Invasion of the Pod People

Invasion of the Pod People


2007
Story by Ron Magid and Jay Marks
Written by Leigh Scott
Directed by Justin Jones

Invasion of the Pod People
I seriously have to be scared of this root?

Invasion of the Pod People asks the question: “What if the Bodysnatcher movies made everyone lesbians?” Well, buckle up, because we got lesbians and plant duplicates out the yin-yang! Another mockbuster from The Asylum, and one of the last efforts by Leigh Scott as writer before he cut and run. Leigh Scott’s Asylum films Dragon and Transmorphers have been reviewed before, and feature a bunch of the cast also in Invasion of the Pod People. Director Justin Jones has done a lot of assistant director work (and possibly was basically the real director on a few of those flicks!)

Invasion of the Pod People
All the asteroids from all those movies have teamed up to destroy Earth once and for all!

Invasion of the Pod People was to be a mockbuster for The Invasion, a film so bad it got delayed for months, forcing Pod People to go it alone on the video store shelves. Some would say that was a blessing in disguise for Invasion of the Pod People

Invasion of the Pod People
The guy the pod people never bothered to replace!

Melissa (Erica Roby) – Our heroine, an up and coming talent agent who will spend part of the film depressed or uninterested in anything, and the other half freaking out because space plant people!
Samantha (Jessica Bork) – Boss of Melissa and Billie, under Vickland, who becomes a lot more close to her coworkers after getting podded. Jessica Bork was also in Dragon and Transmorphers, because she’s awesome like that.
Taylor Michaels (Shaley Scott) – Bitchy almost client model for Blackthorne who suddenly becomes a super nice lesbian after being podded.
Billie (Danae Nason) – Coworker of Melissa who manages to not get podded long enough to become a main character. I’m sure you will shocked to know she was in Transmorphers!
Detective Pete Alexander (Marat Glazer) – Detective who is one of the few people who figures out something creepy is going on. Marat Glazer played Veers in Transmorphers.
David Vickland (Michael Tower) – The head of Blackthorne Agency and a very intense dude. Michael Tower was in Transmorphers.
Space Ginger Root (Itself) – The alien invading plant is ginger root in a pot. Seriously. That’s the threat to America. Ginger root. I had some of this last night! I guess I’m doomed to become a lesbian pod person. Oh, well…
Invasion of the Pod People
I’m in an Asylum film!

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Transmorphers (Review)

Transmorphers


2007
Directed and Written by Leigh Scott

Transmorphers! Morph than meets the eye! Wait a minute, that’s the theme to Transformers, not Transmophers, another in the long line of “mock”busters from The Asylum. We previously encountered them in the first Dragon Slayers team-up with FantasyFilmscapes.com in the movie Dragon, which was mysteriously named similar to Eragon. In addition to having elements similar to Transformers, Transmorphers borrows from several famous science fiction movies, the most obvious will be The Terminator and The Matrix. We’ll point out the rest as the references happen. Before we can get to the plot, first we must address the disk. Simply put, the Transmorphers DVD shipped with an incomplete movie. Large swaths of the film are out of sound sync, and many effects are incomplete. Guns shoot silently or no lasers exit the end. CGI at times is embarrassingly bad. In fact, the film is so bad that The Asylum went back and completed the film and fixed the sound problems, and any new DVDs are supposed to have the completed film. Well, I’m not about to track down another copy of the film to play Russian roulette to see if I got a corrected version. Transmorphers was filmed under the title Robot Wars, but everyone working on it pretty much knew it was going to get a new title that would sound familiar to a certain big budget film coming out.

Ignoring those major flaws, how is the film? Actually, it is pretty entertaining. Giving the budget constraints and time spent on the film, it was amazing what was produced. Writer/Director Leigh Scott gives a few tidbits of information from his interview on YourVideoStoreShelf.com about production for The Asylum and why he won’t be working for them anymore. Scott is known for creating a large bulk of The Asylum’s mockbusters and for going on message boards and arguing with irate watchers of his films. As for now, humanity is driven underground thanks to an invasion of alien robots.

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