i am omega Tagged Articles at Cinematical

We wouldn't have it any other way: just a few weeks after the Wachowskis' Speed Racer hits theaters, the Asylum will unleash its knock-off-of-the-month: Street Racer! (To read up on what Asylum is all about, take a look at my post about Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls from a month or so back.) The plot: "After serving time for a tragic accident, in which a young boy is crippled, an illegal street racer finds himself dragged back into the world of high speed competition on the side streets and highways of Los Angeles."

If you thought that the company's efforts to make spartan, homemade versions of studio blockbusters were lovable, or in some other way admirable, take a look at their Street Racer trailer and you may change your mind. Obviously unable to come up with anything resembling the Wachowskis' blue-screen fireworks, the Asylum opted to essentially make The Cheap and the Furious and cynically tie it in to Speed Racer. Of course whether it's actually any more cynical than I Am Omega or Transmorphers is an open question. And the film's tagline, which the Asylum is clearly proud of -- "You're never more alive... Or closer to dead!" -- is kind of awesome, in a horrible way.

The director, Teo Konuralp, made a no-budget sci-fi thriller called Feedback a few years ago that actually got some good reviews. If Street Racer represents "selling out," then he's sure found an odd way of doing it.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Will Smith and the cast and crew of I Am Legend should be tickled pink about this. The blatant knock-off is a longstanding tradition of the B-movie world, and occasionally the practice can spawn something noteworthy. Everybody's heard of Godzilla, right? Well, the Big G started life as an imitation of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and has since become a pop culture icon while The Beast (which sported some very cool stop-motion animation from Ray Harryhausen) is largely forgotten by the general public. Lucio Fulci's Zombie has become a gore classic, despite going so far as to call itself Zombi 2 in its native Italy in an attempt to make people think this was a sequel to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which had been released there as Zombi. On the other hand, Carnosaur has become little more than a footnote in monster movie history, despite its attempts to cash in on the buzz surrounding Jurassic Park.

This is the newest release from The Asylum, and its resemblance to I Am Legend, and more specifically to The Omega Man, the previous film adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel, is stupefyingly obvious. The Asylum has become the modern torch-bearer of the B-movie knock-off with the likes of Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers and AVH: Alien Vs. Hunter all hitting DVD at a time convenient enough to take advantage of the big budget publicity machine of the films they are imitating.