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: A group of researchers in Antarctica are abducted by a platoon of masked soldiers and dragged to a hidden continent in the center of the Earth. There, they discover that surviving Nazi soldiers are plotting an invasion of Earth to revive the Third Reich.
REVIEW: I honestly wasn't originally planning on doing a review for Nazis at the Center of the Earth, simply because I can't review every B-Movie I watch, I just watch way too many of them, and where I recently put out two reviews, one for Grimm's Snow White and one for Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver, with another one for Camel Spiders being prepped for the near-future, I was planning on just sitting back and enjoying Nazis at the Center of the Earth without having to worry about taking notes and doing up a review after. But by the time the credits started rolling I knew I just had to do a review of this one to help get the word out to fellow B-Movie lovers about just how good I found Asylum's latest offering to be.
Our main characters are all scientists at a remote facility in Antarctica, where they happen upon an entrance that leads down through the ice to another 'world' at the center of the earth, in which remnants of Nazi Germany are residing, led by the real-life Nazi war criminal made famous by his horrifying human experimentation, Dr. Josef Mengele, as they seek immortality by abducting people and using their flesh and body organs to replace their own when theirs expire.
To start, this movie already had me pretty much won over by mentioning and touching upon some of my more favorite conspiracy theories (yes, admittedly I'm a conspiracy theory nut), such as Nazis having top secret underground bases in Antarctica where they currently may still reside in secret to this day, Nazis working on UFO and futuristic technologies at said secret bases, that Hitler actually survived WWII, and that there was a secret battle between the U.S. Air Force and a UFO in the skies over Antarctica a few years back. Do I honestly believe these conspiracy theories? Well no, of course not (Though I am willing to be open to the idea of Hitler having survived WWII), but they're fun to think about and still among my favorites regardless, and it was great to see them all utilized here in one form or another. It's the attention to these little details that sometimes go a long way with me, and Asylum is normally pretty good at including those little details in their projects.
The acting from most everyone was surprisingly good. Yes, there were a few of the more minor characters who were about as good as to be expected from an Asylum movie (which is to say not very), but all the main cast, especially the lead scientist with questionable methods, as played by Starship Troopers' Jake Busey, were in top form, with their true acting chops coming out when they had to play their characters as being terrified; when these characters were screaming or being horrified, you believe them, and you feel the fear right along with them. Another shout-out has to go to actor Christopher Karl Johnson (Angels & Demons, Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes) who played the evil Dr. Josef Mengel to perfection. Every time he was on-screen, there was great tension as you just knew he was in the scene for a reason, and normally those reasons don't bode well for our captured good guys.
Which brings me to what I believe is the strongest aspects of this movie, and it's kind of a broad topic but it all interconnects. Nazis at the Center of the Earth is nothing if not atmospheric and genuinely creepy. Nazis alone is enough to make the movie a bit creepy, but this movie goes above and beyond what it has to, to paint them as a real genuine threat to the characters. Not once did I think 'well sure, they're the villains because the movie says they are, but they're so cartoony and laughable that I just don't see them as a threat'. Instead, I was on the edge of my seat whenever they were on-screen, knuckles white from clenching them in fear and ready to jump a mile high at the slightest unexpected noise in my darkened apartment. I'm not going to go into the details of individual scenes regarding them and some of the things they do, because to be spoiled on them would remove much of the tension, but what I will say is that this movie is certainly not for the feint of heart. There is plenty of blood, gore, disturbing imagery, and uncomfortable scenes that made me extremely anxious - there are quite a few scenes that even I found difficult to watch that made me squirm in my seat uncomfortably. Of course, it takes more then just horrifying subject matter to accomplish that. Sure, that's a large part of it but it could easily come across as hokey and eye-rollingly lame without excellent make-up and practical effects. From the look of the skinless and zombie-esqe Nazis to the various experimentation and operations done on the captured scientists, it all looked amazing and never once did it seem terribly fake or obvious (A first for Asylum, I believe).
But for those that are squeamish or easily creeped out, you'll be able to relax after a bit as the movie takes a surprising and sudden 180 degree turn midway through from being deadly atmospheric and disturbing to a full-on campy cheesefest filled with hilarious one-liners. How can a movie where zombie Nazis that rip people's skin off and group-rape women in a dimly-lit underground base turn into a hilarious cheesefest, you ask? Two words:
Robo-Hitler.
Yes, if you just saw the words 'Robo-Hitler' then you did indeed just read that correctly. In a sudden twist that I can honestly say I did not see coming, Hitler is revived as a giant CGI cyborg with a wide range of arsenal that includes a long-ass blade, machine gun arms, and green energy blasts that shoot from his chest. I am being 100% serious right now when I tell you that I shit you not on this.
And I loved it.
So so much. Only Asylum can turn such a genuinely disturbing and nightmare-inducing torture-porn movie into a laugh riot camp-ground and actually have it work. Adding to the amazingness that is Robo-Hitler is the fact that he also commands a gigantic Nazi UFO Doomsday Machine that breaks up through the ground of the Earth and rests in the skies above Antarctica, heading out to declare war on the rest of the world by pre-empting a biological attack by way of releasing flesh-eating bacteria above the major cities. This of course leads into the previously-mentioned battle between the U.S. Air Force and a UFO over Antarctica, but as to be expected, the fighter jets are no match for this Doomsday Machine and it's up to our escaped heroes to take it down from the inside. This part of the movie actually felt very similar, visually, to another Asylum movie titled Battle of Los Angeles, and upon doing some research discovered that the director of this, Joseph J. Lawson, had been the visual effects supervisor on that one, which would explain the similar visual style from the reveal of the Nazi UFO onwards.
I know this kind of movie isn't everyone's cup of tea, even among B-Movie fans, but I have to say that I personally really loved Nazis at the Center of the Earth. To me, it's near-perfect. There's really only two very minor stumbling blocks, the first of which is the fact that despite being out in the cold in the middle of Antarctica, there's no visible breath coming from any of the characters, not even crappy fake CGI breath and that kind of takes the viewer out of the movie for those scenes (though there is a scene where two of the characters end up outside in just their regular everyday clothes and they rush to grab warm jackets and gloves to put on, so props to the director for that little bit). The other minor detractor is that, putting Robo-Hitler and his UFO Doomsday Machine aside, most of the twists and character motivations in this movie are very predictable and easy to guess pretty early-on, leaving very little to be surprised by during the movie. But as I said, these are only minor issues that are easy to overlook when up against all the other excellent things in this movie.
Production value-wise, this is probably one of Asylum's best and most professional movies to date. Entertainment wise, while it may not be the best (Seriously, 2-Headed Shark Attack, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, and Mega Python vs Gatoroid has that market pretty much covered), it's still really, really good and far better then I was expecting.
Also, be sure to stay through the End Credits for a short little stinger scene at the very end.
