produced a television show called Z-Nation that is in response to the
success of The Walking Dead. Yes, they tackled The Walking Dead multiple times.
The question of this post is “Where does The Beast of Bray Road fit into The
Asylum’s filmography?” Before I answer
that question, you’ll need to know what The
Beast of Bray Road is.
Released in 2005, The
Beast of Bray Road was about mysterious monster related deaths in a small
town. Most of the attacks happened near
Bray Road. Phil Jenkins (Jeff Denton) is
a new police officer in the town, and he suspects that something is killing
people, while everyone else thinks the missing residents will show up
later. When urban legend hunter Quinn
McKenzie (Thomas Downey) shows up, they work together to take down what they
discover is a werewolf.
As you might be able to tell, that was not a
mockbuster. It’s not ripping off any big
movies released around that time. It’s a
simple werewolf story. It doesn’t
involve the weather, faith, or sex comedy.
But a werewolf is an animal, albeit a mythical animal. I would consider this to be one of The
Asylum’s animal attack movies.
The Beast of Bray Road
was made before The Asylum became what they are known for, so it is missing
many of their tropes. It isn’t filled
with terrible CG effects. There isn’t
that token female scientist/doctor. It’s
not a mockbuster. It’s simply a solid
little horror movie from a studio just starting to find its footing. It was a promising show of talent that later
blossomed into entertaining modern b-movies.
The Asylum might not be a studio making movies for
everyone. For fans of b-movies, they are
an endless fountain of entertainment.
They’ve made classics that will be cherished by bad movie lovers for
years to come. They’ve delved into
various genres and styles. They’ve
broken into the mainstream. They are a
part of history.
These notes are not a part of history:
- The Beast of Bray Road was suggested by @AndyZach.
- Asylum movies I’ve covered prior to this one are: 2-Headed Shark Attack, Rise of the Zombies, Snakes on a Train, Paranormal Entity, Nazis at the Center of the Earth, Bermuda Tentacles, The Coed and the Zombie Stoner, Transmorphers, and 3-Headed Shark Attack.
- I also mentioned Metal Man in this post.
- There were four actors in The Beast of Bray Road who were also in Transmorphers. They were Jeff Denton, Thomas Downey, Eliza Swenson, and Noel Thurman.
- The director of The Beast of Bray Road, Leigh Scott, also directed Transmorphers.
- Have you seen The Beast of Bray Road? Have you seen any other Asylum movies? What do you think of The Asylum? What categories did I miss for their movies? Discuss this post in the comments below.
- The comments are also a good place to suggest movies for me to watch in the future. This movie was suggested to me three years ago, so it goes to show that I get around to them eventually. You could always find me on Twitter and tell me there, too.
- If you want to see clips of some of the bad movies I watch, follow me on snapchat. I’m there under the name jurassicgriffin.
- Next week’s movie is Fatal Deviation, a low budget Irish action movie. I can say that I didn’t understand half of the dialogue when I watched it, so this will be an interesting movie to write about. I’ll see you with a post next time.
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