observation notes: The Beast of Bray Road

With all the cinematic attention vampires and zombies have gotten over the years, I've always been surprised that werewolves has never sparked the public interest. Sure, there are notables out there like Silver Bullet, Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers (you do not want to start a conversation with me about a certain Benicio Del Toro...project.), but contemplate this for a moment: before the Mormon-abstinence-telenovela that is Twilight burst onto the scene, the werewolf movie that most often came to mind for your average American under the age of 40 was Teen Wolf. Now I like Teen Wolf, a lot, I own the double-feature DVD with Teen Wolf Too, I even have a t-shirt like Stiles' that says "What Are You Looking at Dicknose," though truthfully that's more of an Always Sunny thing at this point, but I digress; the point is, there aren't a lot of great werewolf movies out there, and what there are are always low-budget. Hollywood should wake up, make a good old-fashioned werewolf pic, without setting it in a good old-fashioned era. Or making the werewolf some dreamy teenage boy. Or making the werewolves somehow subservient to vampires. Or painting them as pack animals. They are not. And they are not glamorous either, nor well-trained or pleased with their condition. Lycanthropy isn't a privilege, it's a curse. America's youth would do well to remember that.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with The Beast of Bray Road, except that said film is indeed about a werewolf, a reportedly true one at that. Set in rural Wisconsin, the film starts as all good horror films should: with a pretty girl in a stalled car on a lonely stretch of road in the middle of the night. The requisite forest chase by a partially-seen snarling beast ensues. Screams, ripping flesh, and there's your beast - a cross between a werewolf, a bear and a critter - plus only half of the pretty lady. Bitchin' opening.

Well, this death sends a ripple of panic through the small town the lady hailed from, a bucolic hollow full of eccentric characters like tourism-hungry deputies, scandal-seeking budding bloggers, wanton floozies and all their customary small-town bullshit - remarkably like the setting and resulting feel of True Blood. I honestly caught a lot of similarities, despite this film being nearly six years old - all as seen through the eyes of a local sheriff (Jeff Denton), the standard-issue relocated big city cop with some brooding secrets.

Suspects are investigated but nothing pans out, and meanwhile the bodies keep coming, along with sightings from disreputable sources, leading the townsfolk to rather quickly and without much debate decide it must be the Beast of Bray Road. The scene where the legend was explained was my one problem with the script. I really don't like obvious exposition, and that's all this was. But it was mercifully brief, and truthfully the only (minor) flaw in what I thought was an otherwise great script. The other thing I had a problem with last night - the fact that the other law enforcement officers were actively and intentionally dropping the word "werewolf" to the press in order to drum up tourism - this morning I woke up really liking, I don't know why, it just strikes me the day after as pretty funny, and a believable adjustment to the crooked-cop scenario.

Anyway, from here it's basically cat and mouse: the beast kills, the cops get closer, and so on and so on until there's the final confrontation. As I'd like to keep this a relatively spoiler-free site - the point is to get you to watch the movies, after all - I'll just say that I thought I knew how it was ending, and when I figured out I was wrong, they dropped it on me before I could re-figure, another compliment to an excellent script.

So speaking of the script, it was written by the fantastic Leigh Scott, who also edited and directed the film. I've mentioned Mr. Scott here before, he's worked quite often with The Asylum (Frankenstein Reborn, The Hitchhiker, Transmorphers), and his newest film, The Witches of Oz, got a mention in this blog's first Outside the Walls entry. This was by far my favorite of his films to date. The script, as mentioned a few times, was excellent: it built suspense well, even with a full-reveal of the creature in the first five minutes, it scared you, made you laugh, and the characters - even the minor characters - felt fully fleshed out and were inhabited by capable actors at every turn. Denton (King of the Lost World, The 9/11 Commission Report) comes across as the beefy, jowly lovechild of Zack Braff and Dax Shepard and plays the role with the same sort of dry humor as those idiots, only more subtle, not out for amusement as much as he is diffusement, which isn't a word, but I think you get the gist. Other standouts include Sarah Lieving (the documentarian from Monster and E. Roby's oversexed sister in Pod People) as the sultry bartendress and love interest of Denton's Sheriff; Thomas Downey (Shapeshifter, Ballistica) as the Indiana-Jones-esque cryptozoologist; and Andy Lauer, best-known as "Charlie" on "Caroline in the City," as an abusive asshole.

Bottom line, this film was a lot of fun and a good scare, the result of an outstanding script and charged performances, and, of course, the sharp eye of Leigh Scott. It's my kind of werewolf movie.

This review is dedicated to the great state of Wisconsin.

these notes originally posted 9/25/2011

observation notes: Transmorphers

A notable entry of the mockbuster era, Transmorphers - in league with War of the Worlds 1 and 2 - really helped solidify The Asylum in the cultural consciousness as an independent studio worth watching. Facing lawsuits - there were none - from Michael Bay and Hasbro, The Asylum brazenly forged ahead and released this dystopic sci-fi/action epic. It goes as follows:

After the discovery of life on a distant planet - 20 million miles distant, a nice nod to Ray Harryhausen, perhaps - we foolishly try and make contact. Decades we wait, and then the response? Full-on alien-robot invasion, one that obliterates 90% of the Earth's population and paves the way for the rest of the alien-robots to re-settle our planet. These robots? Transmorphers. It's up to what remains of humanity to act as our last defenders.

Cut to outer space, where a military guild ship has caught hints of a robot advance. The impending course of action causes a bit of a rift in the crew, half of whom side with the lady General (Eliza Swenson) and want to respond diplomatically, the other half on the side of another officer (Jeff Denton) who wants to respond with guns blazing. As a sort of compromise, or stalling tactic, a team of elite space-marine-type-folks are sent out to recover a bot for studying purposes. This is where the hunt begins, not so much on the marines' part as much as on the part of the warrior-alien-robots they presume to hunt. Excellent sound effects abound.

When they discover the coming battle is too big for just the team to handle, the military resorts to awaking a pair of problem-soldiers (Griff Furst and Matthew Wolf) from cryogenic stasis to lead the assault. Naturally, they're a little pissed about being frozen - Griff Furst for the physical act of being frozen, Wolf for the fact that in the interim, his ex-wife has become the new wife of...wait for it...the lady General! (wha-?)

This is the oft-spoken-of lesbian subplot mainstream media chose to latch onto in their mentions of the film, but honestly people, isn't that just lighting fires to watch them burn? I mean, aside from her body, Megan Fox looks like a unibrowed transsexual right out of the salon (no offense to transsexuals, or salons, only Megan Fox). Where's the brou-ha-ha in that thing making out with the Even Stevens kid?

I digress, but it doesn't matter, because from here on out the film becomes a cat-and-mouse game of intergalactic Risk, man versus robot for the supreme control of the others' right to live. The rest is yours to discover.

I will say, however, that overall Transmorphers was a nice sci-fi (that is, heavily technological) /post-apocalypse (that is, ruined landscape, decimated population, fight for survival) hybrid that plays like Starship Troopers set in a Warriors landscape. The sound editing wasn't so great on my copy, but the FX are amazing in design, if not comparably fluid in execution: at times the robots come off a little too 2-D, but for direct-to-DVD they are exceptional, and believable enough for your buck. The battle scenes are especially spectacular, enough so to make you overlook any technical short-comings if you allow yourself to get lost in the sheer artistry and resourcefulness of low-budget filmmaking.

As for performances, this one's peppered with a score of great ones from Asylum regulars. Jeff Denton (The Beast of Bray Road, The Hitchhiker), as mentioned, plays the stern officer itching for a fight, and as such he pulls off the HMFIC* role to a T, stoic and stern, the blue-collar translator to Eliza Swenson's more-polished authoritative general. The lovely Ms. Swenson (Dracula's Curse, Frankenstein Reborn) inhabits the role of the General as a cold, distant and emotionally detached administrator, in short the perfect commander. Visually Ms. Swenson comes off as a young Angelina Jolie meets Amanda Seyfried, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing. But her most powerful asset is her ability, for someone so petite, to fill the screen with her strength, an insane amount, like the button that unleashes the bomb. No wonder she's been employed by The Asylum seven times (catch her next in director Leigh Scott's The Witches of Oz).

Unfrozen soldiers Griff Furst (Alien Abduction, The Hitchhiker) and Matthew Wolf (The Apocalypse, Dragon) are a gruff but wry duo, a blend of humor and action. Furst comes across as the space-Maverick to Wolf's Goose, but in the former's case, even badder-boy, grizzled and dashing, a charming machine of a soldier. He's never been more likable, or formidable.

Other notable performances in this large ensemble cast come from Asylum regulars Shaley Scott (The Hitchhiker, Invasion of the Pod People) - who as a firestarter is deliciously meddlesome, insidious and mayhemic in a Serpent-queen kind of way, if that makes any sense, which it totally does to me; she's got blue eyes that'll burn right through the screen - Michael Tower (30,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Dracula's Curse), Sarah Hall (When a Killer Calls, The Hitchhiker), Erin Sullivan (Monster), Noel Thurman (Supercroc, Universal Soldiers), Jason S. Gray (Universal Soldiers, The Da Vinci Treasure), Jessica Bork (Dragon, The Hitchhiker), Thomas Downey (The Beast of Bray Road, King of the Lost World), Monique La Barr (Death Racers, 666: The Beast) and even a few more.

Of course, this giant cast is brought to you by none other than Leigh Scott, who comes across as very loyal for how often he uses the same folk. Mr. Scott wrote and directed this film in ambitious fashion, complete with split-screen and a grayed color-scheme that played together to form a claustrophobic, prison-like future from which there is no escape but full-blown revolution. 

Though alike in name and concept, the story of Transmorphers is its own, independent of the Hollywood version, and, in that regard, is a successful futuristic-actioner. It's arguable that Leigh Scott mastered the mockbuster, and I think the best proof is right here.

* Head MotherFucker In Charge

observation notes: Dragon

Boasting to be part one of an epic trilogy, Dragon – like one of the films it would seem to tie-in to, Eragon – failed to produce a second or third part. Whether this was the result of unrealized ambition by notedly-ambitious writer/director Leigh Scott (The Beast of Bray Road, 9/11 Commission Report), or perhaps a tongue-in-cheek nod to the over-ambitiousness of the mentioned film is unknown, and in the end, who really cares? All told, this fantasy film stands just fine on its own.

The basic premise is this: there’s this Princess (Amelia Jackson Gray), cute as a button, on a desperate mission to save her kingdom from impending invasion by an army of not-so-cute elves, the evil kind. Only problem is, the elves aren’t her only problem. She has to navigate her way through a haunted forest, a sorceress (Eliza Swenson) of questionable loyalties, a band of mercenaries and their roguish leader (Jeff Denton) and, as the title would lead one to believe, a big ass Dragon. 

Fortunately for our Princess, however, she does not traverse this forest nor brave these travails alone; at her side are a pair of upstanding adventurers (Matthew Wolf, Jon Paul Gates) more than capable of defending her majesty.

Before I get into any other aspect of this film, I’m going to talk a minute here about the effects, as with a film like this – that is, a direct-to-DVD purported fantasy epic – effects are the dealbreaker; a bad story can be overlooked, sour performances made funny, so long as when the moment comes, the effects don’t disappoint. And these don’t. Crafted by the fine folks at Sharper Effects Group, each effect – from dragons to fire to magic et cetera – is seamlessly integrated into the visual fabric of the film so that, while not perfect, they are near-perfect in context. The dragon especially, though a dash cartoonish, Pokemon-ish, even, was real enough for me; if we ran into each other in a dark alley, I’d definitely piss myself.

As for the performances, this one – like many Leigh Scott films – boasts a fine cast of capable regulars. Jeff Denton (Beast of Bray Road, The Hitchhiker) plays the roguish leader of the mercenaries with his customarily formidable aplomb, audacious and suavely capable. Great hair here, too, though his accent is slightly less-great. Ms. Gray (Halloween Night, Snakes on a Train) as the Princess is perfectly cold and demurely arrogant, blooming over the course of the film to reveal a good heart and strong soul at the center of a fiercely loyal and independent woman in an era where such a thing was a rarity. Also showcasing great strength and an awesome accent is Ms. Swenson (Transmorphers, Dracula’s Curse) as the sorceress. Ms. Swenson is gorgeously witchy like Stevie Nicks at her peak, but, you know, fucking mean. This is the best I’ve seen her, totally immersed in this accursed, prognosticating wretch of a witch, but, admittedly, I’m just discovering the joys of this wonderful actress, so for all I know the best could be yet to come. Here she’s like the best goddesses: frighteningly authoritative and creepily sexy.Plus, she did the score for this film. Yup, and it's really, really good.

As the guards, Matthew Wolf (Transmorphers, The Apocalypse) and Jon Paul Gates (a whole bunch of stuff even I haven’t heard of) are the heart of the film, the former playing it as a naïve warrior, too chivalrous, perhaps, for his profession, and as such endearing, while the latter demonstrates some of the same chivalrous obedience paired with independent caution; he’s got a job to do from which he wavers not, but mortality to him is a real thing, and something to guard fiercely. 

Leigh Scott, as mentioned and as he often does, pulled double creative duty here, writing and directing. His script is truly epic from the get-go, not overly-mythic but rather, like the best myths, simply explained as a struggle between good and evil for an ultimate balance. The story is competently militaristic, believable from a strategic standpoint, and only fantastic for the agents that execute the plan; this could have been a war movie, a sci-fi flick, a western - the story’s that universal. Here LS has crafted an engaging narrative that fits the genre for its basic complexity, but doesn’t bore or lag, and packs a mammoth wallop for 80 minutes. As a director, LS makes a great use of the scenery, making a real forest haunted by use of light and color to strike an unsettling ambiance.

Overall I found this one to be faithful – in terms of narrative and atmosphere – to the films it would seem to ape: Lord of the Rings, Eragon, Dragonheart, Reign of Fire. The action sequences are spectacular*, and these when paired with a stirring plot and excellent performances make for an intense drama expertly doled-out at a pace that accomplishes the near-impossible: making epic that which takes less than an hour and a half to unfurl. If you like dragon-based fantasy films, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t love this one.

*my cat, who, in 6 years has never paid so much as a lick of attention to the TV, was utterly transfixed by this one, for whatever reason. Weezer has very discriminating tastes, believe me; I’d trust her more than me.

observation notes: The 9/11 Commission Report

This one's a doozy. Based on the events and theories published in the official 9/11 Commission Report, writer/director/Asylum mainstay Leigh Scott crafted this multi-plot political thriller featuring virtually every star in the Asylum's universe. The names have been changed (looooooosely) to protect the, well, I'm not sure, but the names are a little different, probably a legal thing.


The film begins 28 days before the attacks with an obviously militant foreign man seeking 747 flight simulator training. He pays the six-grand fee in cash, American for "no questions asked," and, naturally, for that price they're willing to show him everything. But he's interested in "just flying." Uh-huh. They even let him pick a specific flight plan. 

Jump now to the District, fall of '98, with the handing down of an indictment for our Bin Laden character. This scene serves to inform us of something that - however we know or think of it - we already know, that our government knew about Bin Laden, knew what he was up to, knew what he was capable of and how he became capable of it, and knew his over-arcing plans. But now that there was this indictment, all we had to do was get him to trial. He's still years from being able to orchestrate terrorist plots of a catastrophic magnitude, so there's plenty of time, should be a piece of cake. Umm-hmm.

Jump even further back to Manila in 1995, where the Philippines' government is "interrogating" a suspected Middle Eastern terrorist. An American shows up to lend a hand - to the Philippine side of things - and pretso!, the fella's no longer suspected, he's a full-on terrorist, with secrets hinting at some sort of broad attack in-planning.

Jump yet again back to '98, but Pakistan now (where I got 47 hits the other week! thanks guys!), where members of a terrorist cell roll with the punches and think on their suspected feet.

2001 again (whew), flight training, our foreign guy has started to raise eyebrows with his line of rather blatant questioning about fuel payloads, geography, specific landmarks, and by only flying simulated routes to DC and New York, and even worrying aloud about how accurate the simulator is. At long last the FBI is called in, but things almost get further inept from there, as the best the agent can determine in an opening conversation with the foreign man is that he's from "the Middle East." "Where?" the agent follows up. "The Middle East," the man repeats - conversation over. Niiiiice.

Onward, or backward, I guess, to Israel in '98 where the special agent working to locate Bin Laden seeks out a reporter/lover with info on a man who has info on the location of Bin Laden. We follow the agent to Afghanistan and the meeting with this man. Dude's willing to take Bin Laden out for us, all the wetwork himself, he's practically begging to do it, dropping lines like, "New York, that's where they're going to strike next." It literally doesn't get any more literal than that. And this is the one issue I had with an otherwise interesting script, that it's a little too literal in spots with how obvious the signs may have been, but, admittedly, for all my ignorant ass knows, it was this obvious and I'm just being an uninformed, nit-picky jerk who should read his own links; the possibility exists.

These separate cogs continue to spin back and forth through time, closer and closer to the inevitable, tragic ending. There are no spoilers here, ultimately, but how the film arrives at its conclusion is intriguing enough - no matter how familiar you are with the facts/"facts" - to cause me invoke my ever-present "no spoilers" statute.

I've already called the film interesting and intriguing, and it is, both in and of itself, and for its position in the greater Asylum catalog. This film is not what I was expecting, I'll be honest; I was expecting some sensational, disaster-ridden, conspiracy-rich action-fest, and it's none of those things, and this is a good thing. Leigh Scott truly has crafted something unique here, something intimate and exhilarating, intense and thought-provoking. The timeline, disjointed as I've probably made it sound, was not disjointing to watch, and moved at a pace that kept every scene fresh and important, thanks primarily to the fact that this film's based on acting, not action, and for this one, as mentioned, everybody came out. 


Dig this lineup: Rhett Giles (Way of the Vampire, Frankenstein Reborn, War of the Worlds), Marat Glazer (Shapeshifter, Supercroc, Dracula's Curse), Sarah Lieving (Monster, The Beast of Bray Road, King of the Lost World), Jeff Denton (The Beast of Bray Road, King of the Lost World, The Hitchhiker), Griff Furst (Transmorphers, Alien Abduction, Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers), Eliza Swenson (Transmorphers, Frankenstein Reborn, Dragon), AJ Castro (Snakes on a Train, The Da Vinci Treasure), Christina Rosenberg (The Beast of Bray Road, Dracula's Curse, King of the Lost World), Kim Little (Killers, Killers 2, War of the Worlds 2, Supercroc), Michael Tower (Invasion of the Pod People, The Apocalypse, 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Jason S. Gray (Universal Soldiers, AVH, The Da Vinci Treasure) and a delightful but brief cameo from Erica Roby (Invasion of the Pod People, The Hitchhiker, Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers.) 

Whew. 


And everybody - I mean everybody - is acting above the bar, turning it on and delivering rock-solid performances. Jeff Denton? Awesome. Kim Little? Awesome. Sarah Lieving? Awesome. Rhett Giles? Awesome. Are you noticing a pattern here? Fuck yes you are, because they're all awesome. This is Leigh Scott's doing, weaving like directing greats Stanley Kramer and Robert Altman a complex, multi-layered and -perspective drama that never lags, never snags, and never gives in to the tempting pitfall of sensationalism, residing instead in the terse, stark and enthralling realm of historical thrillers.

Now, I realize this is a highly-charged and polarizing topic, so I won't dare wax philosophic one way or the other, but wherever you land in this debate - who knew what when, who could have stopped what, who actually did what - you have to give The Asylum credit for the balls it took to make this one. While Hollywood was kowtowing to vox populi rallying films like United 93, and the conspiracy "enthusiasts" were flooding the market with makeshift documentaries out to undermine anything official, The Asylum threaded the needle and dared to blend these perspectives and make a serious film about the serious doubts that exist in this most horrific of events. The result is a sweeping, epic film that becomes the most ambitious and serious production undertaken by The Asylum to date. It's a hardcore thriller and a globe-hopping adventure that's engaging, though-provoking, and proof positive that The Asylum knows the rules and knows how to play by them; most of the time, they just don't care. No "mock" or "tie-in" anything here, this film is the real deal, and a real winner.

977's Unsolicited Yet Copyrighted Pitch #3: THE RUN

In the spirit of the new direction 6 Guns pointed The Asylum, I humbly present this killer-gang thriller that's part western, part 70's-era slasher flick, and part revenge story. I call it, simply, The Run.

Based on the same historical anecdote that inspired both Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow and Cornell Wilde's The Naked Prey - the run of Lewis & Clark trailblazer John Colter from Blackfeet Indians - The Run begins at the outskirts of the Eastern Oregon desert, late summer 1978. Our protagonist, Franklin Delano Lund, 35, is relocating his wife, two sons and ailing father-in-law from Maryland to Oregon in search of work. He is a boatbuilder, trading Baltimore for Portland. When we meet him it is dawn of their tenth day on the road, and FDL is waking in his hammock to the rays of the new sun. If all goes well, by the time the sun sets again, they should be in Portland. If all goes well.

All Not Going Well #1: Soon after FDL and the fam hit the road that morning, the radiator in their old pickup truck cracks, stranding them along an isolated stretch of highway.

All Not Going Well #2: It takes well into that night before another vehicle is seen to approach them.

All Not Going Well #3: The vehicle in question is a pickup truck carrying seven men - rogues, scoundrels, sweaty psychos - who after feigning assistance, attack and abduct FDL and his family, dragging them off screaming into the empty night.

They are taken to a barn even further into the isolated desert where for the next few days they are humiliated and abused for the inebriated and heartless amusement of their captors, mostly FDL, that we see, but by the time these few days are over, FDL is the only member of his family left alive, and the fun has ended for his captors; now it's time to dispose of the last remaining witness (I'm leaving out a lot of details about their time in the barn, the little events that build to this Act One climax, because they're too sweet to give away here. one would hypothetically have to read the script.). But Roscoe, the leader of the gang, sees promise in FDL, he sees fire, so he doesn't want to just kill him, he wants to play with him for one last contest: the run of the arrow.

The run of the arrow works as follows: FDL is made to strip naked. Then, the gang's best archer (yes, they have a best archer) fires an arrow as far as he can into the desert. Upon this arrow landing, FDL is instructed to walk to it, and when he reaches it, he's told he should start to run. Why? FDL wants to know. Because, Roscoe informs him slyly, That's when the men start giving chase. That's when the game becomes kill or be killed. 

(FDL's naked, tired, dehydrated, hungry, battered and unarmed, of course, while his captors are whiskey-fueled, vicious, well-armed and used to hunting human prey. so...his odds aren't great [which makes him that much more empathetic and badass])

The next two acts of the film are this chase, FDL running through the desert, trying to gain any advantage he can, as one-by-one the men pursue him, forcing violent conflicts only one can walk away from. And when it isn't the men he's battling, it's the environment, the heat, the sand, his own thirst and hunger; every instant becomes survival. This chase is also a flight from character, as FDL struggles to save what is still good within himself from the rising murderous rage he feels over the deaths of his family, the cruel fate that brought him here, and the men who would play with his life like he was a bug. Ultimately, however, he realizes the only way he is going to survive is to have his revenge, to become like the men he despises - a ruthless, wanton killer. 

I won't give away any more - every detail is a spoiler in this one - but to say that in addition to his pursuers and the environment, FDL must also contend with mountain lions, deranged mountain folk, a coyote and heartbreak after heartbreak courtesy of thwarted salvation. And the ending, specifically the final scene, is, in my humble, responsible opinion, awesome

An engaging action-thriller and an intense character study, The Run is equal parts brutal and fragile, as are the psyches of most men pushed beyond their limits. It's about more than physical survival, more than cold vengeance, it's about what, if anything, can survive - emotionally, mentally, morally - when everything is ripped away from you and destroyed needlessly before your eyes. 

Think Cormac McCarthy meets Wes Craven, if I may be so pretentious, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Oregon minus the chainsaw. I'm seeing Jeff Denton as FDL, Sarah Lieving as his wife, and perhaps Paul Logan - if we can dirty him up, think Killers-era PL - as vicious alpha male Roscoe. And this pitch comes with a finished script.

I'm just sayin'.

observation notes: King of the Lost World

This is where the distinction between "tie-in" and "mockbuster," I believe, is the most vivid. King of the Lost World is of course meant to draft attention from fans of King Kong, but instead of making a rote reinvention, The Asylum has here - as they did with Princess of Mars, the Avatar tie-in and The Land That Time Forgot, a Land of the Lost tie-in - returned to the source material, of sorts. King Kong is not based on a book, but there are tales it was suggested by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel "The Lost World," which also inspired "Jurassic Park" and Jurassic Park (and the sequel to the latter, of course; it's subtitled The Lost World.) It also feels as if The Asylum, when putting a modern touch on the storyline, was inspired by a certain television show that premiered just the year before. See how many words you get into the following sentence before you figure out what show I'm referring to; if it takes more than four, you're blocked for ten minutes: when a plane crashes on a strange island, survivors are left with a struggle for life that's going to take more than mere survival.

The survivors - a collection of Asylum all-stars including Bruce Boxleitner (Legion of the Dead, "Babylon 5"), Jeff Denton (The Beast of Bray Road, Pirates of Treasure Island), Rhett Giles (Frankenstein Reborn, Dracula's Curse), Andrew Lauer (Jane White is Sick & Twisted, War of the Worlds) and Sarah Lieving (pick any Asylum movie; 70-80% of the time she'll be in it) - make the inevitable decision to leave the beach in search of other survivors and the airplane's black box, not realizing they're entering a monstrous menagerie of Vernesian proportions: animals, insects, plants - you name it, it's out to get you on this island. So, predictably, things go south real quick.

First the toga-ed, juggalo-ed natives appear. Then the survivors come across a footprint the size of a fucking starter home. I don't know how other people travel, but me, if I come across something like that, a footprint I could park my car in, I go back the fuck where I came from. But instead of retreating to the beach and visibility from the air, our survivors decide to test that designation by tromping further into the obviously foreboding jungle. Along the way they find a downed plane with working missiles - lucky break, that - and a deranged Steve Railsback (Helter Skelter, The Stunt Man, Intermedio). The rest I'll let you unravel for yourself - say no to spoilers - but needless to say, creatures, fire and sweat-stained tank-tops abound. There's even a gratuitous breast scene that turns kinda lesbian, followed promptly by mild jungle torture, creature violence and revelations. And the monkey, the king of the lost world, I'll say just two things: it's really, really fucking big, really; and it makes a laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate appearance in the film.

Bottom line, I found the film to be enthralling, original and character driven instead of FX-heavy, though the FX present are effective. They're not Peter-Jackson FX, but aside from that monkey-T. Rex brawl, who the fuck cared? Bruce Boxleitner is viciously stoic as the passenger with a secret, and a gun, while Steve Railsback is rightfully ornery and emaciated, a convincing castaway madman, spouting "Lost" season one theories that the island is their Hell. Sarah Lieving and Jeff Denton are lovers once again as they were in The Beast of Bray Road, the former her typically hyper-motivated, fiercely-independent self, strong and brash, but still able to break just like a little girl, and the latter furrowedly concerned and quietly relentless.

Brought to you by the same writing triumvirate of Pirates of Treasure Island, and directed, as was that film, by Leigh Scott, the Peter Jackson of The Asylum, King of the Lost world is B-movie gold, and a goddamn good time.

observation notes: The Beast of Bray Road

With all the cinematic attention vampires and zombies have gotten over the years, I've always been surprised that werewolves has never sparked the public interest. Sure, there are notables out there like Silver Bullet, Ginger Snaps, Dog Soldiers (you do not want to start a conversation with me about a certain Benicio Del Toro...project.), but contemplate this for a moment: before the Mormon-abstinence-telenovela that is Twilight burst onto the scene, the werewolf movie that most often came to mind for your average American under the age of 40 was Teen Wolf. Now I like Teen Wolf, a lot, I own the double-feature DVD with Teen Wolf Too, I even have a t-shirt like Stiles' that says "What Are You Looking at Dicknose," though truthfully that's more of an Always Sunny thing at this point, but I digress; the point is, there aren't a lot of great werewolf movies out there, and what there are are always low-budget. Hollywood should wake up, make a good old-fashioned werewolf pic, without setting it in a good old-fashioned era. Or making the werewolf some dreamy teenage boy. Or making the werewolves somehow subservient to vampires. Or painting them as pack animals. They are not. And they are not glamorous either, nor well-trained or pleased with their condition. Lycanthropy isn't a privilege, it's a curse. America's youth would do well to remember that.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with The Beast of Bray Road, except that said film is indeed about a werewolf, a reportedly true one at that. Set in rural Wisconsin, the film starts as all good horror films should: with a pretty girl in a stalled car on a lonely stretch of road in the middle of the night. The requisite forest chase by a partially-seen snarling beast ensues. Screams, ripping flesh, and there's your beast - a cross between a werewolf, a bear and a critter - plus only half of the pretty lady. Bitchin' opening.

Well, this death sends a ripple of panic through the small town the lady hailed from, a bucolic hollow full of eccentric characters like tourism-hungry deputies, scandal-seeking budding bloggers, wanton floozies and all their customary small-town bullshit - remarkably like the setting and resulting feel of True Blood. I honestly caught a lot of similarities, despite this film being nearly six years old - all as seen through the eyes of a local sheriff (Jeff Denton), the standard-issue relocated big city cop with some brooding secrets.

Suspects are investigated but nothing pans out, and meanwhile the bodies keep coming, along with sightings from disreputable sources, leading the townsfolk to rather quickly and without much debate decide it must be the Beast of Bray Road. The scene where the legend was explained was my one problem with the script. I really don't like obvious exposition, and that's all this was. But it was mercifully brief, and truthfully the only (minor) flaw in what I thought was an otherwise great script. The other thing I had a problem with last night - the fact that the other law enforcement officers were actively and intentionally dropping the word "werewolf" to the press in order to drum up tourism - this morning I woke up really liking, I don't know why, it just strikes me the day after as pretty funny, and a believable adjustment to the crooked-cop scenario.

Anyway, from here it's basically cat and mouse: the beast kills, the cops get closer, and so on and so on until there's the final confrontation. As I'd like to keep this a relatively spoiler-free site - the point is to get you to watch the movies, after all - I'll just say that I thought I knew how it was ending, and when I figured out I was wrong, they dropped it on me before I could re-figure, another compliment to an excellent script.

So speaking of the script, it was written by the fantastic Leigh Scott, who also edited and directed the film. I've mentioned Mr. Scott here before, he's worked quite often with The Asylum (Frankenstein Reborn, The Hitchhiker, Transmorphers), and his newest film, The Witches of Oz, got a mention in this blog's first Outside the Walls entry. This was by far my favorite of his films to date. The script, as mentioned a few times, was excellent: it built suspense well, even with a full-reveal of the creature in the first five minutes, it scared you, made you laugh, and the characters - even the minor characters - felt fully fleshed out and were inhabited by capable actors at every turn. Denton (King of the Lost World, The 9/11 Commission Report) comes across as the beefy, jowly lovechild of Zack Braff and Dax Shepard and plays the role with the same sort of dry humor as those idiots, only more subtle, not out for amusement as much as he is diffusement, which isn't a word, but I think you get the gist. Other standouts include Sarah Lieving (the documentarian from Monster and E. Roby's oversexed sister in Pod People) as the sultry bartendress and love interest of Denton's Sheriff; Thomas Downey (Shapeshifter, Ballistica) as the Indiana-Jones-esque cryptozoologist; and Andy Lauer, best-known as "Charlie" on "Caroline in the City," as an abusive asshole.

Bottom line, this film was a lot of fun and a good scare, the result of an outstanding script and charged performances, and, of course, the sharp eye of Leigh Scott. It's my kind of werewolf movie.

This review is dedicated to the great state of Wisconsin.