inmate profile: Stephanie Greco

The next film slated for release by The Asylum is The Haunting of Whaley House, from writer/director Jose Prendes, and which premieres - for those of us not going to Comic Con - on DVD July 31st. With that in mind, it's time to turn our attention to some of the creative powers behind this impending, chilling masterpiece. First up: actress Stephanie Greco.

Ms. Greco's bio, from her own website: " Native South Floridian Stephanie Greco began acting in High School. She has performed as Corie Bratter in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, Helsa Wenzel in The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 and Muffet Di Nicoli in Uncommon Women and Others.  

Her love of film took her off the stage and onto the screen in 2002 when she began dabbling in local productions and independent films.

Stephanie’s first leading role came under the direction of Avery Pack in the film Artifact. Artifact premiered at the Miami Jewish Film Festival in January 2006 and screened at festivals in New York and Israel.

In the summer of 2007, Stephanie made the move to Los Angeles. She has studied under the direction of Michelle Danner at The Larry Moss Studio, Amy Lyndon and Robert D’ Avanzo. She performed in the west coast premiere of John Buffalo Mailer’s Hello Herman and wrote, produced and starred in the web show Nannyland.

Stephanie has performed in numerous independent films, on television and as a series host. She recently finished principal photography on two horror features. In The Haunting of Whaley House, Stephanie stars as Penny Abbot, a skeptic who works at America’s most haunted house. The Haunting of Whaley House will premiere at Comic Con 2012. In Chemical Peel, which has been described as a mix between The Mist and Cabin Fever, Stephanie plays one of six women who become trapped when a bachelorette party goes horribly wrong. Look for Chemical Peel Halloween 2012."

Not a bad resume; Ms. Greco also appeared in another Asylum production, 2008's The Day the Earth Stopped. Here's hoping  The Haunting of Whaley House will be a breakthrough performance for Ms. Greco. Find out for yourself when the film streets on DVD, Blu-Ray and VOD July 31st.

Bargain Alert! 6 DVDs for the Price of 1!

I was at my local shopping mall the other day, buying some belated Christmas presents for a belated trip home to North Carolina that was canceled at the last minute because of the winter storm that plowed through the Southeast this week, when, browsing among the selections at Suncoast Motion Picture Company, lo and behold I discovered the two precious things to the left there in the bargain bin...for only $5.97 apiece!!! That's only 99 cents per movie for half-a-dozen of The Asylum's finest: I Am Omega/Monster/Alien vs. Hunter and Countdown:Armageddon(Jerusalem)/Transmorphers: Fall of Man/The Day the Earth Stopped.  The DVD's are put out by Echo Bridge Entertainment, a secondary distributor The Asylum seems to use for certain titles, most recently Airline Disaster and 8213 Gacy House. This is a great deal on six great films, so if you've still got a Suncoast or F.Y.E. store in your vicinity, and you got $11.94 to drop on some quality home entertainment, I think you know what you have to do.

observation notes: The Day The Earth Stopped

The only Asylum movie to ever illicit a lawsuit, The Day the Earth Stopped was none-too-liked by the execs over at Fox, who thought the film's similarity to a certain, like-named and worse Keanu Reeves movie generated a "likelihood of confusion" among consumers. I work in a video store (big surprise, I know) and no one, even the mentally challenged or drug-addled, has ever confused Jennifer Connelly for C. Thomas Howell.

Plot in a nutshell: spaceships that look like sperm invade our galaxy and deposit on Earth robots or leftover transmorphers or some shit intent on doing us in. A rogue citizen of this alien race comes to warn us, assuming the form of a hot chick. And from there (as well as to there) it's basically the same movie as the Keanu shitstorm - with the added bonus of a thinly-veiled Christian end-message - slow to begin but once the concept hooks, it's a low-grade FX spectacular, a little simplistic, yes, but the best science-fiction movies often are; survival in the face of impossible, inconceivable odds is often compelling enough on its own, and in that regard, The Asylum's version of this sci-fi classic surpasses the Hollywood version, which is ultimately too political and concerned with rooting itself in a believable environment as opposed to just copping to the fact that it's a movie about a giant fucking robot. Own it, Fox. Their shit looks like a long episode of "The X-Files" with even worse lighting.

C. Thomas Howell is awesome as always, smoldering and compassionately disaffected, a sort-of shlub who's the only one to believe the hot alien. But C. Tom doesn't just rock this one in front of the lens, he rocks it from behind as well (all of that sounded so pornographic, I know, but I'm keeping it) as the film's director, his second such assignment for The Asylum. For a complicated, FX-laden busyfest, C. keeps his shots taut and concise, balancing panoramas of destruction with the tighter moments of chaos that fuel the tension.

Oh, and Judd Nelson finally drags his ass to work with 27 minutes to go to play the boisterously frazzled father of humanity's salvation.


A choice conversational snippet from this one:

"Prove that human life has value? How the hell am I supposed to do that?!"

"Did you ever see The goddamn Lion King!?"

inmate profile: C. Thomas Howell

One of the most recognizable stars in The Asylum's galaxy is C. Thomas Howell, who rose to fame in the early 1980's thanks to pivotal roles in films such as The Outsiders, E.T. and Red Dawn. And who could possibly forget his star-making turn in the delightfully racist Soul Man? Truthfully, that's where the rise leveled off, but C. Thomas kept plowing ahead, putting close to 100 movies under his belt over the last two decades, all over the spectrum: big-budget Hollywood pics, TV movies, and direct-to-video horror, drama, action, sci-fi and adventure flicks.

Then he entered The Asylum.

In five years C. Thomas has made five films with The Asylum - War of the Worlds, The Da Vinci Treasure, War of the Worlds 2, The Day the Earth Stopped and The Land That Time Forgot - the last three of which he directed. That's right! C. Thomas is not only acting for The Asylum, he's directing! Very capably, I might add.

Though there's nothing lined up in the immediate future between C. Thomas and The Asylum, the big man's keeping himself plenty busy, as usual, with six films in various stages of production at the moment, the most interesting of which seems to be Camel Spiders, about these things.

One can only hope that if MGM ever gets their shit together or sold, the Red Dawn remake will be released and The Asylum can mockbust that (Crimson Dusk? Maroon Twilight? Fuchsia Noon?), with C. Thomas as the small-town sheriff who rallies his citizens to fight back against the invading North Koreans. Stranger things have happened. Like the aforementioned Soul Man.

C. Thomas Howell, consider yourself saluted.