The Asylum has been part of my movie-watching diet for over a decade. If you know how long I’ve been doing Sunday “Bad” Movies, you’ll notice that a decade is longer than this blog has been around. That’s because I’ve been watching movies from The Asylum longer than I’ve been writing these posts. I came into the blog already having some history with the production company known mostly for their mockbusters and bad television animal attack movies. This was before Sharknado made them a household name. When I discovered The Asylum, they were confusing people on movie store shelves.
That all said, I made sure to include The Asylum in Sunday “Bad” Movies when I started writing. They didn’t come into the schedule immediately. It took a few weeks for them to get into my watch-and-write list. Even then, it wasn’t a sure thing. I originally used polls to determine what I would watch. I’d toss three movies in there, people would choose, and I’d have my movie for the next week. 2-Headed Shark Attack just happened to win one of those early on, and The Asylum was in.
This week was another movie from The Asylum, one of the sequels to that first one that made it into the blog. 5-Headed Shark Attack was the third movie in the franchise, following 2-Headed Shark Attack and 3-Headed Shark Attack. A group of marine students working at an aquarium in Puerto Rico teamed up with their boss and the aquarium owner to track down a four-headed shark that was terrorizing the area. They soon discovered that the only way to stop the shark was to kill it and teamed up with the local police to do so.
5-Headed Shark Attack was your basic movie from The Asylum. It had the bad effects. It had the female scientist. It had the crane/drone/helicopter shot that looked much simpler than they probably intended it to be. All it was missing was the former big star, no longer getting major roles in more mainstream projects. I guess Chris Bruno might count, but his biggest role on IMDb was a supporting role in the television adaptation of The Dead Zone. I’m not sure many people even remember that being a thing.
Now, I don’t have too much to say about 5-Headed Shark Attack, specifically. It was a standard shark movie produced by The Asylum. The two movies before this in the franchise were better. All it really had going for it was Red (Chris Bruno), the street-smart, or should I say water-smart, boat captain who led the charge to kill the shark. Even then, he felt like a lesser version of a character that was in Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus. So, yeah, very standard Asylum-produced creature feature.
What 5-Headed Shark Attack made me ponder, though, were the many actors who made frequent appearances in the movies from The Asylum. That was inspired by an actress named Lindsay Sawyer. She played Cait, one of the marine biology students at the aquarium. She looked familiar to me, so I looked her up, only to discover she was in Sinister Squad, an Asylum movie I wrote about last summer when The Suicide Squad came out. Looking at her credits, she was in one other movie from The Asylum, putting her at three. That’s nowhere near the top of the list, but it got me thinking. Who was in the most Asylum movies?
My curiosity got the better of me. I knew that Lindsay Sawyer wouldn’t be the most frequent actor in Asylum movies. She was only in three of them and I already knew other actors who made more appearances. The itch scratched at my brain hard enough that I had to relieve the irritation. I had to find out. I started with bigger name actors I knew had repeat Asylum roles.
The first actor that popped into my head was one who I always associate with The Asylum, even though he was from a famous acting family. Shane Van Dyke came into the production company as a performer in a prequel to one of their mockbusters. Transmorhpers: Fall of Man was released to coincide with the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It was his way of getting his foot in the door, and it led to his directing three movies right in a row. Paranormal Entity, 6 Guns, and Titanic II would follow his initial appearance. Then he went off to write Chernobyl Diaries, not a movie from The Asylum, and that would be it for his time with the company.
Those four movies were not enough to ease my mind. Shane Van Dyke had more than Lindsay Sawyer. She only had three. But there have been over two hundred movies produced by The Asylum. There were directors who directed more than four movies for The Asylum. Hell, there were franchises that ran more than four movies. There was no way that Shane Van Dyke was in the most movies produced by The Asylum. I had to go deeper. That search would continue with other, bigger names.
The big names continued coming to me quickly. They were the people I knew more than others. Lance Henriksen. How many was he in? I knew The Da Vinci Treasure and Pirates of Treasure Island. That was only two. Surely, that was not enough. How about his The Da Vinci Treasure co-star, C. Thomas Howell? He was in at least five of them. Two War of the Worlds movies, The Da Vinci Treasure, The Day the Earth Stopped, and The Land That Time Forgot. Or maybe it was Casper Van Dien. I knew the guy directed movies for The Asylum. But how many was he in? 500 MPH Storm, Sleeping Beauty, and Avengers Grimm. Only three. Not enough.
Now, you’re probably wondering why the Sharknado movies haven’t come up yet. Ian Ziering and Tara Reid were in all six of them. That puts them at six Asylum movies each. Fair. That is a very fair point. That’s more than anyone so far. C. Thomas Howell only got up to five and six is one more than that. I didn’t think of them immediately because I knew they had six Asylum movies each. I didn’t think they were in any more than those six, so I not even considering them because. That was their cap for me. With the other people, I thought there was a chance of more movies. There was not. Aside from one person.
The last big name I noticed in a bunch of movies from The Asylum was Eric Roberts. The guy recently made a push to be in anything that people asked him to be in. For that reason, he made it into seven of The Asylum’s movies. I had not seen any of them. His time with the company began in 2019 with Monster Island and the partnership was still going as recently as last year with Megaboa. Perhaps I’ll get to his movies at some point. That’s not why I got into this post, though. I was looking for what person had been in the most Asylum movies. Eric Roberts was in seven. That wasn’t even one in twenty. Maybe the big names weren’t the way to go.
I had to go another level down. The big names who might not be the big mainstream stars now, but still have name recognition… They weren’t going to be at the top of the list. They used The Asylum as a stepping-stone to get their careers back on track. Sort of. They stepped back into the more mainstream movies, at least for the time being. I needed to go with the people that weren’t big names before. I needed to go with the people I recognized for multiple Asylum movies without knowing them for other things.
That part of the list began and ended with Gerald Webb. He was the one guy I recognized in enough movies by The Asylum that I actually learned his name. He would come in, play an important role, not the main role, and exit the movie. Sometimes he would be an important death, in that Agent Coulson sort of way. The first time I saw him in one of The Asylum movies was in the first of their movies that I saw, Battle of Los Angeles. But his career with the company went much deeper than that.
Gerald Webb was featured in four movies that were a part of Sunday “Bad” Movies. That was more than Casper Van Dien or Lance Henriksen (Asylum movies, not Sunday “Bad” Movies appearances), the same amount as Shane van Dyke (again, Asylum movies), and only one less than C. Thomas Howell (you know the drill by now). Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, 3 Musketeers, 2-Headed Shark Attack, and Sharknado 2: The Second One. And that was only the movies covered for the blog. I also saw him in Titanic II, Battle of Los Angeles, and Android Cop. If we stopped there, he’d be tied with Eric Roberts. Guess what? There were more!
In total, Gerald Webb was in sixteen different movies by The Asylum. That was more than double anyone I looked into at that point. How did I know the number of movies? While I was thinking about Gerald Webb’s filmography, I put all the movies by The Asylum into a program. [Quick edit: I have since found out that the list I used was not a complete list so the numbers may be off]. The program collected the cast list of each movie and was able to tell me how many movies a specific actor had been in. This was the same program I used to get the stats for the notes for Sunday “Bad” Movies. Anyway, he ended up being in more movies than any of the bigger names. He was also in more movies than director Leigh Scott (11), director Dylan Vox (13), and Audrey Latt (13), a person I assumed was related to The Asylum’s head, David Michael Latt. I was close to the actor with the most appearances in The Asylum’s productions, but I wasn’t quite there.
Right above Gerald Webb was someone I should have looked at a little sooner. Kim Little was an actress from Diagnosis Murder, a show that also featured… Shane Van Dyke. Yes, the same Shane Van Dyke I mentioned earlier. Well, most Van Dykes were on that show. It was a Van Dyke show. Anyway, Kim Little didn’t only have that Shane Van Dyke connection. She was also married to David Michael Latt. I should have realized that connection and checked her appearances.
Kim Little appeared in seventeen movies for The Asylum, one more than Gerald Webb. She made her first appearance in Scarecrow Slayer, one of the pre-mockbuster movies the production company made. She also made an early Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Rise of the Zombies. She lent her voice to some of the animated movies from The Asylum and even got to step into a Sharknado movie. Yes, her roles in various Asylum productions might be a little bit of nepotism. It’s Hollywood, after all. Nepotism happens all the time. I should have noticed it earlier. If I had, I would have been one step closer to the top actor. I would have scratched that itch that was gnawing at my brain.
She wasn’t the top actor, though. There were two other people who managed to make it into more Asylum movies than Kim Little. First up was a woman named Tammy Klein. I looked for a while but couldn’t find any connections that she had to David Michael Latt or David Rimawi (the other co-founder and producer for The Asylum). She was a jet engine mechanic for the air force before going into an acting career. She went to school for chemistry and criminalistics. There was something involving nursing. She didn’t quite stand out as a candidate for top Asylum actor. Yet, she somehow squeaked into second place. Maybe there was something I missed in my minimal research.
Tammy Klein’s first role for The Asylum was in the 2010 film MILF. Since then, she pounded out the roles for the company with about two a year. Well, a little less than that. She made a total of eighteen appearances, with the most recent being Planet Dune, released last year to coincide with Dune. I bet you didn’t see that coming. In all my watching of The Asylum’s movies, I only managed to see her thrice, in Little Dead Rotting Hood, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, and The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time. Maybe it was fair that I didn’t know she was in that many until now. I hadn’t seen her too often.
Finally, after plugging in all the movies [again, I know now that my list was incomplete], after leaping past the known Gerald Webb, the wife Kim Little, and the surprise Tammy Klein, I got to the top. There was one person left. There was a guy whose name I recognized, but whose face I couldn’t quite pin down. I had only seen him in a couple things. His name still stuck in my head. This was a guy who went by Jonathan Nation.
Jonathan Nation first started with The Asylum in 2008. He was in the 2012 mockbuster, 2012: Doomsday. It was the beginning of a long career he would have with The Asylum. Over the following fourteen years, he would appear in a total of twenty movies. If you had seen every movie from The Asylum, you might still not recognize him. He sometimes had a beard. Other times, he didn’t. He looked like a completely different person when his facial hair came and went.
I never really noticed Jonathan Nation. Sure, I had seen the name before. He was in some of the Asylum movies I had seen. He was in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and 6 Guns. But I never would have been able to pin him down. Maybe if I had seen all twenty of the Asylum movies he was in, I would have known to think of him while trying to figure out who had been in the most Asylum productions. I had only seen the two, though, which didn’t tell me much. My point of reference for the most was Gerald Webb, simply because I had seen him in the most.
The list of most Asylum appearances was far from over. However, this would be the end for now. It included all the Asylum productions [that my list included] until this point. The thing was, The Asylum was always releasing new movies. They always had something in production. Finding the most frequent actor was only going to be relevant at that point in time. At this point in time. With new movies added, other actors would have their appearances boosted. Who was to say that Jonathan Nation would remain at the top? I wouldn’t say that. Eric Roberts made his first appearance with The Asylum in 2019 and he was already at seven movies. Give him the same amount of time as Jonathan Nation and he could easily get to the same numbers. There’s no saying who would top the list in a year, or two, or five. The list could be completely different.
I began this journey to find the most frequent Asylum actor because of Lindsay Sawyer. She played an important role in 5-Headed Shark Attack. I recognized her and looked her up, only to realize she had been in Sinister Squad. That got me curious about who was in more Asylum movies. I began searching out actors. I started with the big names, narrowed my search to names I just happened to know, and then used a computer program to dig up the truth. What I found shocked me. And, yet, it all happened because of a little piece of curiosity from this week’s movie.
5-Headed Shark Attack was fine. It was watchable and entertaining enough, but it didn’t leave a lasting impact. It did, however, spark a thought in my mind that I had to follow through on. Sometimes that’s enough. If a movie can spark some sort of discussion or some curiosity, it is doing its job. It got people to think. It got them to think about things outside their daily lives. They got to take a break from work and family troubles and think about something unrelated. The movie sparked that. It got their mind, their imagination, going. 5-Headed Shark Attack did that for me. I appreciated that.
The Asylum helped to fill the schedule of Sunday “Bad” Movies since I began the blog back in 2012. 2-Headed Shark Attack was the first Asylum movie, only a month and a half into writing these posts. Now 5-Headed Shark Attack is the most recent, with this week’s post. There are many more movies from this company, and many of them will likely end up in the schedule in the future. I’ll always have a soft spot of the production company that brought some of the best mockbusters to movie store shelves. Thank you, The Asylum, for always being there when I’m in the mood for a bad movie.
And now it’s time for notes:
- Here is a list of The Asylum’s movies that I’ve covered for Sunday “Bad” Movies. 2-Headed Shark Attack (week 7), Rise of the Zombies (week 16), Snakes on a Train (week 29), Paranormal Entity (week 60), 8213: Gacy House (week 60), Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes (week 60), 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (week 60), Nazis at the Center of the Earth (week 73), Bermuda Tentacles (week 96), The Coed and the Zombie Stoner (week 102), Transmorphers (week 130), Transmorphers: Fall of Man (week 130), 3-Headed Shark Attack (week 165), The Beast of Bray Road (week 176), Grimm’s Snow White (week 178), Sharknado (week 190), Sharknado 2: The Second One (week 190), Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190), 6 Guns (week 247), The Da Vinci Treasure (week 268), Mega Shark vs.Giant Octopus (week 300), Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus (week 300), Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark (week 300), Mega Shark vs. Kolossus (week 300), Attila (week 321), Battledogs (week 346), 3 Musketeers (week 384), Dead 7 (week 442), and Sinister Squad (week 453).
- I discovered, following the writing of this post, that there were some movies I hadn’t included when putting them into the program. The list I used was incomplete. So, take my findings with a grain of salt. There may be an update down the road at some point.
- Lindsay Sawyer was the only 5-Headed Shark Attack cast member to make a previous Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. She was in Sinister Squad (week 453).
- Have you seen 5-Headed Shark Attack? Have you seen any of The Asylum’s movies? Which ones? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments or find me on Twitter and drop me a message.
- Twitter is a good place to let be know what movies I should be checking out for Sunday “Bad” Movies. Find me, tell me. If not there, you can drop a suggestion in the comments. I’m always open to suggestions.
- Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
- Next week, I’ll be revisiting another franchise I’ve watched for Sunday “Bad” Movies before. This time, it will be a fourth installment. No, I’m not jumping right to 6-Headed Shark Attack. That one is a while away. Instead, I’ll be going back to the Tremors (week 360) franchise for the prequel, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins. Make sure to stop by next week for that post. It should be fun. See you then.
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