Sinister Squad (2016) and The Asylum Putting Twists on Mockbusters

The Asylum is a name that anybody who knows bad movies will recognize. They made a name for themselves with a few types of cheap movies. They put out numerous creature features, many of which ended up on SyFy or whatever iteration of that channel was going at the time. The Sharknado movies are an example of that. The Asylum has also put out numerous low-budget horror flicks and sex comedies over the years. What made them into the studio they are, however, is their frequent production of mockbusters.

A mockbuster is a pretty simple idea that I’ve gone over many times before. I’ve seen enough of them for Sunday “Bad” Movies to know by now. A big studio (usually) will release a major blockbuster property. Another studio, much smaller than that big one, will throw together something that seems similar on the outside to try and cash in on the potential success of that major flick. Usually, the name will sound close enough to cause confusion for less informed viewers. Something like Mission: Impossible could become Mission: Not Possible. I don’t know if that one is real, but it could easily be. The quickly thrown together rip-off gets released around the same time as the big budget flick, and the small studio rakes in some of the overflow profit.

The Asylum grew out of a series of mockbuster flicks. There were a handful of flicks before the mockbusters began, but once they tapped into that market, people really began to recognize them. They became known as the studio that made the direct-to-video knock-offs filling rental store shelves. You know, for the maybe seven years between the rise of The Asylum and the agonizing death of rental stores. They also found their way onto streaming services, further confusing people who wanted to find something quick to turn on after staring at the menu of movies for half an hour.

As I mentioned a little earlier, I’ve seen a bunch of The Asylum’s mockbusters for Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’ve also seen a bunch of them outside watching movies for the blog. Some of them were better than others, taking the basic idea of another movie and running with it. They added their own twist, beyond the usual bad effects and insanity. Something magical happened. Here are five, technically seven, mockbusters from The Asylum that I thought put interesting spins on the material.

Sinister Squad and Avengers Grimm

This week’s movie is Sinister Squad. Alice (Christina Licciardi) was part of a government agency that also included Goldilocks (Lindsay Sawyer) and Piper (Isaac Reyes). They were tasked with capturing various fairy tale villains. With the help of Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Aaron Moses, in a dual role), they captured the likes of Rumpelstiltskin (Johnny Rey Diaz), Bluebeard (Trae Ireland), and the Big Bad Wolf (Joseph Michael Harris). While trying to capture the witch Carabosse (Fiona Rene), they discovered that Death was trying to break free of the Underworld and take over Earth. They needed the help of the captured villains to stop that from happening.

Clearly, Sinister Squad was a mockbuster of Suicide Squad, the DC supervillains movie. It was about a group of villains that were brought together to take down a bigger evil. The government was pulling a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sort of tactic to take down the baddest bad guy. The Asylum couldn’t use DC characters, though. They didn’t have the rights to those characters. Thus, they chose to go the public domain route. They took villains from popular fairy tales and placed them into the squad, instead. Rumpelstiltskin was there. Big Bad Wolf was there. Even Gelda (Talia A Davis), the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, made an appearance.

The use of fairy tale characters in the place of the comic book villains brought everything together in a cohesive way, giving a better vision than some other mockbusters. It felt like the writers were actually trying for something beyond ripping off another film. The same could be said for The Avengers Grimm, which took The Avengers and replaced the superheroes with fairy tale heroes. It was the same idea and, again, felt like it had a decent vision behind it.

Dead 7

One of the more recent inclusions in Sunday “Bad” Movies was Dead 7, a mockbuster take on Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, Battle Beyond the Stars, or the numerous other versions of that story. A few small western towns were overrun with zombies. One of the last towns decided they were going to stop the zombie attacks once and for all. They hired a team of the best gunslingers in the area to take down the woman sending zombies their way. Some of those gunslingers would not return.

The Asylum did another take on a classic western back when they produced 6 Guns, but it was Dead 7 that went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to being a mockbuster. It could have easily been a rip-off of The Magnificent Seven, with zombies instead of bandits. It could have left it at that and been the standard mockbuster fare. However, the casting changed things. The casting brought in a bunch of people from popular boy bands and placed them into the main roles. There were people from Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, O-Town, and 98 Degrees involved. It became a nostalgia-fest for anyone who listened to those groups growing up. It was more than a quick rehash of a classic story.

Utilizing members of boy bands showed the effort that the filmmakers put into Dead 7. They could have taken some of the regulars of The Asylum. People like Hayley Derryberry and Gerald Webb could have had major roles alongside one or two past-their-prime stars like Jamie Kennedy or Reginald VelJohnson. That’s how most movies from The Asylum are cast. Yet Dead 7 took the time to carefully consider the cast and put a whole bunch of boy band members into nearly every leading role. Sure, it helped that Nick Carter was a producer. Still… It was nice to see something different happen in the casting process.

3 Musketeers

The Three Musketeers is part of a series of novels that also include The Man in the Iron Mask and has been in the public domain for many years. That’s why so many adaptations of the tale have been made. If someone wants to make an adaptation, they can. Anyone can. The Asylum made their adaptation to coincide with the big budget studio Three Musketeers flick that was being directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. The two films couldn’t be any more different.

Where the Anderson flick created a sort of steampunk world in which the story was told, The Asylum took a much different approach. They set their film in the present day. The titular musketeers were spies trying to stop cyber terrorists. Their codenames were Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. They were joined by a newer agent, nicknamed D’Artagnan. It was all the elements of The Three Musketeers, placed in a modern cyber-security setting with espionage and guns.

The updated setting of 3 Musketeers made the story feel fresh again. It wasn’t simply another movie where four guys sword-fought their way to taking down Cardinal Richelieu and his agent, Rochefort. They were still going to try and take the villains down. It just wasn’t the same period-setting sword-fighting story. It was modernized in a way that I haven’t seen in any other adaptation. Even the Paul W.S. Anderson version, which added steampunk elements, still felt classic. Steampunk does that. It feels classic and futuristic all at once. 3 Musketeers felt like it was in the now, which made it stand out among other versions of the tale.

8213: Gacy House and 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck

Here’s another two-for. Both movies kind of cover the same ground in terms of why I think they are some of the more interesting mockbusters from The Asylum. They were both made to cash in on the success of Paranormal Activity and its sequels. They weren’t as obvious about it as Paranormal Entity was, but they were still found footage haunted house movies released to coincide with the Paranormal Activity franchise, so they still count as mockbusters.

The big difference is that the Paranormal Activity films are complete fiction. The entire story, the full lore, was made up by the people writing the screenplays. They came up with the story. They created the villain. They built out the history from their own minds. 8213: Gacy House and 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck were fiction as well. The stories of the people investigating the houses were complete fiction. Yet, there was a little bit of reality pulled into them by using real murderers.

8213: Gacy House involved a group of investigators as they spent time in the house that John Wayne Gacy owned. This opened the story to be about a historical person rather than a fictional entity stalking people. It grounded the film in the real world, giving viewers an opportunity to connect with the threat a little more. The same went for 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck, which used the ghost of Richard Speck as the villainous entity. Knowing that the entities in these movies were real people who committed horrific acts could make things more frightening for viewers. In turn, it made the movies more interesting than simple rip-offs to a popular found footage franchise.

Nazis at the Center of the Earth

This one is a little different than The Asylum intentionally doing something to set the movie apart from what it was ripping off. Nazis at the Center of the Earth was a take on Iron Sky, the movie about Nazis thriving and surviving on The Moon. The difference was that this one took place in a Hollow Earth type of situation. That might not sound that interesting. All the filmmakers did was go from the sky above to the ground below. They didn’t try anything new with the story. They simply changed the location.

The strange thing was that it predicted the Iron Sky sequel. Iron Sky: The Coming Race involved people travelling into a Hollow Earth to find a power source that could help them survive on another planet. It was utilizing the same Hollow Earth setting that Nazis at the Center of the Earth featured. It was a fulfilled prophecy from The Asylum. Where they thought that their change of setting would set them far enough apart from the hyped Iron Sky, they ended making a movie that shared some major story elements with the sequel. It was unintentional foreshadowing.

That’s not to say that the movie itself was interesting. Nazis at the Center of the Earth was very middle-ground for The Asylum. It did, luckily, feature a rocking end credits song by Jake Busey’s band Sons of the Lawless. It had that much going for it. The most interesting thing, though, was the way it fumbled into predicting the sequel to the movie it was ripping off.

So there are five, or seven, mockbusters by The Asylum that ended up being more interesting than they deserved to be. Each of the mockbusters was the result of ripping off a major motion picture that was getting a wide release in theaters. In most cases, they leave the mockbusters at that. They’re typically a lazy attempt to cash in on the potential success of something else. In some cases, the movies become more than that. They become something that can stand on its own to be an entertaining piece of b-movie fare.

The Asylum has been making movies for two decades now, and they don’t seem to be slowing down. Their mockbusters made them famous, but they’ve found success in other genres as well. Creature features like Sharknado and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus have become staples in people’s bad movie watching repertoire. The Asylum solidified their place in people’s hearts through their work in the b-movie genre. Whether the effort was there or not, the movies became fan favourites. Are they really that bad if that’s the case?

It’s time for some notes:

• Movies mentioned in this post included Dead 7 (week 442), 6 Guns (week 247), 3 Musketeers (week 384), 8213: Gacy House (week 60), 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (week 60), Paranormal Entity (week 60), Nazis at the Center of the Earth (week 73), Iron Sky (week 440), Iron Sky: The Coming Race (week 440), Sharknado (week 190), and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (week 300).
• Nick Principe made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Sinister Squad. He was previously seen in The Summer of Massacre (week 26) and Lavalantula (week 290).
• Have you seen Sinister Squad? What did you think of it? Have you seen any of the mockbusters I mentioned? Have you seen any others? Have you seen anything else from The Asylum? Illuminate me with your thoughts in the comments. Or we could converse on Twitter.
• If there’s a movie you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can also use Twitter and the comments to let me know what the movie is. I’m open to almost any suggestions. And I’ll mention you if I watch it. Unless you suggested it when I had the giant list of suggestions that I lost when I lost my old computer. Then I’m sorry for not mentioning you. I’ll try my best, though.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram, keeping the bad movie fun going all week long. Check it out.
• Okay. Next week should be interesting. I’m going a little older with the movie. By older, I mean the 1970s. 1976, to be specific. I’m not entirely sure what to expect out of this one. It’s a movie in the “best of the worst” box set I bought a couple years ago. It’s called Track of the Moon Beast, and I’m going into this without any idea of what I’m getting myself into. I’ll see you next week with my thoughts.