The 10 Best B-Movies of 2013

 

Like with 2011 and then 2012, this is my Annual list of my personal favorite B-Movie releases of the last year. There is still plenty of movies from this past year that I haven't yet seen, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself. Also, this list is solely based off what has hit home video formats and Video On Demand services in 2013, so movies that aired on TV stations like Lifetime or the SyFy Channel this year, but never came out on DVD, BluRay, and VOD services yet, does not count for this. I want this as a list of movies that you could potentially pick up yourself or have easy access to legally obtaining. Likewise, some of these movies may have aired on TV in 2011 or 2012, but didn't actually get released on home video formats or VOD until 2013, thus I count them as 2013 movies for that reason.

The following list won't be in any specific order, as I clearly love all of them for them to even be on the list to begin with, so putting them in any kind of ranking order beyond that is a bit moot.

- Age of Dinosaurs is not just The Asylum's best movie to date, it's also the most just plain fun dinosaur movie I've watched in a long time. Never taking itself too seriously, we get tons of fun-filled dino attack scene after fun-filled dino attack scene that plays like a Best-Of compilation of those classic 'Dinosaur Attacks!' cards. Add to that some of the most impressive CGI to come from Asylum yet, in addition to well-crafted Carnosaur-esque practical effects and puppetry, as well as Treat Williams being Treat Williams, and you have a guaranteed shot at a fun time. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here. 

 - Found Footage is an easy genre to tackle, yet many movies fumble while trying. Europa Report may not be scary, or even a horror movie. In fact, it's more of a slow-burn character study drama than anything else, set within the plot of traveling through Space to another planet. But the way it handles the Found Footage aspect is among the best I've ever seen, plus the movie is actually really good and well-made as well. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

- Exceptional CGI special effects and good acting from some familiar faces dominates Spiders, a fun-filled creepy-crawly killer spider flick released early this year. Starts in with the action pretty quickly and hardly lets-up for its entire runtime. If you're a fan of Creature Features, especially giant killer spider ones, this is surely not one you want to miss. Especially once the giant mutant alien spider starts destroying the city - fun times! You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
 
 

 - You didn't think I'd have a Best Of list without the most infamous of the 2013 B-Movies, did you? The cult phenomenon surrounding Asylum's Sharknado is arguably even more interesting than anything in the wacky movie itself. Still, by even 20 minutes in it's pretty easy to see why this obtained it's pop culture status, and that's because the movie is as insanely stupid... and awesome... as it sounds, and B-Movie fans are sure to love every minute of it. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

 - Attack From Beneath, aka Atlantic Rim was Asylum's well-timed mockbuster of Pacific Rim, and while it may have had a teeny tiny fraction of that Hollywood movie's gigantic budget, it's every bit as entertaining. Acting and Effects are top-notch stuff for an Asylum production, and it was filled with a non-stop supply of hilariously-delivered one liners and fun popcorn action scenes involving Power Rangers-esque Mech Robots battling giant monsters. What more can you want in a low budget B-Movie? You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

- Having already hit Home Video everywhere else in the world last year, Grabbers, an Irish monster horror/comedy in the style of Shaun of the Dead and Slither, only hit American VOD services this year. You know you're in for a hilarious good time when a movie deals with a slimy tentacled alien invasion where the beastie of note is allergic to alcohol so the remaining townsfolk have to get totally and completely hammered at the local pub in order to fight it. Why this amazing little gem is having such a difficult time finding proper distribution in America, I'll never know.

- The only Christopher R. Mihm movie I don't yet have a review done for, but that doesn't mean that The Giant Spider isn't a fun movie worthy of a spot in his filmography. It just means, honestly, that I've been lazy. The Giant Spider is a great and hilarious black and white homage to the classic 1950's monster B-movies with the best style of effects seen in a Mihm movie yet. It's super short runtime also means there's very little of the movie where something fun isn't happening. Though due to the massive amounts of references to past Mihm movies I wouldn't recommend starting with this one, but for fans of his filmography, you do not want to miss it.

- After two comedic entries (one of which I loved, one I think is the worst movie ever made), the Child's Play series returns to it's straight-up horror roots with this new entry. It's smaller budget is very much noticeable, but that doesn't stop Curse of Chucky from being a very worthy return to form. Includes good kills, good Chucky lines, loads of tension, and some references to all previous movies, so mix those things with its return to its horror roots, and every fan of the classic movies should be happy with this one.

- Frankenstein's Army is one creepy WWII-set Found Footage horror movie that includes not only an interesting story, well-placed tension, and buckets of blood and gore, but also amazing monster designs worthy of a theatrical movie, with excellent practical effects to bring those designs to life. However, Frankenstein's Army is a prime example of a Found Footage movie that I think could have been even better had it been a traditionally-shot movie instead of Found Footage.

- Not only one of my favorite B-Movies of the year, Big Ass Spider (previously Mega Spider) is one of my favorite movies of the year, period. Well acted, well-done CGI spider effects, a good story, and equal parts hilarious and just plain awesome. Out of all the movies on this list, this is the one that should have had a wide theatrical release because the overall quality and talent on display here is really fitting of that. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.



All in all, another great year for B-Movie fans, and seeing as how a grand total of three of these movies on my list are killer spider movies, it's safe to say that 2013 was the Year of the Spider for me and it was great seeing the shark dethroned for a year (even though there were a couple fun shark titles as well, such as Ghost Shark). And while these are just my personal favorite ten, there are still plenty of other good, fun, worthy B-Movies from this past year that fans can sink their teeth into as well.

Actually, below you'll find three such movies that almost made my list but, for one reason or another, just couldn't quite be included.

 HONORABLE MENTIONS

- Jurassic Attack still has not yet been released in America, other then on the SyFy Channel as Rise of the Dinosaurs. It also has just a few too many minor flaws that add up enough to prevent it from being included among the 'Best of the Best' for me, but it was still one really fun ride of a dinosaur adventure movie that I enjoy re-watching from time to time and that is certainly worth your time if you can land yourself a copy. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

 

 - Another SyFy-aired movie that has yet to be released, Grave Halloween was a big surprise for me as I found it to be far above the caliber of the Original Movies SyFy tends to air. Being more of a creepy, atmospheric, haunting kind of movie, Grave Halloween dealt with the infamous and spine-tingling real-life location of Aokigahara, Japan's Suicide Forest, which is a terribly depressing and creepy location even when not factoring in the ghost legends. However, as much as I enjoyed it as a whole, I do have major issues with a couple parts, including the entire climax.

 - The Dyatlov Pass Incident (or Devil's Pass as it's been renamed in America) has an amazing near-perfect first half that acts great as a "Dyatlov Pass Incident 101" of the real-life mystery that the movie is based around. It's also atmospheric as hell, creepy, mysterious, and well acted. That first half is among my favorite stuff of the year, especially when it comes to Found Footage. But it all utterly comes apart during the second half of the movie, which in turn just about ruins it all for me. To understand further as to why, you can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

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Big Ass Spider (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Epic Pictures Group

Runtime: 80 mins

Format: Itunes

Plot: A giant mutant spider escapes from a military lab and goes on a rampage through the city of Los Angeles. When a massive military strike fails, it is up to one clever exterminator to kill the creature before its eggs hatch and the city is overran with hundreds of mutant spiders.

Review: I'm a very vocal person when it comes to my annoyance with the overabundance of Shark movies in the B-Movie genre as of late. Surely the majority of them could have still essentially been the exact same movie with a different killer animal, so why not switch it up a bit and get some variety out there? That's why I've been doing my bit to help promote other corners of the killer animal B-Movie market that seem to have a shot at giving the sharks a run for their money. Dinosaur flicks have been putting up a good fight these last couple years with movies like Area 407, The Dinosaur Project, Jurassic Attack, Age of Dinosaurs, and the upcoming flicks Poseidon Rex, Jurassic Block, and the very long-awaited Raptor Ranch.

On the flip side, the other animal also doing it's part to dethrone the shark is the spider, with recent movies like Camel Spiders, Arachnoquake, Spiders 3D, Christopher R Mihm's 2013 movie The Giant Spider, and now this Tremors-esque monster comedy Big Ass Spider (previously known as Mega Spider), so when I had the opportunity recently to catch and review Big Ass Spider, of course I jumped at it (and not away from it, like I would a real big ass spider, hahaha).

Big Ass Spider has Matt Parkman from Heroes (I'm keeping the Heroes love alive!), or rather his real-world name of Greg Grunberg as everyone else not still-obsessed with keeping the Heroes love alive calls him, front and center as the main character that we follow around. He's an exterminator that specializes in spiders and after getting hurt doing a Pro Bono job on his day off, goes to the hospital where shortly after, a slightly larger-than-normal spider kills a patient and he offers to track it down and kill it in exchange for his ridiculously high medical bill to be wiped. Throughout the movie he battles not just this abnormally large arachnid, but also something just as difficult – woman troubles. The guy is as unlucky in love as they come, however it's not for lack of trying...almost too much...but always with the expected hilarious results.

Helping him to track down this spider, he teams up with a side-splittingly idiotic hospital security guard, Jose, who totally steals the movie every time he opens his mouth. The guy acts tough when he's not, repeats everything Greg Grunberg says, and makes sure to rudely include his 2 cents into every single conversation that happens around him, he never fails to elicit the intended laugh and the movie is easily raised up a few notches just for having this character in there, and played so perfectly by his relatively-unknown actor, Lombardo Boyar. Him and Greg Grunberg have such great chemistry together, it's easy to accept them as strangers-turned-friends during the events of this movie. Also joining them here is Ray Wise, who has been in just about everything ever made, as the stereotypical cliche thick-headed stubborn military general partially responsible for not only the spider's existence, but all the failed attempts to recapture or kill it after it's initial escape from the hospital due to ignoring any and all advice from the heroes, and playing one of his lead soldiers and one-of-many potential love interests for Greg Grunberg is the always-beautiful Clare Kramer, who most people will probably recognize as Glory from Buffy the Vampire Slayer but fellow B-Movie lovers like myself will also remember as the main character in the direct-to-video sequel, The Skulls 3.

This movie wastes none of its short 80-minute runtime, starting the plot off almost right away and making good headway even before the 20 minute mark. By half an hour in, the acid-spitting mutant spider has been chased around the inner ducts and dusty basements of the hospital, down through the sewers, and out into the middle of the city where it continues to grow immensely and snack down on the all-you-can-eat buffet that is a wide-open park during a hot summer afternoon. The rest of the movie is spent going back and forth between the military and Greg Grunberg trying to track the always-growing-larger spider down, leading them all to a massive showdown atop a skyscraper in the middle of the city. Along the way in there is even a nice little short scene for fans of Found Footage movies as a squad of soldiers with helmet-mounted video cameras go tracking the spider down in a forest. This movie has no shortage of awesome spider-carnage scenes, and while for the most part it tries to stay a bit family-friendly, there are a couple scenes with some decent gore in them, between skin melting from the spider's sprayed acid and some rather fun impalings, Warrior Arachnid-style.

The special effects are never shied away from, as the movie rarely goes more then five minutes without showing the mutant beastie, and while the average B-grade creature feature of modern day has, well, less-than-stellar effects that has people groaning or laughing at it as opposed to with it, this movie had surprisingly great CGI, especially as the spider continued to get bigger and bigger, a place where the CGI in the SyFy Channel Original Movies that I'm usually used to seem to degrade, but here they seem, if anything, to improve the bigger the spider got. The only times the CGI wavered a bit and were not quite up to par with the rest of the movie were a couple scenes of the military soldiers firing on the spider, and especially toward the end when a nest of baby mutant spiders were running around inside the skyscraper. Save for those two instances, the CGI was top-level stuff and far better than I was expecting out of this.

We also thankfully don't get a whole lot of overdone stereotypical exposition as to the military's creation of this thing. We simply get a really short answer of 'We created this thing as an experiment, this is why and how we created it, and due to an error on our behalf it's now loose' and that's literally it. Seeing as how these kinds of movies always have the same overly-drawn out exposition on the military's creation of whatever mutant animal monster said movie is focused on, I can really appreciate that this movie simply drops a few quick sentences on it and then moves on, leaving in the dust any complicated stereotypical subplot detour that would normally accompany such a movie and instead just uses that time for more fun and hilarity with the main leads of Greg Grunberg, the exterminator unlucky in love, and Jose, the hilariously idiotic-but-lovable hospital security guard.

As mentioned at the top of this review, when it comes to the movie's comedic side, the tone of Big Ass Spider is very nearly identical to that of other purposely-campy creature feature comedies such as Slither, 8 Legged Freaks, and the Tremors series. This thing is simply a laugh-riot from start to finish, with I don't think a single scene passing by that didn't have me in stitches at some point. Hell, you know right from the start that you're in for a hilariously campy fun hour and a half when the movie starts off with Greg Grunberg watching in slo-motion as a building-sized mega spider destroys the city around him to the beat of Storm Large's Where Is My Mind.

Big Ass Spider is one of those rare B-Movies that is several levels better then your average SyFy or Asylum-made production and is not just entertaining, but genuinely made so well that it probably could have had a legit wide theatrical release and been at least mildly successful. I can easily see this being the Arachnophobia and 8 Legged Freaks for this decade, and those who loved those movies should also love this one as well and those who hated those movies...well, find yourself a sense of humor for the lowest price that you can and then come back so you can strap on your exterminator gear and enjoy this laugh-riot killer spider comedy.

As for exactly how you can check this movie out? Well so far the home video release isn't slated until January 7th, 2014 but after recently playing at the Toronto International Film Festival you can now currently watch it via Video on Demand services or find it for digital download on sites like Amazon and Itunes, and you can make a safe bet that the day it does finally come out on DVD (and hopefully BluRay as well), I'll be at my local HMV first thing to nab myself a copy.

10/10  rooms in the Psych Ward

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