I confess to having developed an addiction to The Asylum. I’m fascinated by its business model and marketing, etc. etc. One of The Asylum’s filmmaking strategies is to tap into what’s hot in the theaters. In the case of THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED, the obvious reference point is the Keanu Reeves “Day the Earth Stood Still” remake. I actually had more fun with THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED than with the real McCoy “Stood Still”. I love a proud B movie and The Asylum’s pictures make no pretense at being anything other than what they are, pure and simple – exploitation films. I’m using the term in a broad sense, broader than the usual meaning of horror/sex/etc. THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED, for example, makes no bones about its bigger budget Hollywood inspiration. But while the film may be highly derivative, like many Asylym flicks, it takes the germ of the source material and molds it into a different shape, tweaking it a bit. I’m pretty sure part of that has to do with avoiding the legal ramifications of excessive copycatting, but I’d like to think there’s also the desire on the filmmakers’ part to make the best out of a borrowing situation. Here, rather than Keanu Reeves, we have a woman who looks like she just stepped out of an adult entertainment feature, though that is not actually the case with her resume (confirmed on imdb.com). A surprising but rather gorgeous scene of her arrival on Earth helps open the picture. She arrives meteorite style and is first seen walking naked through the woods. As an unnamed co-viewer of this film said, it was very beautiful and pagan scene. Anyway, that’s a definite departure from the Reeves pic. I’m kind of glad I didn’t see Keanu naked. There’s also a male humanoid alien. So THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED has TWICE the aliens here on Earth to warn us factor. There are also some giant robots hanging out in all the major metropolitan areas of Earth. Naturally, we try to bomb the shit out of them and it doesn’t fucking work. THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED is a helluva lot of fun. It was directed by C. Thomas Howell and also stars him, and features, in addition, an appearance by the always cool to see Judd Nelson (“The Breakfast Club”). THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED is primo B-film borrowing and its kitsch by way of shamelessness, the disaster movie awesomeness, the sharp if unconvincing CGI and so on and so forth work together to make this a blast. Now, let’s hope mankind can prove its worth to the aliens so it doesn’t get blasted!
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