I thought in this post we'd check in on some of the work being done by Asylum regulars outside the walls, that is, for other production companies besides the one we cherish so dear. This time, I thought we'd start with some of my favorite talent behind the camera.
Writer/director/cinematographer/etc. Mark Atkins, recently of Battle of Los Angeles and soon-to-present Dragon Crusaders, has another directorial effort due soon, the awesomely-premised Sand Sharks, starring Corin "Parker Lewis" Nemic, Brooke "Fruit of Hulk's Loins" Hogan and Vanessa Lee Evigan, Asylum vet for Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which she appeared with her father, the great Greg Evigan (also 6 Guns). I don't have the exact plot for this one, but the great thing about shark movies, is that once the premise is established, it pretty much goes in the same, wonderful direction. No release date for this one yet, either, but all indications are it'll be some time this year.
Anthony Fankhauser, director of 8213 Gacy House, 2012 Supernova and line producer of 17 other Asylum titles, has a pretty full plate of his own. IN addition to producing Atkins' Sand Sharks, he's also line producing a television film called Jabberwocky featuring the lovely Kacey Barnfield (Lake Placid 3). No word on whether it has anything to do with Lewis Carroll. Furthermore, Mr. Fankhauser has also written and directed a horror film called Grizzly Flats (formerly Shadow People) about a family terrorized by, well, shadow people. Danielle DeLuca stars.
Speaking, in a sense, of Lake Placid 3, its director, Griff Furst - known for directing The Asylum's 100 Million B.C., I Am Omega and Universal Soldiers - has been keeping busy as well. In addition to his recently-released horror flick Mask Maker, he was also at the helm for the recent SyFy Saturday Night entrant, Swamp Shark, starring D.B. Sweeney, Kristy Swanson and Robert Davi, recently of The Asylum's Ballistica. Swamp Shark aired last Saturday night to the highest ratings since Sharktopus. Seems SyFy fans realllllly like shark movies. And The Asylum has 2 Headed Shark Attack on its slate. I'm just sayin'...guaranteed ratings champ.
And finally, Christopher Ray, director of Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus and Almighty Thor, as well as being the first assistant director of A Haunting in Salem, has another gig as first assistant director in the pipeline, this time on the creature-thriller Camel Spiders, starring the great C. Thomas Howell (War of the Worlds, War of the Worlds 2, The Day the Earth Stopped, The Land That Time Forgot) and Brian Krause (2012 Supernova).
So as you can see, inside Asylum walls or out, the creative types responsible for your favorite films have a lot on the horizon. Don't feel the least bit guilty straying to support them.
So, it's been brought to my attention via comments, personal emails and Facebook posts that perhaps in these observation notes, in my zeal to communicate my enthusiasm for Asylum productions, I'm giving away a bit too much in regards to plot details, thus doing the opposite of my primary directive and spoiling a thing or two. As I've said before, the ultimate point of these notes, indeed this blog, is to spark your interest, whet your appetite, and make you want to see the daggum movies. As such, I will try to restrain myself a little more in the future, restrict my synopses from now on to no more than a mere paragraph of general description, focusing my efforts instead on praising the technical and creative aspects of the films. Funny, I think, maybe you won't, that I choose to start this with a film I didn't particularly care for. Either way, here we go:
This is the second of The Asylum's 2012-prefixed films - sandwiched between 2008's 2012: Doomsday and next year's 2012: Ice Age - and, as the title indicates, concerns impending oblivion courtesy of an astronomical anomalous catastrophe: seems a star in a neighboring galaxy goes ape-shit unstable and explodes, "supernova" as the kids call it, and unleashes a deadly burst of space-radiation hurtling towards Earth, where it will eradicate every living thing on the planet; it is up to a brilliant if rebellious astrophysicist (Brian Krause) to compose a radical plan that can save all of mankind from imminent extinction. That plan? Well, that's one of the things on which I'm censoring myself, but rest assured I didn't choose the adjective "radical" haphazardly. Add to this a subplot - one typical in Asylum films; see Mega Fault, Meteor Apocalypse, Titanic II - in which said astrophysicist's family is in constant peril from the first ripples of destruction, and the result is a moderately intense - if overly melodramatic - disaster flick roughly on par with other direct-to-DVD offerings in the genre.
I'm not known to be one who minces words, so I won't start here: this isn't the greatest story, and the dialog is even not-greater. This film, in fact, is a pretty good example of a stellar - pardon the pun - concept that crashed and burned upon execution. This story was too rote, the characters weren't near developed enough - despite admirable turns by the principle cast - and the conclusion kinda sucked. That said, the FX were pretty cool, startlingly cool, in fact, as though lifted from another movie and dropped into this one, a credit to both the visual effects department and director Anthony Fankhauser (8213 Gacy House), the latter of whom makes the best of a mediocre situation by depicting the chaos as sufficiently chaotic and peril palpable. My only critique of the direction would be the repetitive use of the same FX clips, but, given what the budget of such a film was bound to be, I suspect this isn't a short-coming of direction but rather an economic necessity, so, no harm no foul.
As for performances, I like Brian Krause. I can't put my finger on just why, I just always relate to him. Whether it's in this or other genre work - from the classic Sleepwalkers to the more-recent Beyond Loch Ness and Warbirds - there's just something really normal about this guy, in a good way, something we can all empathize with. Given that, I actually liked him in this: intense, focused, gruff, desperate but strong. The Asylum should have him back soon.
The lovely Heather McComb("The Event," "Prison Break," non-Asylum Shark Swarm) as the beleagured wife seeking protection against unimaginable perils, is appropriately frazzled without over-acting, and manages a grace under fire that is admirable and indeed noteworthy. Actress Najarra Townsend (hella shorts) rounds out the cast, showing a modicum of promise in her role, holding her own with the more accomplished actors.
This - global annihilation via extraterrestrial masses - isn't a new concept to either cinema in general (Armageddon, Deep Impact) or The Asylum (2012 Doomsday, Meteor Apocalypse) and while this is far and away not the finest entry in either category, it is a moderately entertaining 85 minutes, thanks to neat-o FX and plausible performances. But, truthfully, in a choice between this film and the actual apocalypse, it's kind of a toss up.
Sorry, they can't all be positive.
So sometime in 2012 - hopefully before the world ends - Brad Pitt has a film coming out with director James Gray (The Yards, We Own The Night) based on the book "The Lost City of Z," which in turn is based on the real-life story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared into the uncharted jungles of Brazil in 1925 with a team that included his own son, all in pursuit of a renowned lost city of lore, a quest that had already killed 100 men before Fawcett ever set foot in the Amazon basin. Brad Pitt plays Fawcett, and such is the reason, it is suspected, for that crazy ass goatee he was sporting for a while.
With that as the basic premise - an explorer goes on a dangerous, obsessive quest for a mythical city hidden somewhere in an unmapped jungle - I humbly present a tie-in, The Forgotten City, a blend of this story, Saul Bellow's novel "Henderson the Rain King." and a dash of King Solomon's Mines.
Richard Dancy is a cartographer - map-maker to the layman - in 1920's Britain, a man in his mid-30's, single and coldly academic. This is the result of his harsh upbringing by a famous explorer and therefore an often absent father, the revered Reginald Dancy, with whom Richard has a strained relationship at best. One day a triumvirate of members from the Royal Academy of Exploration comes with some rather foreboding news for Richard: his father has disappeared during his latest expedition, it has been six months since he was last heard from. Richard knows his father is had mounted his third expedition for the Forgotten City of Kuikugu (kwee-coo-joo), a mythical civilization hidden somewhere in the deepest reaches of the Amazon basin in western Brazil, a place no other civilization exists even today, one of the last entirely unknown regions of the planet. The triumvirate implores Dancy the Younger to lead a rescue mission - since he knows both the maps and the region, having been on the second expedition with his father, a source of their falling out - of himself, two soldiers in the British army, a local guide and an associate cartographer assigned by the academy who just happens to be a woman. Hesitantly, and perhaps at the behest of his estranged-by-association mother, Richard agrees and the film shifts to the jungles of Brazil.
I don't want to give too many twists or turns away, but needless to say the journey through the jungle - using copies of older Dancy's maps, extrapolated from by the son based on what he knows of his father's cartography mindset, the father having taught the son - is arduous at best, beset with danger floral, faunal, native and from within. But I will tell you this: they do find the city, and they do find a culture still living there, ruled by a god in flesh, as far as the natives are concerned. And this god? None other than Reginald Dancy. (this is where the "Henderson" comes in)
The rest amounts to this: the father has discovered the most significant archaeological and sociological discovery of the century, perhaps ever, and in the process he has been mistaken for a god by the primitive inhabitants here, a role he was only eager to play. He's gone mad with power, and instead of sharing this discovery with the world, he wants to horde over it, command it where it is, create a world, a society, a civilization, all of his own. Son wants to bring him back. He won't go. Son wants to go back, then, let people know Reginald is alive, let them know what he's discovered. Reginald won't be having any of that, either, because if the world knows, the world will come, and his idyllic kingdom will be destroyed. So he can't let his son leave. But his son won't stay. So...turmoil!
The third act I'll keep to myself but to say it's awesome. As for casting, I'm seeing Brian Krause (2012 Supernova) as Dancy younger, maybe Jonny Lee Miller, if they can get him, but definitely John Rhys-Davies as Darcy the elder. The woman I think would be best suited for Natalie Stone (30,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls), and as far as the soldiers go, I'm happy so long as one of them is Geoff Meed (6 Guns, Airline Disaster).
Here's your tag line: "A lost civilization...that will do anything to remain that way."
And if this idea doesn't float your boat, but the idea of tying-in to Lost City... does, you could always just do a supernatural-action adaptation of the story of Hiram Bingham III, the American explorer who rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911. Brian Krause would definitely be suited for that role.
I'm just sayin'.
Writer/director/cinematographer/etc. Mark Atkins, recently of Battle of Los Angeles and soon-to-present Dragon Crusaders, has another directorial effort due soon, the awesomely-premised Sand Sharks, starring Corin "Parker Lewis" Nemic, Brooke "Fruit of Hulk's Loins" Hogan and Vanessa Lee Evigan, Asylum vet for Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which she appeared with her father, the great Greg Evigan (also 6 Guns). I don't have the exact plot for this one, but the great thing about shark movies, is that once the premise is established, it pretty much goes in the same, wonderful direction. No release date for this one yet, either, but all indications are it'll be some time this year.
