I Am...Omega? Alien vs...Hunter? No doubt you've seen titles like these littering the video shelves and wondered, "What's up with that?" These are known in some circles as "mockbusters," cheap direct-to-video knockoffs that flout not only the principles of copyright law but also all sense of artistic merit in order to capitalize on upcoming theatrical releases (the mockbuster usually preceding the movie it rips off by a few weeks). The films are by and large awful, but you have to have a perverse admiration for the earnestness of their efforts, which at best will be known as "the poor man's ______."

Although these movies aren't restricted to horror -- reigning mockbuster king The Asylum offers titles like 100 Million B.C. and (eesh) Transmorphers -- a good portion of them do fall in the genre, and I undertook the task of watching 14 prime examples of this new trend in filmmaking. Pray for me.

Snakes on a Train © The Asylum