Mockbuster
A mockbuster (also known as knockbuster or drafting opportunity) is a film created to exploit the publicity of another major motion picture with a similar title or subject. Mockbusters are often made with a low budget and quick production to maximize profits. "Mockbuster" is a portmanteau of the words "mock" and "blockbuster". Criteria Unlike films produced to capitalize on the popularity of a recent release by adopting similar genre or storytelling elements, mockbusters are generally produced concurrently with upcoming films and released direct-to-video around the time the film they are inspired by is released. A mockbuster may be similar enough in title or packaging that consumers confuse it with the actual film it mimics; however, their producers maintain that they are simply offering additional products for consumers who want to watch more films in the same subgenres. History Mockbusters have a long history in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, the 1959 Vanwick film '' The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Asylum
The Asylum is an American independent film production and distribution company based in Burbank, California, known for producing low-budget, direct-to-video films, in particular mockbusters, which capitalize on the popularity of major studio films with similar titles and premises. The Asylum's business model revolves around producing as many low-budget films as quickly as possible, which earn around $150,000 to $250,000 in profit. Since the company produces dozens of films every year, this model generates millions of dollars, and the company claims never to have lost money on a film. The Asylum spends around 4-6 months making a film, and since the company is not affiliated with any industry guilds other than SAG-AFTRA, this means their employees will sometimes work up to 22 hours a day. Initially founded as a distribution company for low-budget drama films, The Asylum switched to in-house productions in the mid-2000s due to competition from larger studios like Lionsgate Films. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Black Shampoo
''Black Shampoo'' is an American exploitation film directed by Greydon Clark. Released in 1976, the comedy film is considered an example of the blaxploitation and sexploitation subgenres of exploitation film. Produced on a budget of $50,000, the film stars John Daniels as Jonathan Knight, an African American businessman and hairdresser who frequently has sex with his predominantly white female clients, and Tanya Boyd as Brenda, Jonathan's secretary and girlfriend, who was previously in a relationship with a white mob boss, who, out of jealousy towards his ex's new lover, begins to regularly send goons to trash Jonathan's hair salon. The violence escalates as the film progresses. Clark purposely did not want to make a film that featured character archetypes that typically led blaxploitation films, such as pimps, private detectives or drug dealers, and set out to make a film in which an African American businessman was the lead, instead of more stereotypical blaxploitation char ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Black Lolita
''Black Lolita'' is a 3D blaxploitation film directed by Stephen Gibson. It was released in 1975 under that title. Some time later, new footage was added to create another film, which was released under the title of ''Wildcat Women''. It is about a singer who returns to her home town to fight the gangsters who have taken it over. It stars Yolanda Love, Ed Cheatwood, Susan Ayers and Joey Ginza. Premise A beautiful singer whose career is on the rise finds out that her relatives are being harassed by criminals. She returns to her hometown to take revenge on them. She puts together a team to take them on, and Buddha, the criminal boss who murdered her uncle, from whom he was trying to extort money. Background The film is also called ''Bad Lolita'', and was released in 1975. The original was released in 3D. It was announced in the January 20, 1975 issue of ''Box'' that the film was possibly the first black action movie to be filmed in 3D and that it was scheduled to open in Chicago i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shampoo (film)
''Shampoo'' is a 1975 American comedy film directed by Hal Ashby, and starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Tony Bill, and Carrie Fisher in her film debut. Co-written by Beatty and Robert Towne, the film follows a promiscuous Los Angeles hairdresser on 1968 United States presidential election, Election Day 1968, as he juggles his relationships with several women. The film is a satire focusing on the theme of sexual politics and late-1960s sexual and social mores. Plot On the eve of the 1968 United States presidential election, successful Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy meets with Felicia, one of his several clients/sexual partners, at his apartment. During sex, he receives a phone call from Jill, his naive, younger, up-and-coming actress girlfriend, who is suffering a panic attack, paranoid that an intruder is in her home. George rushes from his house to calm Jill, which frustrates Felicia. George's occupation and charisma have pro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Monster Of Piedras Blancas
''The Monster of Piedras Blancas'' is a 1959 American Horror film, horror monster film. It was produced by Jack Kevan, directed by Irvin Berwick, and stars Jeanne Carmen, Les Tremayne, John Harmon, Don Sullivan, Forrest Lewis, and Pete Dunn. The film was released by Filmservice Distributors Corporation as a double feature with ''Okefenokee (film), Okefenokee''. ''The Monster of Piedras Blancas'' was influenced by ''Creature from the Black Lagoon'' (1954). Kevan, who had supervised the manufacture of the Gill-man suit and worked on The Mole People, Mole People costumes at Universal Pictures, Universal-International, created the Piedras Blancas monster costume. Kevan employed several of his former Universal associates on the picture, including soundman Joe Lapis and prop master Eddie Keys. Plot In the sleepy California town of Piedras Blancas, Sturges, the lighthouse keeper, is very superstitious and concerned for the safety of his teenage daughter, Lucy. He leaves food for a sea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Village Of The Giants
''Village of the Giants'' is a 1965 American teensploitation comedy science fiction film produced, directed and written by Bert I. Gordon. Based loosely on H. G. Wells's 1904 book ''The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth'', it contains elements of the beach party film genre. The story concerns a gang of rebellious teens who gain access to a chemical substance called "Goo", which causes living things to grow to gigantic proportions. The cast is composed almost entirely of teenaged actors and young adults portraying teenagers. Also making musical guest appearances are The Beau Brummels, Freddy Cannon, and Mike Clifford. Gordon would later direct another adaptation of Wells' story, titled '' The Food of the Gods''. Plot ''Village of the Giants'' takes place in fictional Hainesville, California. After crashing their car into a roadblock during a rainstorm, a group of partying, big-city teenagers (Fred, Pete, Rick, Harry, and their girlfriends Merrie, Elsa, Georgette and Je ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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War Of The Worlds (2005 Film)
''War of the Worlds'' is a 2005 American science fiction action-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, based on H. G. Wells' 1898 novel, '' The War of the Worlds''. Tom Cruise stars in the main role alongside Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, and Tim Robbins, with narration by Morgan Freeman. It follows an American dock worker who must look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he struggles to protect them and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade Earth and devastate cities with giant war machines. Produced by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Cruise/Wagner Productions, the film was shot in 73 days, using five different sound stages as well as locations in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. It was surrounded by a secrecy campaign so few details would be leaked before its release. Tie-in promotions were made with several co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blaxploitation
In American cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the black civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panther Party, political and sociological circumstances that facilitated black artists reclaiming their power of the representation of the black ethnic identity in the arts. The term ''blaxploitation'' is a portmanteau of the words ''Black'' and ''exploitation'', coined by Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood branch of the NAACP in 1972. In criticizing the Hollywood portrayal of the multiracial society of the US, Griffin said that the ''blaxploitation'' genre was "proliferating offenses" to and against the black community, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of inherent criminality. After the cultural misrepresentation of black people in the race films of the 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, the Blaxploi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' is a 1969 American Western (genre), Western buddy film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman), and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid" (Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack US Posse comitatus, posse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance's lover, Etta Place (Katharine Ross), flee to Bolivia to escape the posse. The film was released on September 24, 1969 and initially received lukewarm reviews from critics, but over the years it has since garnered some retrospective reappraisal. In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The American Film Institute ranked ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' as the 73rd-greatest ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alias Smith And Jones
''Alias Smith and Jones'' is an American Western television series that originally aired on ABC from January 1971 to January 1973. The show initially starred Pete Duel (and, after Duel's death, Roger Davis) as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, outlaw cousins who are trying to reform. The governor offers them a clemency deal on two conditions: that they keep the agreement a secret, and that they will remain wanted fugitives until the governor decides that they should receive a formal amnesty. Plot Operating primarily in Wyoming Territory (1868–1890), cousins Hannibal Heyes and Jedediah "Kid" Curry (whose boyish face spawned the nickname) are the two most successful outlaws in the history of the West. However, crime-fighting methods are evolving to foil them; safes are becoming harder to crack, trains more difficult to stop, and posses more adept at tracking them down. Heyes, the brains of the Devil's Hole Gang, falls in disfavor with fellow members. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Star Wars (film)
''Star Wars'' (later retitled ''Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope'') is a 1977 American Epic film, epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. and released by Twentieth Century-Fox. It is the first film in the ''Star Wars'' franchise and the fourth chronological chapter of the "Skywalker Saga". Set in Universe of Star Wars, a fictional galaxy under the rule of the tyrannical Galactic Empire (Star Wars), Galactic Empire, the film follows a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance, who aim to destroy the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star. When the rebel leader Princess Leia is captured by the Empire, Luke Skywalker acquires stolen architectural plans of the Death Star and sets out to rescue her while learning the ways of a metaphysical power known as "the Force" from the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Bak ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV Series)
''Battlestar Galactica'' is an American science fiction on television, science fiction television series created by Glen A. Larson that aired on the American Broadcasting Company, ABC network from September 17, 1978, to April 29, 1979. It stars an ensemble cast led by Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch (actor), Richard Hatch, and Dirk Benedict. The series follows a group of humans fleeing the destruction of their homeworlds aboard the Battlestar Galactica (fictional spacecraft), titular spacecraft, searching for a new home while being pursued by the Cylons, a fearsome society of robots intent on exterminating all humans. Beginning production as a miniseries, ABC subsequently ordered a full season and the show was reworked as an episodic serial. However, high production costs and declining ratings led to the series' cancellation after 24 episodes. ABC attempted to revive the series as a lower-budget spinoff, ''Galactica 1980'', but it performed poorly and was cancelled after airing ten e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |