Would you watch a reality show produced by Joe Estevez?

Of course not!  Reality TV …. hey, that’s the form of entertainment that is destroying our culture and leaving viewers unable to think for themselves!  Reality TV is a pox on our house.  Thanks to reality TV, the Kardashians are more famous than they have any right to be.  Jennifer Welch has become a political pundit despite having all the charm of a sour lemon.  People now feel like they have to live every moment as if there’s a million people watching and as a result, it’s become difficult to connect in any meaningful way…..

Eh.  Actually, I like reality TV more than I should and I probably would watch a reality show produced by Joe Estevez.

I mean, why not?  The best reality shows are always kind of sleazy and there are few actors who are as talented at playing sleazy characters as Joe Estevez.  If Martin Sheen often seems as if he’s auditioning to be the Pope, his brother Joe comes across as if he’s auditioning to be the tabloid reporter who writes a slanderous story about the Pope.  The fact that Joe Estevez looks like a drunk version of his brother only serves to make him all the more effective as someone who you wouldn’t necessarily want to be associated with.  (Unless, of course, he could make you a lot of money….)

In Hell Asylum, Joe Estevez plays Stan, a network television executive.  The movie opens with a show being pitched to him.  The pitch, like many of the scenes in Hell Asylum, goes on way too long.  Basically, a group of models have been recruited to spend the night in a supposedly haunted asylum while being filmed.  The pitch is nothing special but Stan needs a hit.

Of course, it turns out that the asylum really is haunted.  It takes a while but eventually, the models and the television crew end up being stalked by a bunch of mysterious hooded figures.  (Brinke Stevens is credited as being the “Head Spectre.”)  The murders are filmed with a blue tint, which is creepy at first but eventually just hurts your eyes.  There’s some gore, but it’s mostly just some red gloop and rope meant to stand-in for spilled intestines.  It’s not particularly scary but at least it’s only 72 minutes.

Of course, Joe Estevez thinks that he has his hands on America’s hottest new reality show.  At first, I thought the movie was being a bit too cynical but then I thought about all of the real-life deaths that I’ve seen posted to twitter and YouTube and I realized that I was probably being naive.  We actually did have a reality show in which each episode ended with someone pretending to “die.”  Murder in Small Town X was set up like Survivor, except that no one was voted off the island.  Instead, they were voted to meet the killer.  Even though no one actually died, I would have to think it would be more infinitely more traumatic to know that a bunch of people voted for you to be pretend-killed instead of pretend-exiled.  That said, Murder In Small Town X was actually a lot of fun!

I wonder if Joe Estevez produced it.