Mockbusters: Making a Mockery of Your Favorite Films
Saturday March 22, 2008
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
Comments
Mockbusters? I am sort of split here. On the negative side, somebody is making money by ripping off someone else’s idea and work; that is just not the American way! On the other hand, you can’t believe anyone would rent one of these not expecting to see a bad copycat. I haven’t heard of any major cry from the studios? What are the stats? Will more people go see the original after seeing the rip-off? Besides, most of the stuff that Hollywood is producing isn’t that original anyhow.
Yeah, William, it’s an odd phenomenon. I’m not sure how they get away with it, but I guess these films are in the vein of all those ’80s ripoffs of Porky’s and Alien and Dirty Harry, etc. They’re just WAY more obvious about it. I guess if they were doing huge business from it (granted, they must be doing fairly well), the studios might have something to say. I rented one out of curiosity (and the rest just for this feature), which I think a lot of people do — and which might be all they need to keep making these movies.
-Mark
-Mark
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