You know that old saying, 'when did the inmates take over the asylum?'. Well, apparently it was earlier this decade.

Are you the type of person who doesn't like the big brand names, and doesn't mind settling for the cheaper usually inferior version of product?

Well, there are two movies being released this year right up your alley.

Forget big budget action extravaganzas Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, instead watch The Terminators and Transmorphers 2.



They are the latest so-called 'mockbusters' from infamous film studio The Asylum, which has been trying to cash-in on some higher-profile films for the past five years now.

The Terminators tells the story of a small band of resistance fighters who battle the cyborgs that have taken control of the planet. Sound familiar?

And of course Transmorphers 2 carries on the story about an invading alien race of robots.

Just recently, as the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still hit the big screen, complete rip-off The Day The Earth Stopped hit the DVD shelves.

Earlier on in 2008 saw the DVD release of Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls (just as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was being released in cinemas), Monster (alongside Cloverfield), Death Racers (alongside Death Race), I Am Omega (alongside I Am Legend) and Alien vs Hunter (alongside Aliens vs Predator: Requiem).


You may have seen these titles sitting on the bottom shelf of the new release section of your local video store - and some may have accidently picked them up and even hired them by mistake thinking they were the 'real' thing.

And that is exactly what The Asylum co-founders David Michael Latt and David Rimawi want. They even kinda admit it.

The Asylum featured in an October 2007 article in the New York Times, written by the interestingly named Rolf Potts, who visited the studio's meagre offices in Hollywood.

Potts writes, "He (Latt) told me that the Asylum discovered mockbusters by accident, in 2005, when Latt’s own adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds hit video stores around the time Steven Spielberg’s big-screen version hit cinemas.

Until then, Potts adds, "the Asylum concentrated mainly on straight-to-DVD low-budget horror movies — a market that was rapidly being taken over by bigger, savvier companies like Lionsgate (the company behind the Saw series and Hostel).

"So when Blockbuster ordered 100,000 copies of Latt’s War of the Worlds (seven to eight times the typical order for the Asylum’s horror movies), he and Rimawi reconsidered their business model."

With Peter Jackson's King Kong coming out soon after, the guys got to work on another what they like to call "tie-in" King of the Lost World.



Potts writes, "... the mockbuster strategy aims at a broader and shallower demographic: some viewers have seen the real blockbuster and want more of the same thing, no matter how lo-fi; some are genre geeks, interested in low-budget adventure and sci-fi films; others rent the movie thinking it is something else. Web sites are rife with the scornful entries of duped film fans."

And of course it's all legal.

All have cheap special effects and equally cheap actors. It seems to be where those with once well-known names go to die - or get a second chance, if you can call it that.

Prominent in The Asylum movies have been C. Thomas Howell (The Outsiders, Soul Man), who has also 'acted' as directed on a couple of projects; as well as Lance Henricksen (Aliens), Lorenzo Lamas (Snake Eater), William Katt (The Greatest American Hero), Bruce Boxleitner (Tron) and Marc Singer (Beastmaster, V), just in case you were wondering where those guys had gotten to.

Check out The Asylum's releases. And see if you can pick what 'genuine article' movies they are stolen from. Shouldn't be hard. The Asylum is not very subtle.