Entering The Asylum

If there's one thing everyone should know about me, it's the fact that I absolutely love trashy schlock films. The more ridiculous and absurd, the better! By this logic, The Asylum's catalog should all be pure gold to me. With titles like Nazis at the Center of the Earth and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, you'd think they'd at least be worth a laugh. Unfortunately, they've consistently put out some of the worst movies ever.


The Asylum is primarily known for making low-budget knock-offs of more popular mainstream films known as "mockbusters." These shameless cash-ins piggyback on the success of bigger films by having a similar title and cover art with hopes that people will mistakenly buy the wrong movie off the shelf. For example, they made gems like The Terminators, Paranormal Entity, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls and Transmorphers. They also make those monster movies that sometimes air on the SyFy channel, like Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, their most famous being Sharknado.


I think a big part of Sharknado's success is due to the title making a great hashtag. More people know OF the movie than having actually seen it. The Asylum's movies are always better in concept as the actual movies are often totally unwatchable. I couldn't understand how one company could make so many of these movies and not turn out a single watchable film. Of course I haven't seen more than a handful of their movies, perhaps those were just the worst ones they had to offer? So I've decided to watch as many of The Asylum's films as I can to find out for sure.


I don't know that I will be able to give them proper reviews, due to the sheer volume of mind-numbing garbage I will undoubtedly be sitting through, so I will be logging them more like journal entries instead. Stay tuned for The Asylum Marathon!!