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Mockbusters

November 25, 2011

I haven't noticed much improvement in the size of Netflix's streaming catalog in the last few years, and that's been annoying.

But much more annoying is the quality of what they have instead: a bunch of really awful movies that they know damn well I am never going to want to watch. In particular, before Netflix Instant I was completely unaware of a niche in the film industry called Mockbusters.

A "mockbuster", it turns out, is a film made as cheaply as possible and given a title similar to that of a successful movie. The sole purpose of this is to drive DVD sales for people who confuse the two movies in some way.

Examples (yes these are real movies):

Transmorphers (not "Transformers")
30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (not "20,000 leagues under the sea")
Snakes on a Train (not "Snakes on a plane")
Alien vs. Hunter (not "Alien vs. Predator")
The Da Vince Treasure (not "the da vince code")
The Terminators (not "the terminator" ... its more plural!)
Chop Kick Panda (not "kung fu panda")
Battle of Los Angeles (not "Battle: Los Angeles"... mind the punctuation!)

I've actually watched a few of these, and they're pretty excruciating. I was almost fooled by one, in fact--- I didn't remember at first exactly how many thousand leagues Captain Nemo went under the sea.

Posted by rus at 06:14 PM

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