'Tis the season for bad movies

The holidays have passed. All of the presents have been unwrapped, the champagne corks popped, the resolutions made and already broken and, unfortunately, all the good movies for the year have been released. So you've seen "Sherlock Holmes," "The Blind Side," "Up in the Air" and "Avatar" (probably twice); what's next? January and February are often considered the worst months of the year for movie releases. So in light of the fact that there won't be any good movies coming out for awhile, why not take it way too far in the other direction? For the next couple months, watch nothing but bad movies. Movies made by the bad movie kings, The Asylum. Didn't get enough of James Cameron's "Avatar?" Well how about checking out the movie that is based on the story that inspired James Cameron, "The Princess of Mars," starring Anthony Sabato Jr. and conveniently released by The Asylum a few weeks after "Avatar." It's a tale of how a marine is transported to a distant planet (Mars) in the middle of a crisis and how his decisions affect the fate of the planet. Sound familiar? But don't expect 3-D, good acting, directing or really anything that resembles "Avatar." If "Avatar" isn't your cup of tea, then how about heading to a place where they love tea? Head back to England for another romp with the world's most famous sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. No, not the holiday blockbuster starring Robert Downey Jr. I'm talking about the Sherlock Holmes with a killer robot, and giant dinosaurs and dragons attacking London. Exactly how they get away with calling this "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes" is a mystery not even the real Holmes could solve. The Asylum has put out a total of nearly 300 movies. Most of them have been rip-offs of major blockbusters such as "Transmorphers," "The Land That Time Forgot," "100 Million B.C.," "The Day the Earth Stopped," "Snakes on a Train," "Paranormal Entity" and more. Even with all the schlocky releases, The Asylum has had a couple of hits that became cult classics. "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus" became popular when the trailer for the film went viral over the Internet, and since then it has been a favorite among lovers of bad movies. The amazing thing about The Asylum is that even with their nearly nonexistent production values and their frequently over-the-top stories, Wired magazine reported that the company made nearly $5 million in revenue this past year, which brings to mind the question, how? With nearly no advertising money and hardly any shooting time (the films average about 10 days to shoot) and using inexpensive computer graphics, The Asylum pockets nearly all the money they make off the movies. How do they make that money? Simple. They hope people see their movies, get confused, and rely on the fact that they have some pretty decent-looking box art. They are hoping that people confuse "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" with "Transmorphers: Fall of Man." And it works. The Asylum just keeps churning out films, they make an average of 13 a year. So for the next couple months, instead of waiting until spring for the next good movie, why not pop some corn and watch a couple of truly awful movies that parody the good movies? After all, it is the season for bad flicks.

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