The Asylum Unveils Mandatory 'Indiana Jones' Knock-Off
Filed under: Action, New Releases, Newsstand, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips
We at Cinematical love The Asylum -- and how could we not? No outfit that has enough chutzpah to cash in on Hollywood's blockbuster successes by releasing cheap direct-to-DVD films with titles like Snakes on a Train, The Da Vinci Treasure, Pirates of Treasure Island, Transmorphers, Alien vs. Hunter and I Am Omega (which the courageous Matt Bradshaw reviewed here) can deserve anything but unbridled affection, especially if one is shrewd enough to avoid watching the actual films. When they make a mistake and hitch their wagon to a movie that bombs -- like The Invasion, which spawned The Asylum's Invasion of the Pod People -- my love for them only grows.Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull must have seemed like a pretty safe bet, though, and so on April 29th (almost a month before Crystal Skull's May 22nd release), The Asylum will bust out -- are you ready? -- Allen Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls. You can see its product page, complete with stills and a trailer, right here. The DVD case proclaims this to be "the story that inspired Indiana Jones," and the website helpfully clarifies that the film is "a retelling of H. Rider Haggard's classic novel King Solomon's Mines, featuring the adventurer who was the inspiration for Indiana Jones" (a claim I can't authenticate). The trailer is pretty incredible, featuring a villain who seems to be channeling Daniel Plainview and culminating in a climactic shot of our hero nonchalantly picking up his hat and leather jacket off what looks like a hotel bed.
Browsing The Asylum's website, I also learned that not only do they have a movie called 100 Million BC in the pipeline, but that the Sci-Fi Channel has agreed to premiere it. Huzzah!
So, full disclosure (as if it weren't obvious): I'm fascinated by The Asylum, but I've never actually seen any of the movies. Against my better judgment, I'm thinking of changing that. Can anyone recommend a good starting point?
[hat tip: Slashfilm]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-30-2008 @ 10:04PM
Jordan said...
the funny thing is, save for the semi-cheap look of the film, this could be the trailer for any run of the mill action flick coming out of hollywood- sign of how bad those films are, or how uh..."good" the asylum films are? you decide. i'm going with the former.
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3-30-2008 @ 10:18PM
MCW said...
Why why why would you cover this :( It makes me cry to think that someone might accidentally rent Allen Quarter - wait, what am I saying, that sounds nothing like Indiana Jones. Well, I'm guessing they didn't want to get royally sued, because God knows they couldn't afford a lawyer.
Against my better judgment, I browsed their movie titles, and it appears that the kings of terrible films, C. Thomas Howell (Soul Man anyone?) and Lance Henriksen (Pirates of Treasure Island anyone?) are in pretty much all of the Asylum films. That should help you gauge the quality.
Please, if it all possible, avoid promoting such a horrible, coat-tail riding "company". They don't deserve any credit.
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3-30-2008 @ 11:15PM
Eugene Novikov said...
On the other hand, someone who comes across Allen Quatermain in the video store having read this post will be much less likely to be fooled into renting it than someone who knew nothing about it.
3-30-2008 @ 11:38PM
Sowey said...
The REAL mystery of that movie is the modern lights you can see embedded in the trailer, w/ falling rocks. Shameless, priceless !
Now, the question is : War of The World 2 or 2012 Bullshit (even if it says "Doomsday" on the cover) ?
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3-31-2008 @ 2:13AM
Lyric said...
I saw The Da Vinci Treasure with some of my friends, it was pretty terrible. Its more National Treasure than The Da Vinci Code, although released for 'Code. I guess if you are interested at all in checking one out, make sure you have plenty of people with you that enjoy a B movie here and there.
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3-31-2008 @ 9:59AM
Julian Wellbery said...
Having worked at blockbuster over the summer, I was entitled to five free rentals a week. I Normally ignored anything that went straight to DVD, until I saw Transmorphers. The cover beckoned me with it's obvious disregard for copyright infringement and quotes about the film that further inspection would reveal were from...the filmmakers themselves. I took it home expecting a laugh out loud film. What I got was a movie who's sound was so off that it was completely unwatchable. We're talking about at least a 30-second descrepency. Never have I experienced a movie so busted. Seriously, I was lucky to have "watched" it for free. I feel bad for folks with poor eyesight who have mistaken these knock-offs for the real thing. For Shame.
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3-31-2008 @ 8:50AM
Eugene Novikov said...
Bahahahaha! What did the quotes say?
3-31-2008 @ 12:26PM
Julian Wellbery said...
The Box said stuff like "An Action Packed Rollercoaster Ride!"-in quotes,but gave no reference to any sort of publication or author. It's totally bizarre and yet makes perfect sense at the same time. I suppose they are counting on the renter not looking closely at what they are renting. But still, one would think they could put like
"An Action-Packed Rollercoaster" and then cited a website they created for the purpose of appearing credible. I suppose that wasnt in the budget.
3-31-2008 @ 4:31AM
yatebale said...
the trailer is very attractive, i'll watch it
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3-31-2008 @ 5:10AM
David Cornelius said...
Avoid most of 'em, but a pleasant surprise can be found in their solid reworking of War of the Worlds. The rest range from the barely passable to the hilariously awful.
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3-31-2008 @ 1:08PM
Richard von Busack said...
I'm surprised no one mentioned the two lame-ass Allen Quartermain movies Cannon Films made in the 1980s. Sharon Stone was the eye candy in both of them and Herbert Lom (the twitchy chief inspector in the late Pink Panther movies) got to be the obligatory bad Prussian. These were really, really bad movies and it's good to see that Asylum is continuing this tradition...
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5-05-2008 @ 8:28PM
Scott Weinberg said...
RVB, I saw both KSM and AQATLCOG ... theatrically! And yes, Firewalker, too.
I saw anything back then. Still do, actually.
3-31-2008 @ 9:58AM
techstar25 said...
The question is "How do these make money?"
I don't believe anybody is blind-buying them. The only purchasers of these DVDs are Blockbuster stores. But who is renting? Are they big renters?
Sure some of them are subsidized by The Sci Fi Channel, for broadcast, but not all of them.
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3-31-2008 @ 10:38AM
MosquitoControl said...
A good friend is a Blockbuster manager. He says this crap rents like mad. In fact, he said that it's almost exclusively crap that rents (his biggest renter a few years back was White Chicks.)
Transmorphers was a big one for him. Massive. Of course, he also had people coming into the store asking if Transformers was out to rent the week before it opened in theaters, so... let's just say he hasn't managed stores in the smartest of all areas. People come in hoping to find Transformers, because some guy is already selling it out of the back of his trunk at the gas station. They see Transmorphers. They rent it not realizing it's different.
And yes, at least one customer did come in and complain about how bad the special effects in Transformers was, when he had actually rented and watched Transmorphers.
Holy crap I need to move to a different country...
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3-31-2008 @ 3:05PM
MCW said...
I literally almost made the mistake of renting "Snakes on a Train" one time at Blockbuster, instead of "Snakes on a Plane". It was sitting right beside it, and I considered just renting it for the heck of it.
Still haven't seen Flight of the Living Dead yet, I've heard mixed reviews :(