The B-movie, once the domain of double features, steamy drive-ins, and desperate Blockbuster customers, has never felt less essential. With every major streaming service offering a colossal barrel of content, why would viewers bother to scrape the very bottom? It’s difficult to imagine a modern director making a name for themselves in direct-to-streaming like Roger Corman did with his cheapie fare, let alone elevating themselves to the mainstream like many of Corman’s stars and acolytes. Yet the genre persists because, somehow, there is still money in it. And five years ago today, unfortunate audiences encountered one of its most cynical and controversial products.
Between 2012, when strong performances in Moonrise Kingdom and Looper hinted at a renaissance that never arrived, and 2023, when his family revealed a dementia diagnosis, Bruce Willis starred in 36 direct-to-video features. Seven alone came out in 2021, one of which was Cosmic Sin, a sci-fi “action” film co-starring Frank Grillo, perhaps best known for playing Crossbones and Rick Flag Sr. in the U’s MC and DC. In theory, it was the ideal B-movie arrangement, with Willis getting a hefty paycheck for a couple days’ work, and director Edward Drake getting to put Willis’ prominent mug on a poster that promised an epic adventure it absolutely could not deliver. Reality turned out to be more complicated.
