So the folks out at The Asylum sent me a copy of Airline disaster. It's been a while since I've tackled an Asylum title in this space, thus it's pretty exciting for me to talk about.

Especially since The Asylum started doing almost nothing but big movie knockoffs, Airline Disaster is particularly exciting in that it resembles nothing else.

Airline Disaster gives us an interesting premise, for a change--a new kind of superaircraft, largely automated from takeoff to landing, is rolling out, backup piloted by the brother of the current President of the United States. Thus, the Aryan Brotherhood smells an opportunity--with several of its members in prison, several others take the pilot's family hostage and use them in a bid to get the President to release the imprisoned Nazis.

The Asylum has often managed to do some nice disaster movies, and this is one of them. Frankly, it's entertaining, and that's the truest measure of quality in a movie. Sure, it's a bit on the low-budget side--maybe a LOT on the low-budget side--but they've actually managed to figure out how to use their budget to the fullest. It's simple, but it's good. It's good old fashioned disaster fluff with plenty of gunplay and narrow escapes. Everything you'd look for in a disaster movie is right here.

The ending is pretty much what you'd expect here--I won't spoiler, but suffice it to say there'll be no big surprises and everything is well in hand.

The special features include a making-of featurette, a blooper reel, audio options, and trailers for The 7 Adventures of Sinbad, Mega Piranha, 6 Guns, Sherlock Holmes, Meteor Apocalypse, Airline Disaster and Cheerleader Camp.

All in all, I'll give The Asylum plenty of credit here--this is a fine movie that's got a lot going for it, and since it's not a direct ripoff of anything I can think of, I call that good enough!

Dead Snow

Today is something of an exciting affair for me, folks--because today, we're going to talk about a movie I've been dying to get my hands on for some time now. Today we're talking Dead Snow, a movie that brings together some of the greatest things in horror: chainsaws, Nazis, zombies and classical music

Dead Snow follows a group of med students who are plunging off into the depths of the frozen north of Norway (and if you've been to Norway, you'll know a surprisingly large amount of it qualifies as "frozen north") for a wild weekend of skiing, snowmobiling, getting drunk and having sex. And all goes as planned, for a while anyway, until they find a box full of old coins and watches and whatnot. They think they've managed to get rich besides having a great weekend, but when a complement of frozen zombie Nazis emerges to reclaim that lost booty, then the med students will find themselves fighting for their very lives against the horde.

I was serious about that, by the way. Like I said in the plot synopsis, Nazis and zombies, or more accurately, zombie Nazis, which is actually slightly cooler. And there is plenty of classical music--I recognized, at the very least, Beethoven's Ode to Joy and Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King

The rest of the movie is a little bit on the predictable side, sadly--it's a lot like other horror movies we've seen. In fact, Dead Snow will gleefully describe other horror flicks that it's a lot like, with one great scene involving a couple of the kids in question say: "how many horror movies have started out just like this?" (or an approximation thereof).

Yet, at the same time, it's done a lot right. There's plenty of action in here, with a comic bent that's downright irresistable in some places. Though oddly, the farther in you get, the less comic the action is and the more horrendously bloody. It's almost as though they switched to a whole different script midway through the movie

I'll say this much, though, I've never seen a snowmobile used to kill in so many different ways before

The ending is about as bloodsoaked a romp as you might expect, with the last of the zombies finally taking their cuts. There are even a couple laughs of the darker variety in here

The special features include a making of featurette, a featurette on the makeup effects, a featurette on the burning of the cabin, a blooper reel and a trailer for Dead Snow

All in all, Dead Snow is a pretty solid entry into the horror field. Maybe it wasn't all we were hoping for, or even all we were expecting, but if you like a good squishy horror romp with plenty of violence and a few good laughs.