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For the love of bad movies!

So I discovered this great little movie studio, called 'The Asylum,' which specializes in 'Mockbusters' and other such homages to big budget films.  The studio has had some recent outputs of sort of blockbusters a look at their releases includes 'Transmorphers' 'Almighty Thor' and numerous throw-backs to those cheesy 'American Pie' type movies '18 year old virgin,' 'Celebrity sex tape.' Now some of these films might seem like blatant rip-offs of the Hollywood films but they aren't, well not exactly anyways.  In my experience of watching these 'bad' films they might take the premise of the original story or film and then go in a different direction.

The first film I saw from 'The Asylum' was a western (I think their only western) and it was called '6 Guns.'  Now I think this movie is supposed to be something like 'True Grit' mixed with a little 'Red Dead Redemption' but maybe I am missing the mark on that. Regardless of the *cough* inspiration the movie was actually quite enjoyable.  The (sorry Barry) 'star' of the film was probably Barry Van Dyke, although there were other familiar faces (according to IMDB at least).  For those of you who don't know, Barry Van Dyke is the son of television legend Dick Van Dyke and has had a few stints in television back in the 80s and 90s. I was a fan of father and son in the 90s series 'Diagnosis Murder' so that was actually my reason for picking up this film: STAR POWER WORKS!

On to the film.  The production values in this film were laughable.  A lot of the interior shots were rough and some of the props appeared to be very modern in origin rather than to be from some hundred odd years ago when the film should have been set. The story had some very standard western elements and cliches, although this is something I don't fault the movie for. Cliches wouldn't be cliches if they didn't work! In the very basic sense this is a revenge story and for it to work there are several leaps in logic we have to take to make it work and if you don't take it too seriously it can be enjoyed.  The acting on the other hand is very hit and miss.  I thought most of the leads were passable.  Our bad guy was bad, he acted like a jerk and he was pretty believable.  Our small town sheriff again was your typical western -wild wild west- sheriff and you could find him quite believable in the role.  Mr Van Dyke as the 'hired guy' turned 'role model' for the female lead was maybe not his best work but I think he added some charm to the role and had a decent look. The female lead was not so good. When she had to express sadness or hysteria it was like it had suddenly been turned on it wasn't anything gradual or believable. The acting went from no emotion to complete over-emotion at the drop of a hat and really didn't hit the mark.  I guess you could say she was either on the mark or completely off it... but I guess that is 'hit and miss' in a nutshell.

Overall I would say that if you are someone who cannot find the fun in a really low-budget generic movie avoid 'The Asylum' like the plague. However, if you like me sometimes have a hankering for something that reminds you of something you watched and want a little more or you just love laughing at low-budget drivel pick up one of these 'gems' today. A tip for you though... you may not want to be sober when you watch these.




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