At the end of 2011 I did a Best B-Movies of 2011 list and I always intended that to be an annual post I do up around New Years of every year. Suffice to say I totally and completely forgot all about it come the end of 2012, so while this list is a bit late, at least it's better late then never!
Now to be honest, this entire list is pretty much being done on the spot, with no research behind it other then my own memory of what I saw that year, mixed with what I could find in my collection here at home and what reviews I may have done, plus which ones still stick out as having been really good in my memory after all this time, so forgive me if I ended up forgetting some by accident. Also, there is still plenty of movies from last 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 as well, 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 in 2012, so movies that aired on SyFy that year, but never came out on DVD or BluRay, does not count for this. I want this as a list of movies that you could potentially go out and pick up yourself and have easy access to obtaining. Likewise, some of these movies may have aired on TV in 2011, but didn't actually get released on home video formats until 2012, thus I count them as 2012 movies.
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, so putting them in any kind of ranking order is a bit moot.
- With how many rants I go on about the overabundance of killer shark movies, it surprises no one more then me that 2012 saw the release of some admittedly really fun and entertaining ones, showing there is indeed still life to the sub-genre, in the right hands. Jersey Shore Shark Attack works equally as good as a fun mindless summer popcorn killer shark B-Movie as it does as just an intelligently-written parody of the hit MTV show Jersey Shore that both fans and haters of the show can enjoy. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
- Yeah, yeah, I got two shark movies on here, after going on tons of rants about them. So sue me. 2-Headed Shark Attack, released by The Asylum, was the first bit of fresh life breathed into the shark genre that I saw in a long time, upon its release at the very beginning of 2012. I mean, how can you be a fan of B-Movies but say no to a killer shark with TWO heads? You get everything you'd expect out of this movie, plus more, all wrapped up in one hell of a fun package. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
- The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption is secretly a competition between Ron Perlman and Billy Zane as to who can chew more scenery. Spoiler: Billy Zane does, and then some, earning the movie's entertainment factor just on his own. However it also helps that it's actually a fun fantasy adventure which takes place after the first movie, with an actor that actually resembles The Rock, and includes epic battle scenes that have far larger of a scope then you would expect from a cheapie Direct-to-Video sequel.
- Having aired on SyFy as a 3 hour mini-series, Neverland is a re-imagined origin story of Peter Pan, Hook, The Lost Boys, and how they all came together in Neverland. Amazingly fun for fans of the Peter Pan tale, though not without some questionable changes to the mythology. Makes up for it though by having Rhys Ifans play the best rendition of Hook I've ever seen, and Bob Hoskins returning to the role of Smee for the first time since 1991's Hook.
- Continuing the Syfy/Asylum team-up tradition of making and airing a zombie movie around Halloween, Rise of the Zombies is every bit as entertaining as 2012: Zombie Apocalypse, and then improves upon it. Great cast line-up, excellent zombie effects work, some unexpected twists, and a hell of a lot of gore. If anything, this movie might push things a bit too far, but it's still very well made considering it's a TV movie. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
- The Haunting of Whaley House earns a special place here because I'm normally not a big fan of The Asylum's haunted house/ghost movies as I find they are never as scary or clever as they seem to think they are...but this one scared the god damn bejesus outta me. Good acting, great special effects, some good gore, and genuinely frightening as all hell, this is the first and currently only Asylum-made movie that actually made me sleep with my lights on that night.
- As a big fan of the original Silent Night, Deadly Night it came as a huge shock when I ended up loving the remake, Silent Night. Though apart from a few minor nods, it has nothing at all in common with the original, and I think that's for the better as, and I'm sorry to say this but, I actually prefer this stylish quirky horror remake over the original. Fun inventive death scenes, hilariously campy characters, and a creepy-looking killer Santa, all wrapped up in some Christmas cheer! You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
- As a fan of the entire trilogy, My Super Psycho Sweet 16, Part 3 may not be the best movie in the series, but it's still a really fun entry all the same, and an excellent ending to the trilogy. If you're a fan of either of the first two movies in this MTV-made teen horror movie series, you'll enjoy the final climatic showdown that this movie is, quite a bit. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
- Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes is one of the better, more effective, found-footage movies to come out of 2012. Sure, some of the characters are annoying and some of the ad-libbing from the actors doesn't quite work out so great, but it tackles a topic I love, while feeding pretty accurate information to the viewer, in addition to quite a good handful of creepy and atmospheric scenes, with a final shot that is sure to stick with you, leave you scratching your head, and rushing to turn the lights on all at once.
- No surprise that so many Asylum movies make it to this list every year, since they are my favorite of the low budget B-Movie companies, but out of all of them Nazis at the Center of the Earth is my Top Asylum Pick for all of 2012. Zombie Nazis, Secret Breakaway Civilizations under Antarctica, and UFOs - some of my favorite conspiracy theories all under one movie, and then some extras..like a Robo-Hitler. Let that sink in. Ok, so, yeah, enough said on this, I believe! You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
HONORABLE MENTION
- One of my top favorite B-Movies of all of last year, Arachnoquake really does deserve a spot on this list. However it only ever aired on TV on the SyFy Channel and Space Channel here in North America and never did get a Region 1/A DVD or BluRay release thus, by my own rules, I can't include it in the actual list. Still, this movie defines the word 'Fun', as it has a group of survivors running through a near-abandoned New Orleans from growing-larger-every-minute killer albino spiders that can shoot fire, all with an air of quirky fun-loving cheese that's in on the joke as opposed to being the butt of the joke. You can read my previously-posted review of this one here.
PLOT:After earthquakes ravage New Orleans, dozens of locals fall victim to a previously unknown species of deadly albino spiders. Despite their best efforts, spiders swarm out of the earthquake-opened fissures and infest the city.
REVIEW: I've been backing killer spider movies now for awhile, hoping that they would overtake the shark movies as the popular go-to killer animal for B-Movie companies, however the first of many killer spider movies to hit this year, Roger Corman's Camel Spiders, was only so-so and far from the great 'Second Coming' that I was hoping it would be to usher in the other killer arachnid movies of 2012 and beyond. Well luckily, coming up on Saturday, June 23rd at 9pm Eastern Time on Space: The Imagination Station in Canada, and the SyFy Channel in the U.S., we have our second major spider movie of 2012 – the awesomely-titled Arachnoquake, starring none other then John Connor himself, Edward Furlong! And huge thanks to the wonderful people at Space: The Imagination Station (The Canadian affiliate for The SyFy Channel) for sending me a screener copy of Arachnoquake to check out for early review!
Sadly, my screener copy was only 58 minutes long. It would seem, judging by the regular length of a SyFy Original Movie, that there's roughly half an hour missing from the screener and I think a large portion of that, if not all, is the end. There may be a tad missing from the beginning, since when the screener starts it opens on two characters talking about the earthquake that's already happened, and one of them had already been bitten by a spider, but the title screen comes up shortly after that so I'm thinking that might really be how the movie starts. An hour into it though, the video just abruptly ends mid-battle, so I can't really comment on how it finishes or on anything that may be contained within that last half an hour. With that said, it's certainly a great way to get me to review the screener but still make sure I tune in for the movie when it airs, because I really loved what I saw here and I just can't wait to find out how it all finishes!
Arachnoquake starts off with a group of co-workers that work at a small egg farm out in the woods, and as they work and horse around with one another, they talk about a mysterious earthquake in the area the night before, and one of them complains about having been bitten by something in his sleep. It doesn't take long after that before we discover that the earthquake unleashed a nest of killer mutated albino spiders in the middle of New Orleans, that had previously been trapped below the ground where they evolved through the generations to the way they are now. Of course, as these things go in movies such as this, pretty soon after that the spiders start causing havoc in New Orleans and turn the city into an all-you-can-eat buffet of Human as they continue to grow and multiply, leaving it up to a slacker tour bus driver and his diverse group of tourists for the hour, to save the day.
I had quite a few surprises waiting for me within the confines of this movie, none of which I was expecting. First up is the acting; a few roles aside, the acting really impressed me from almost everyone, and not once did I ever stop and think 'Boy, that was some horrible acting right there.' Heck, even though Edward Furlong is the bigger name, it was Bug Hall as the slacker tour bus guide that really surprised me, and he was a much better actor then Furlong (who falls into the small 'few roles aside' section). Also, you just have to love that name – Bug Hall. My only wish at this point is that his next SyFy Original Movie be one about killer bugs. You just know he has to do it at some point (Bugpocolypse: Starring Bug Hall - seriously, somebody get on that). Also because of his great acting, as well as most everyone else's top-notch skills in this, a lot of the comedic beats honestly came across as genuinely funny. Far too often in B-Movies, moments that are meant to be funny just come across as a lame attempt, but here almost every time (and there is indeed quite a few), all the comedic beats and funny one-liners are full hits, thanks in large part to everyone's excellent comedic timing and acting abilities. Make no mistake – this movie knows exactly what it is and has tons of fun with it, and tons of fun making fun of itself, with almost every scene having some form of comedy within it, be it a visual gag, a one-liner, a silly sound effect, or an insane situation. Actually, one of my favorites is a Deep Blue Sea speech moment. Even though here it's pretty easy to spot coming from a mile away thanks to how the frame was obviously shot, but that didn't make it any less hilarious when it happened.
Another of the surprises are the creature effects. Are they great? No. But they are quite passable and fit within the surrounding physical environments far better then they did in Camel Spiders, and they never once took me out of the moment. Then again, it's hard to be taken out of the moment by low-quality effects when what they're doing is so amazingly cheesy that is is literally candy for the eyes; We have giant mutated albino killer spiders of all sizes ranging from tennis ball-sized to as large as a car rampaging through New Orleans and the surrounding backwoods areas, chomping down on people and webbing entire vehicles up, and we also have a few other little treats such as a scene where an alligator fights with one of the giant spiders in the swamps, and Edward Furlong, along with the girl softball team he coaches, take their bats to an attacking spider with hilarious results. Oh, and despite their large sizes, magically they're still light enough to walk on top of water, and scurry fast enough on it that they can keep up with a speeding boat! Like I said, such awesome cheese to fill your mind that the last thing you're thinking of are the effects because you're just having such a blast with everything else. And that's not even the cheesiest stuff with the spiders! There is one, um...special ability...that they can do, that I won't ruin here in my review, but let's just say I totally was not expecting it, and I loved it every time they utilized it (and the effects for it were indeed really well-done and realistic-looking).
Of course with a killer animal movie, there are two main aspects viewers normally look at – the animals themselves, and the kill scenes. While the death-by-spider scenes were normally either off-screen or light on the red gooy stuff, they made up for that by having very disgusting spider 'births'. See, it's never really explained how (at least not in the first hour that I saw), but everybody that got bitten by one of these spiders had spider eggs implanted in them within that bite, and it doesn't take very long for those baby spiders to...well...burst out. Yes - of the skin, in a grisly and disgusting display of puss and gore, done with a mix of CGI and excellent practical effects.
I do have one complaint though, but it really is only a minor one and it's to be expected in low budget fair like this where they don't exactly have lots of money to spend on background extras, but MAN, New Orleans sure is empty this time of year. There was rarely (if ever) anyone else on the streets of this supposed 'Party Central' city, other then our main group of characters, that at times I was starting to think if maybe what came up out of the ground wasn't albino spiders but really The Ancient Enemy from the 1998 movie-based-on-the-book Phantoms (Screw ya'll, I loved that movie). It would have been a nice touch to see other background people reacting to the invading army of spiders as well.
Apocalyptically-empty city aside though, there were some really great set pieces on display here, such as the tour bus weaving in and out of stand-still traffic in the middle of the city to try to shake off the spiders that were crawling all over it, or the above-mentioned spider chase across the surface of a bayou, or the spiders dragging someone through the thick vegetation of the swampy forest. And I must say, speaking as someone who spent three years in my youth working at a grocery store – I REALLY enjoyed this one scene where the main crew of characters were chased by one of the spiders through a grocery store (which much like the entire city around them was also 100% void of other people). Actually, this movie started really quick with the action and almost never let up on it for the entire run-time, save for maybe 60 seconds here and there in between, and almost every action scene took place within a different set piece so we got quite a nice variety of locations, which in my eyes was a really good creative decision as it prevented the movie from ever getting stale or repetitive. I'm always saying that the worst crime that a B-Movie can commit is to be boring, and this is certainly not guilty of that.
Having not yet been able to view the final half an hour, that's pretty much all I can say on the movie for now. I'm even more anxious then ever to watch the movie when it airs on June 23rd, cause I enjoyed the first hour so much that I'm looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up, especially after having seen some photos online of a couple shots from during that last half hour of the movie that included one of the spiders so big that it was as large as a house, climbing up two skyscrapers, and another shot of it in-battle with some military vehicles – NICE. My below rating is based on just the first hour, so it could easily go up or sink lower (or remain the same), depending on how that last half hour plays out when I watch it on Space. Either way, when Arachnoquake airs in-full on TV look to my Twitter page or Facebook Page to see what my thoughts on that final half hour were, since I don't really see the point in writing up a second review.
Missing 30 minutes aside though (since I can't really speak to that yet), this was a much better killer spider movie then Camel Spiders was, and more along the lines of what I was expecting Camel Spiders to be. If the other upcoming killer spider movies of 2012/2013 (Mega Spider and Spiders 3D) are anything like this, then spider movies still could be in the running to overtake the throne from the sharks as the new Rulers of the killer animal B-Movies! Muah ha ha ha ha!
