Next up in the Committed spotlight from the cast of The Haunting of Whaley House is actor Alex Arleo, who plays the awesomely-named "Jake Wildman" in the film.
Arleo made his on-screen debut back in 2009 in George Anton's Dracula, in which he played "Holmwood." A couple years after that he made his first film with The Asylum, the riotously raunchy Barely Legal (that's him below). Then 2012 hit, and Arleo started popping up everywhere, first for The Asylum again in Celebrity Sex Tape, then alongside Michael Madsen in the drama Sprawl. Four episodes of Girls of Sunset Place followed that - another co-star of the series was Gary Stretch of Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus fame - then Bert: The Emotion Picture from Barely Legal director Jose Montesinos and co-starring Barely Legal's Jeneta St. Clair, and now he's back at The Asylum for the Haunting of Whaley House.
Obviously Arleo's becoming quite the in-demand young actor. Witness the chops that has casting scouts scooping him up when The Haunting of Whaley House dominates DVD, Blu-Ray and VOD charts everywhere starting July 31st.
Just a reminder, my fellow faithfully-committed, that this Saturday night, August 20th, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus will be getting its World Television Premiere on SyFy at 9pm. That gives The Asylum yet another shot at claiming the SyFy Original Movie ratings record of 3.12 million viewers set by Lake Placid 2 a few years back. In recent years films have come close - Lake Placid 3 (directed by Asylum-alum Griff Furst) garnered 3 million viewers, Sharktopus brought in 2.5 last year, and Swamp Shark (also directed by Furst) was watched by 2.2 million viewers.
So as you can see, creature features bring them in. Three of the four highest-rated SyFy original movies of the last year involve either sharks, or crocodiles. That fourth movie? Mega Python vs Gatoroid, which drew 2.35 million viewers. Add all this up and the only answer is that come Sunday morning, the ratings crown could very well be sitting on The Asylum's handsome head.
Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus was directed by Christopher Ray (Almighty Thor, currently shooting 2 Headed Shark Attack, off a script I wrote based on a story by Ed DeRuiter) and written by Naomi Selfman (Barely Legal, Mega Python vs Gatoroid), two of the best in The Asylum's stable, and stars the incomparable Jaleel White alongside Asylum-mainstay Sarah Lieving and the formidable Gary Stretch. And oh yeah, there's a Star Trek dude in it too, Robert Picardo.
So let's see...we got a shark, a crocodile - both massive - Jaleel White and a Trekkie? What more could SyFy fans possibly want? Tell everyone you know this is going down, Tweet this post, blog it, Facebook it, do whatever non-word verb goes with Google+ it - anything you can to get the word out and the people tuned in. This Saturday night, 9pm, SyFy, a great, fun, highly explosive flick, the stuff of B-movie gold, is gonna be all up on your television; don't miss it!
Last year's best shark film, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus - suck it, Sharktopus - will finally get the primetime exposure it deserves on the 20th of this month when it makes its World Television Premiere on the greatest network in the history of television, SyFy.
That's right, fellow inmates, we're getting another crack at shattering the SyFy Saturday Night Original Movie ratings record, currently held by Lake Placid 3 - helmed by former inmate Griff Furst - at 3 million viewers. The only two flicks to even come close are shark flicks - it-who-shall-not-be-named at 2.5 million and Furst's follow-up Swamp Shark at 2.2 million - meaning if we start blogging, facebooking, tweeting and whatever else right now, we got a real chance at taking the crown.
Either way, a great film is coming to a great channel on a undoubtedly pleasant summer evening. Jaleel White, Gary Stretch and Robert Picardo star for director Christopher Ray - currently starting work on his next film, The Asylum's 2 Headed Shark Attack, details coming soon, promise - from a script by Naomi Selfman.
Saturday, August 20th at 9 p.m. is when it goes down. Tell ten people to tell ten people right now!
I know not all of my readers have been with me since the beginning, and I also know I'm a lousy tagger. The combination of these things means that there are a lost of posts that perhaps you haven't seen. That being the case, every now and again I like to post a megapost, if you will, that can catch you up with all the posts under a certain heading. This week's heading: inmate profiles; below, please find a complete listing of every published profile to date. Enjoy!
This little tidbit is actually a couple of months old, and I was going to let it fall by the wayside, but upon reading it again it just seems so, well, Asylum-esque that I can't pass it up. The long and the short of it (the short and the long of it here) is that an international coalition of scientists from Japan, Russia and the United States are convinced they will be able to genetically reproduce - a.k.a. clone - a baby mammoth using DNA the Russians somehow have on ice (uh-huh...) to fertilize and African Elephant embryo.
Man oh man; the possibilities for catastrophe here are almost endless.
First off - it's a fucking mammoth. Granted, size and weight-wise, it's pretty comparable to an modern-day African Elephant - nothing to spit at - but the tusks alone move it to the top of the land-based apex predators list: longer than an elephants, nearly six-and-a-half feet, and almost pincer-like in the way they can rip through prey.
Second off - think about when it was last on the planet. During the Pleistocene Epoch, such formidable predators as saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, wooly rhinoceroses, glyptodons and cave bears roamed the terrain. It was a far more primal planet then than now, when a mammoth's biggest threat would undoubtedly be us. This thing would decimate anything it came across. No lab could contain it, no zoo could tame it. This is an old-school predator, the likes of which our fiercest species have never seen. It would rule the animal kingdom. Especially if, say, there were more than one of them.
Just sayin'.
*yes, I am fully aware of the SyFy original movie Mammoth with Tom Skerritt and the exquisite Summer Glau, but that was only one mammoth, already intact, resurrected by aliens and terrorizing a small town in middle America. Not at all the massive-mammoth-herd-devastating-a-major-metropolitan-area epic I'm imagining. And no aliens. Our scientists are perfectly capable of destroying the planet ourselves, than you very much.
A lot of people seem to question or even doubt my unwavering love of The Asylum, thinking perhaps I do this with my tongue-in-cheek; I do not, and I shit you not, I have been waiting for this moment since the first crude picture of the Mega Shark vs. Gigantosaurus poster made the rounds following this year's Cannes Festival: the moment I press play on Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus. No build up can do this justice, so let's just get right into it.
The film opens in a beautiful, remote jungle in the interior of the Congo, where a shady coal mining operation is interrupted by the awakening of a massive, massive fucking crocodile-thing, big enough to make Supercroc look like an asshole.
Cut to a battleship, the USS Gibson - nice - where Jaleel White, portraying the Navy's "shark guy," in title an "aqua acoustical engineer," is summoned by his Captain (Mike Gaglio) to examine strange heat projections picked up by their equipment. The Captain thinks it's a pod of whales, but Jaleel disagrees, says it's too big, and the signature is uniquely shark. The Captain angrily dismisses this, accusing Jaleel of holding on too tight to his theory that the Mega Shark is still alive, which Jaleel himself confirms by restating his point that no carcass was found, nor was there any visual confirmation of the Mega Shark's death. The Captain shoos him away, but Jaleel is more convinced than ever that the Mega Shark is alive and out there somewhere just waiting to strike again. It doesn't wait long, however, as about two minutes later it belly flops onto the deck of the battleship. Awesome to see you again, Mega Shark.
In the course of the ensuing chaos, someone important to Jaleel is killed, making his interest in Mega Shark now more than intellectual, it's personal. That's right: this time it's personal.
Back in the Congo we're introduced to Nigel Putnam (Gary Stretch), a dashing, adventurous, mecenary cryptozoological trapper. He's approached by a representative of the mining corporation and asked to capture the creature responsible for the deaths of 34 of their men, which we know is the Crocosaurus. As the price is right, he naturally accepts.
Oh, and for those of you wondering if there's a scene to top that from the first film of the shark snatching the plane from the sky? No spoilers, remember? But yes. And yes and yes and yes.
So, in short, this was worth every second I waited for it. As much as I enjoy, nay, love the first film, this one is just smarter, better-made, much better-performed, and more thrilling. If you enjoyed the first one, you won't be able to help but love this one. In fact, I'm gonna go ahead and place it in a category with Godfather II - that's right, I said it, Godfather II; bring it - as being a highly-anticapted sequel that surpasses the accomplishments of the original film.
So there. Add it to your Netflix cues and whatnot to enjoy it this Tuesday, December 21st.
In order to properly preface the year's most hotly-anticipated sequel - Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, of course - I'm going to be posting more profiles than normal over the next few weeks to help get us all up to date on the creative forces behind this impending classic. Already in the virtual pages of this blog I've profiled actress Sarah Lieving and director Christopher Ray;
if you don't know who the uber-talented Jaleel White is, I pity you, and I figure there are enough Trekkies in my readership that Robert Picardo of "Voyager"-fame needs no introduction, as well. But there's a dark horse in the cast I think bears closer examination, one Gary Stretch.
Bear with me a moment and consider something: Jason Statham. British, classically handsome, fit, fierce and simultaneously debonair, a dapper gangster with a steely attitude to match his fists, a grace in persona comparable only to his fluid mayhem. What could be cooler than Jason Statham? How about Gary fucking Stretch, who's all those things, plus, instead of being just an unfairly handsome British model, he also happens to be the glamour boy of early 90's British boxing. Yup, a for-real boxer.
A one-time light-middleweight champ, Stretch's one-two punch of personality and good lucks made him a staple in the British tabloids in his heyday, a popularity that helped pave the way for the inevitable transition into acting.
But before you start drawing comparisons to Stone Cold Steve Austin, John Cena or other muscular athletes who have tread the boards, Stretch is the real deal, often turning in impassioned, gritty performances that have earned him acclaim and accolades aplenty, including a British Independent Film Award nomination for his role alongside Paddy Considine in the 2004 thriller Dead Man's Shoes.
It's performances such as that one which have kept Stretch's career on a steady ascent over the last few years, catching the eye of major Hollywood players including writer/director/firestarter Oliver Stone, who has used Mr. Stretch in two of his films, Alexander and World Trade Center.
In MSvC, Stretch plays a character named Nigel Putnam, who, based on what little I can deduce from the trailer,
is some sort of giant crocodile expert, or at the least some sort of outdoorsy foreigner who first encounters Crocosaurus. Whatever he is, you can bet Stretch brings some smoldering intensity to the screen, and a bitchin' beard that kind of makes him look like a younger Lapidus from "Lost," or a scarier Pierce Brosnan in Seraphim Falls.
So there you have it, the second-billed star in MSvC now revealed. Check out Gary's chops this December 21st when the films is released on DVD. Add it to your Netflix cues now!
Oh, and Mr Stretch? Consider yourself saluted.
