The Asylum has really distinguished itself as of late as the foremost purveyor of hilariously schlocky, pandering, mercenary knockoffs of the popular films of the day. The studio is probably best known as the force behind Sharknado, a nature documentary about a tornado made of sharks that escaped the ghetto of nature documentaries to become a B-movie cult phenomenon. Now The Asylum is exhibiting its Roger-Cormanesque shamelessness with Bound, a no-budget answer to the literary juggernaut Fifty Shades Of Grey and its R-rated, non-todger-featuring adaptation, which will be giving folks masturbatory fodder and kinky ideas beginning Feb. 13.
The film’s appealing shamelessness is epitomized by the tagline “No Grey. Only Black and White,” a winking reference to Christian Grey, the wealthy, sadistic, and cruelly non-todger-displaying romantic lead of Fifty Shades Of Grey. It’s also a reference to the name of its male lead, Ryan Black (Bryce Draper), a younger man who introduces Carpenter’s older character to the sinfully pleasurable world of BDSM. In what can only be described as an unforgivable missed opportunity, Carpenter’s character does not boast the surname White, which would lend a perfect synchronicity to both the grey/black/white trio and would make the tagline’s “Only Black and White” gloriously, transcendently literal. Honestly, we expected so much more and so much less from you, company behind not only Sharknado and Sharknardo 2: The Second One, but also such subtle homages to more reputable films as Atlantic Rim, American Warships, Abraham Lincoln Versus Zombies, Bikini Spring Break, Battle Of Los Angeles, Transmorphers: Fall Of Man, and for the faithful Sunday School Musical, a cleaned up, Christian-friendly version of the slightly more popular High School Musical series.
There are some key differences between the two films, however. Fifty Shades Of Grey revolves around a cruel older businessman’s sadistic affair with a naive younger woman. Bound, in sharp contrast, casts Carpenter as “Michelle Milan, a wealthy divorcee and single mother,” which seems to broadcast numerous scenes of Milan scrambling to find a babysitter so she can be erotically horse-whipped while still enjoying a little privacy.
Bound does not have the name-recognition or the budget of Fifty Shades Of Grey (or, somewhat puzzlingly, a title that sounds at all like Fifty Shades Of Grey), though it does have the title of a much-loved erotic noir from the Wachowskis that previously won the feverish attention of an earlier generation of masturbators through its much-talked-about sex scenes between Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. It does, however, have one huge asset in the sizable subsection of the nerd community agog with anticipation about the prospect of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer star Carpenter doing all sorts of kinky stuff—no matter how bargain-basement the production might be. And since this is The Asylum, it’s entirely possible it was all filmed in an actual basement the producers rented at a bargain rate.
According to the Telegaph, writer-director Jared Cohn both linked and separated himself from the BDSM-for-middle-America juggernaut, explaining, “We’re thrilled to bring Bound to audiences, a film that has been compared to Fifty Shades Of Grey in that it addresses the subject of BDSM. However, our story is a very distinctive and pointedly modern version of the traditional dominant/submissive stereotype.”
No word yet on the key element of movies like this: Whether it will similarly differentiate itself from Fifty Shades Of Grey by featuring scene after scene of its male lead whipping out his naked todger, the much ballyhooed missing element from the Fifty Shades Of Grey adaptation. And if the film has trouble with a climax, why not end things with a giant sharknado attack that violently assaults the central lovers in ways they find masochistically erotic? The film will open on midnight screens in select/undiscriminating cinemas on Jan. 9 before being released to iTunes Jan 10.