Asylum August Update

By Jon Condit
July 6th, 2006

We still have to wait until August 18th to see those mother fuckin’ snakes on that mother fuckin’ plane. However, The Asylum’s mother fuckin’ rip-off set on a mother fuckin’ train leaves the station four days earlier on August 15th.

That’s right, Snakes on a Train! Only The Asylum, folks, would go forward and produce such an obvious DTV knock-off. On the other hand, given the film’s plot, perhaps they should have instead titled it Snakes in a Woman .

"Under a powerful Mayan curse, snakes are hatched inside a young woman, slowly devouring her from within. Her only chance for survival is a powerful shaman who lives across the border. With only hours to live, she jumps on a train headed for Los Angeles. Unfortunately for the passengers aboard, they are now trapped, soon to be victims of these flesh-eating vipers."

See, Snakes on a Train isn’t just a flat out rip-off of Snakes on a Plane. Its Snakes on a Plane meets Under Siege 2 meets Curse II: The Bite! I’ve ragged on The Asylum for doing knock-offs of big screen films, but the most aggravating aspect is that they often do so with no flare. Given the outlandish nature of both the film they’re making and the film it’s designed to capitalize on, Snakes on a Train will show some of the must missing spark these films so desperately need.

Asylum regular Peter Mervis (When A Killer Calls, The Da Vinci Treasure) is directing, and hopefully this time he won’t go overboard with that annoying shaky cam thing he loves to do with the editing. Man, that crap’s annoying.

The Asylum also picked up the distribution rights to Jeff Overstreet’s mad scientist horror flick Dr. Rage, which will be released to DVD on August 8th under the new title The Straun House. The film casts the great Andrew Divoff as Dr. Timothy Straun, a mad scientist conducting illegal and unethical experiments on others and himself involving the rage serum he has created. Denise Duff co-stars and Karen Black little more than cameos, but really this one is the Andrew Divoff show. I reviewed an import DVD of Dr. Rage a few months back and it’s an okay flick highlighted by some major league scene chewing on Divoff’s part.

The Asylum’s DVD release will also include a making of featurette, a blooper reel, and footage from the cast and crew doing a Fangoria panel to promote the film.

- The Foywonder