Editor’s Note: Sure, there are plenty of times when we groan at bad movies, but we also find ourselves attracted to those so-bad-they’re-good stinkers that prove irresistible. Freeline Media critic Mike Fried has his own thoughts on two “bad” movies — but are they actually bad? Read on!
By Mike Fried
MOCKBUSTERS
4/5
“Considering I have never made a movie before, how come you are letting me make a movie?”
“Because you asked.”
This tells the tale of wannabe director Anthony Frith who wanted to be a filmmaker and was relegated to making corporate videos.
But he loves bad movies and the production company The Asylum is the leader in making bad movies. Sharknado, anyone? Eric Roberts? Michael Paré, anyone?
Well, Anthony gets his dream job which begins to turn into a real nightmare and while the resulting film, The Land That Time Forgot, is probably on the dungheap of forgettable films (it has a 2.6 rating on IMDb – and yet it is not in the bottom 250 films, which is nice).
But what he does do is document his issues in making the film; the resulting film, Mockbuster, is one of the most interesting and fun documentaries on the filmmaking process that I have ever seen.
The Asylum makes those shitty moves that Prime Video seems to pick up all the time and the company has released more than 500 films including 300 of their own original works. Their business model is to have a movie cost anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 and by selling the movies to idiots like Prime, they make a profit anywhere from $150,000 to $250,000 per film.
And they do it and we watch the movies. As one of the principals says, “We make shitty movies for people with bad taste … and alcoholics.”
Credit to Frith for poking fun at himself and The Asylum. I mean the CEO has business cards that say “Powerless Figurehead” but that belies the notion that everything down to the costumes must be approved by the home office or any shots will be discarded and likely so will the director.
Featuring a terrific interview with Eric Roberts, the movie revels in making fun at the burn and churn method of making movies. Six day shooting schedules with 20-30 pages shot per day with minimal cast and crew filming interiors in cramped quarters and exteriors in forests just outside the city limits it is an interesting insight into how a movie is made. Like Roberts says, “If you’re making a Nolan movie and you walk into the zeppelin hangar and see all of Gotham City, that is a play area – but otherwise making of the two movies is the same. You act.”
And Anthony Frith’s takeaway was that he knew that he was bad enough that he couldn’t make a good movie but he didn’t realize that he wasn’t good enough to make a bad movie.
Just one thing: if the movies that The Asylum makes are called Mockbusters because they mock blockbusters shouldn’t this movie have been called “Blockumentary”?
WATCH IT!
THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (2025)
I watched this movie because I recently saw the documentary Mockbuster, which is a film by Anthony Frith about his trials and tribulations in making this movie for The Asylum.
Quite frankly, I did not have high hopes for this film so I was very pleasantly surprised.
Ok, this movie has the most ridiculous script I have ever experienced. There’s Australians, Germans, Russians and Natives on this island along with dinosaurs. There’s gravitational fields. But with Frith’s imaginative touches this was way above other movies produced by The Asylum – with the exception of Sharknado — sorry, Anthony.
To think that this movie was shot in only a period of six days is quite remarkable given the coverages and pickup shots that work well plus absolutely above average cinematography that one doesn’t see in Grade Z productions.
Even the VFX are decent for a movie that costs only a quarter of a million dollars.
Michael Paré is even onboard as a US Navy Admiral and his wife is played by B-movie lady Michelle Bauer. The rest of the cast are no-name local Australian actors, but they all look like they are having lots of fun.
Dumb stuff happens, like a knife being thrown and hitting a T-Rex behind the ear and killing it, but that is no different than Richard Kind hitting a shark out of Citi Field with a bat.
Do yourself a favor watch the documentary Mockbuster first; then watch this and I think it will appreciate this film even more.
A special shout out to Nate Charles Karagiannis-Troisi who, as the crazy German Von Schoen is so over-the-top as to be enjoyable. “Well if you have seen it one failure of substandard Russian Engineering you have seen them all and I have seen one so I have seen them all”
FIRST WATCH MOCKBUSTER! Then you can understand why I rate this 3/5 despite the silliness.
3/5
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@gmail.com
