Not sure if this is a bad one or not, but I caught part of some really weird animated thing on HBO last night called A Scanner Darkly. I only caught a little bit, so I really have no clue whether it is good, but the art was rather odd. It looked like someone had colored video or something.
As to movies that did suck, I thought of another one- The Cat in the Hat. This was so bad it produced a number of scathing reviews that are still fun to read. My favorite:
“They might as well have skipped the hassle of securing licensing rights and simply called this mess Mike Myers: Asshole in Fur.”
sal
Scanner was shot live action and then colorized to look like animation. How & why I don’t know. Based, as apparently all science fiction movies the last twenty years are, on a Phillip K. Dick story.
rawshark
A Scanner Darkly was a great book. The movie sucked.
Why did you watch The Cat in the Hat? What were you thinking?
Few movie suck more than Transformers. Each robot has a demographic satisfying personality. So. Fucking. Sad.
michael
In the case of A Scanner Darkly, one should add though that the story stuck much closer to the book-original than is the usual case with Phillip K. Dick-stories. I, for my part, liked it a lot. The technique used is afaik called “rotoscope”.
Sam Hutcheson
Dude. The Transformers rocked. A Scanner Darkly is one of those PKD stories that are basically too paranoid/delusional/schizoid to really translate to a traditional American movie format. That’s why it was rotoscoped and put out there as an art-school type of film.
KCinDC
Digital rotoscoping.
zmulls
Rotoscoping sounds like an uncomfortable medical procedure….
I enjoyed the book “Through a Scanner Darkly” but haven’t seen the movie yet. I was intrigued by the choice to do it that way — felt like it would work for the material.
Jake
John, are we to assume you enjoy Rotten Tomatoes?
rawshark
Dude. Transformers sucked. Go read some of the old comics. They were written for kids yet were far less condescending.
Zifnab
Yeah, Cat in the Hat and Grinich Who Stole Christmas were a pair of epically bad flicks. Dr Seuss is rolling over in his grave.
You know what it could have used? More god damn Transformers! I didn’t get to see Starscream betray Megatron once! That was half the god-damn plot of ever other TV episode!
Clearly, you were not a big fan of the cartoon, so you can kindly stfu. The personalities matched the old characters respectably well, and the fact that they kept the old Optimus Prime voice wins Michael Bay major kudos points. The special effects were incredible. The computer animation was vivid and flawless. The fight scenes were exciting. And if you ignored the fact that half the script was the word “No” said repeatedly in increasingly higher volume, the other half at least kept me in the story.
r€nato
I didn’t read the book upon which ASD was based, but the digital rotoscoping became rather annoying (to me) after the first hour or so. I’m sorry to say that I paid to see this in the theater. It’s OK to view as a rental or Netflix, and then only if you’re into the genre.
I can think of far worse films, ASD was merely disappointing.
BTW speaking of disappointing films, I just watched “Letters from Iwo Jima” the other day. As much as I admire Clint Eastwood as a director (that is, greatly), I found “Letters…” at least a half-hour too long and rather depressing. The first hour or so was interesting, but by 90 minutes in you know that the Japanese are going to slowly run out of all supplies – food, water, manpower, ammo – and they are all doomed to die from either US troops or by their own hand and I found myself wishing they’d just get it over with.
dslak
I thought A Scanner Darkly did a particularly good job of critiquing the War on Drugs, while acknowledging that drugs do, indeed, often destroy people’s lives. Seeing the film made me interested in reading the book.
Dreggas
I liked Transformers despite the fact that they didn’t adhere to what each transformer was, vehicle wise as well as name wise.
I never read A Scanner, Darkly. I did see the movie and thought it wasn’t too bad but then again, I never read the book so that would matter.
Yes The Cat in the hat sucked. So did The Grinch Who Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey. Another one of his that sucked ass was The Truman Show.
Add to that other wonderful titles from the past few years such as:
Volcano – fun once you get past the stupidity of it all
Dante’s Peak – ditto in many regards.
ALIEN: Ressurection – based loosely on the entire ripley saga and one of the books published by Dark horse this movie sucked ass and was nothing short of an attempt to milk the entire ALIEN franchise for a few more bucks. Anyone who watched ALIEN 3 know Ripley landed in a molten metal. Nothing would survive and there’s no way there would be DNA left to make a clone of her and the Queen alien.
Toolshed
Scanner Darkly was pretty good if you ignore the book.
Linklater, who made that movie, first used the rotoscoping in “Waking Life” which is a severe mental circle jerk if you’re up for it. A lot of topics people go on about are just psuedo-intellectual drivel (i.e. people with Lit and Philosophy degrees trying to talk about science and evolution) but there is some nuggets of thought provoking goodness. Not to mention its just a beautiful piece of work regarless.
Walker
This is the best Cat in the Hat review (cached from a talk forum as the GuideLive article no longer seems to exist).
The end puts it so aptly:
The book’s charm is gone
And so is its grace.
This Cat in the Hat
Really stinks up the place.
This film should not be here.
It should not be about.
Nor would it exist
Without marketing clout.
r€nato
…I should say – to clarify – by the time the Japanese run out of all supplies and all reasonable hope, there’s still a half-hour left in the film and the rest is just a slow-motion, agonizing, depressing coup de grace.
Paul L.
I wonder what John’s opinion of the Wrong Turn movies is.
I am guessing his opinion would be negative to a movie with implies that remote parts of West Virginia are full of hideously deformed inbred cannibals.
Dreggas
Damn right. And the fact that Megatron didn’t get in one single good humiliating dig at star scream was irritating too. Oh and the fact that devastator was not a tank but rather the uber-bot that formed when bone crusher (who was a bull dozer in the cartoon, not a big garbage truck) and the other “destructo-cons” combined.
Toolshed
BTW, I should also metion the obvious fact that both “A Scanner Darkly” and especially “Waking Life” are exponentially better when viewed while treating your glaucoma (*wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*) if you’re into that sort of thing.
dslak
Walker’s poem made me think of Lovecraft’s “The Thing That Should not Be.” And that’s got me thinking: When is somebody going to make a decent film based on one of Lovecraft’s stories?
Or has this happened and I’ve missed it?
Dreggas
Oh and for the true transformers junkie. You can watch the first two episodes of the cartoon on YouTube.
r€nato
I don’t think anyone has done Lovecraft yet, but I sure hope David Cronenberg gets the nod to direct.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
My favorite movie review came from The New Yorker:
Bombadil
Never been a fan of (or read, for that matter) any Lovecraft, but a quick search of imdb.com yields this.
Are any of these legit Lovecraft?
RSA
John is clearly not a Dickhead. (Some will doubtless view this as a compliment.)
I think that the best straight effort has been In the Mouth of Madness, with Dagon being in distant second place. For over the top Lovecraft-inspired movies, there are Re-Animator and From Beyond, but I’m not sure they should really count. I’d love to see a good effort, too.
zmulls
The thing that I really liked about “Scanner Darkly” as a book was the ending. It’s an amusing paranoid druggie romp through most of it, but the book ends with the protagonist with his mind pretty much destroyed for the rest of his life because of drug use, and an afterword dedicating the book to many of the author’s friends whose lives were totalled by drugs.
So for most of it, it read as a celebration of sorts of drug culture, only to pull the rug out from under you at the end. I appreciated that.
Zifnab
That had absolutely nothing to do with the Duke Lacross Rape Scandal. Good job Pa… oh wait. Are you suggesting that Wrong Turn is falsely accusing West Virginia hillbillies of anal sodomy in a grand liberal conspiracy to defame rich white conservatives?! Damn you Scott Beauchamp!
rawshark
I was a fan of the cartoon.
The robots just arrived and decided to take on personalities? Why? So it would sell more toys? It’ll sell toys anyway. How do personalities help the mission? Is it possible to sell a car you don’t own? How do you do the paperwork? When bumblebee blew out the windows in all the other cars why wasn’t blood flowing out of Bernie mac’s ears? Or the ears of the other two people standing right there? Is it entertaining for you when you can write the lines the characters are about to say because there isn’t an original thought in the movie? Wasn’t it obvious the girl would think her boyfriend was a jerk and then end up getting a ride from the star in his ‘new’ car? You could probably see that coming when you were in line for the movie but it was a good movie still?
Clearly you were not a fan of the cartoon or you wouldn’t have thought this was a way to bring Transformers to the screen. You’re probably just satisfied by the loud noises and flashy colors.
Zifnab
Go watch the Evil Dead series. That’s the best Lovecraft I’ve ever seen put on the big screen.
dslak
I knew about Re-Animator, but not the other Lovecraft-based or -inspired films.
Zifnab
That’s all I can legitimately ask for anymore.
Bombadil
Didn’t know that was Lovecraft — thanks! “Army of Darkness” is one of my guilty pleasures. I still laugh every time I hear Bruce Campbell say “This is my Boomstick!”
srv
Instead of wasting part of your life watching crappy movies, maybe we should help you out. Some lesser known movies that you might not have seen that are swell:
– Zero Effect
– I think you or Tim liked Internal Affairs. If so, you should get the HK originals (Infernal Affairs I & II)
– Brick. Damn fine movie.
– Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter (Korean)
– Traffic, the 2004 series. There’s the British one (with the K done in the 90’s), the US movie, and Soderburg (sp?) made a new series in 2004 that I’m just starting. Looks OK.
– The great/good Johnny To movies: The Mission, The Exiled, Breaking News, PTU
– The Lives of Others. You probably heard of that one, but not many have seen it.
– If you haven’t seen any ‘sophisticated’ anime, Ghost in the Shell. If you were a William Gibson Neuromancer fanboy.
– Hot Fuzz. A recent fun movie, done by the guy who did Shaun of the Dead.
The Other Steve
That’s just totally wrong.
First, everybody knows West Virginia is infested with hideously deformed inbred zombies, not cannibals!
Second, the fonts and kerning are all wrong.
grumpy realist
Oh, and for guilty pleasures, what about “Dark Star”? (This really dates me.) I still laugh over the Beachball. And the Bomb.
“…in the beginning there was Me….”
Krista
srv – Hot Fuzz was an absolute riot. I actually fell off of my couch laughing.
The Other Steve
Hot Fuzz kicks ass!
Shaun of the Dead, not quite so much unless you liked Living Dead zombie movies. Although if you watch this first, you will laugh harder in Hot Fuzz.
My next car is going to be a bright blue Subaru WRX, with a light bar on top. PUNCH THAT SHIT!
Dreggas
Regarding Lovecraft,
The Evil Dead Series used only one element of Lovecraft’s which was the Necronomicon. Otherwise there’s not much in regard to mainstream hollywood movies that are based on Lovecraft’s work, that being said I haven’t seen “In the mouth of madness” or “Dagon” however it should have been “The Mountains of Madness” which I am still reading.
Supposedly this past year at the Seattle Film Fest. They showed a new movie called “Call Of Cthulu” that plays on the madness induced by Cthulu and takes place in modern times. When it will be released I have no idea.
Truthfully nearly all of Lovecraft’s works could make for a helluva set of movies and it would be great to see some come to life.
RSA
My life is fulfilled by watching crappy movies. (Though I do like the good movies mentioned, at least the ones I’ve seen. John Woo fans should like the Infernal Affairs movies.) Crappy horror and sci-fi movies I have recently seen and liked: Altered, The Descent, Slither, District B13, Equlibrium, and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. (None of these are worthless, and the last is actually a nice parody.)
The Other Steve
Pitch Black and Riddick are probably the two sci-fi films I liked the most recently.
I found over the years I outgrew scifi. Used to read nothing but scifi and fantasy books as a kid.
Now I prefer watching action films with guns blazing! Far more mature, I think. ;-)
Paul L.
What few people realize is that the zombie lord who is in control of this undead horde is
Robert Byrd
RSA
That’s what I was thinking, too. The horror in the first two movies is just too up-close and personal to be Lovecraftian, missing the world-eating evil dimension (the Ancient Ones, Elder Gods, Cthulhu himself, etc.)
Call of Cthulhu? Cool! I’ll have to keep an eye out for it.
MNPundit
The New Yorker review of Nancy Drew was a real gem…
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/06/25/070625crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=2
RSA
Vin Diesel at the peak of his acting abilities. (I like these two movies, too.)
scarshapedstar
I liked Scanner.
Dreggas
For Horror movies that are B and good I recommend:
Subspecies
Puppetmaster
For Sci-fi:
Scanners
Altered States
Now if you want cheese and I mean pure cheese but want to laugh your ass off at a “horror” movie I highly recommend the Brie of the genre: Rawhead Rex. Nothing like a guy in a mask with those silly blinking light eyes and a non-moving mouth as a “demon” who “baptizes” a catholic priest he made into a minion by pissing all over him.
John Cole
I did not know there was a Nancy Drew movie. Is it possible there was something so bad even PR couldn’t raise interest in it?
Ned R.
Guys, don’t get me started on bad movies. My bread and butter still when it comes to cheap laughs. This old piece of mine talks about my favorite eighties cheapie disaster, Vampire on Bikini Beach — it should by no right have existed, yet there it is.
Dreggas
Hey How can anyone forget Gigli!
Dreggas
Now for another camp classic:
Silent Night Deadly Night
for bad camp:
Chopping Mall
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“I think that the best straight effort has been In the Mouth of Madness”
There’s was also a 1966 adaptation of the Lovecraft/Derleth story “the Shuttered Room”, with Oliver Reed, which was halfway decent. It’s not listed in the IMDB search above.
RSA
Some movies are so bad they’re good, and others are so bad they’re really really bad. Not even Mystery Science Theater 3000 could save some bad movies.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
More on Lovecraft-y films ere:
http://www.geocities.com/lovecraftfilmarchive/
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Yet more, even an animated version of the “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”:
http://us.imdb.com/keyword/h.p.-lovecraft/
r€nato
repeated blows to the skull with a hammer did it for me, and was far less painful than retaining that memory.
MBunge
How in the name G. Glorious Godfrey can there be a discussion of “A Scanner Darkly” without mention of the first on-screen appearance of Winona Rider’s jugs? Somewhere, there’s a happy man with the pre-animation footage.
Mike
Geoduck
I’m not saying that Alien:Resurrection is a good movie, but I believe they used some of Ripley’s hair; she had her head shaved early in A3.
As for Lovecraft, making a good movie from one of his works is extremely difficult, because so much of his imagery is literally indescribably. Dagon has already been mentioned as one flick that at least made a good effort. There have been lots of short semi-pro works over the decades that get good reviews; look for the collection The Lurker In The Lobby.
Bombadil
I’ve felt the same about Stephen King’s work, at least his horror stuff. The movies can’t really cover the “horror” and instead go for the scary.
Case in point — in the novel “Salem’s Lot”, for me the most frightening episode is when the young mother wakes up to sunshine and realizes that her baby never woke her up. She finds the infant tossed to one end of the crib, and unable to fully process what’s happened, sits the dead baby in a high chair and tries to feed it chocolate pudding, growing more and more panicky. The rising horror in that scene grabs me every time, and on each re-reading of the book, I’ve had to close it at that scene and say, “that’s enough for now”. But that kind of horror is nearly impossible to translate to film; it’s just too personal. So you have to resort to having a vampire jump out of the dark, and go for the scary instead.
mclaren
You people think you know bad movies? You’re pikers! You don’t even get to first base for epically bad movies! Check out these masterepieces:
Werewolves on Wheels (1971) — yes, the first (and only!) Hell’s Angels werewolf biker flick. I’m still waiting for the Hells Angels werewolf action figures, but for some reason they never arrived in K Mart.
Werewolf In A Girl’s Dormitory (1961) — title says it all! Directed by the great auteur, Paolo Heusch. Never heard of him? This film is the reason.
Nazi Love Camp 7 (1969) ” Two female Army agents go undercover at a Nazi prison camp to get information from a scientist being held there.” The sole comment on IMDB says “Not worthy of its banned status.” Not worthy of being projected onto a screen either, though.
Surf Nazis Must Die (1987) The poster for this film features a surfer hanging ten while blazing away with two Mac 10s. Do you need to know more?
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966) Not even MST3K would touch this one. It satirizes itself.
Billy The Kid Vs. Dracula (1966) John Carradine plays a southern gentleman called “Count Alucard.” Alucard? Get it? Get it???
Invasion Of the Bee Girls (1973) Insect women from outer space wearing groovy 70s eyeshades and 1960s beehive hairdos. Because they’re BEE GIRLS. Beehive hairdos! Is that SUBTLE enough for you???
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) Permit me to quote the tagline from the original promo package: WOMEN OF THE NIGHT FALL VICTIM TO AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CHAINSAW-WORSHIPPING CULT!!!
The Werewolf Of Washington (1973) A presidential advisor who’s a werewolf goes berserk by the end of the movie and chomps the prez. Hilarious final scene in which the Nixonian president gives a speech explaining nothing is wrong, and then turns into a werewolf on camera. Despite that high point, the rest of the film is so bad it’s almot good. Almost. Almost.
Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) This has often gotten the rep as the worst movie ver made, outschlocking even Ed Wood’s disasterpiece “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” But for my money the worst movie of all time is actually…
Barn Of the Blood Llama (1997) Okay: here is the plot summary. I am not kidding. Inbred hillbillies trap tourists at their World ‘O Wool museum and feed them to death-crazed mutant killer…llamas. This movie features bestiality, brain transplants, and haggis.
Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.
Dreggas
Bombadil,
Thanks for the tip, I will have to look into some of those films.
mclaren,
Ok now I have to find those and watch them, they sound like cheese-tacular films.
BARRASSO
Gigli can in fact be fun to watch just add the rifftrax to it. I can’t wait till No Country for Old Men comes out, I used to enjoy horror movies but reality is so much more gruesome besides why rent movies when you can enjoy Battlestar!
liberal
Technique is called “roboscoping.”
I thought the movie was OK, but I didn’t think it sucked.
BTW, anyone other than me notice that “Bladerunner” wasn’t all that similar to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dreggas
I still say everyone has to experience the masterpiece “Chopping Mall” to truly appreciate cheese.
liberal
Reminds me of this quote from “Gigli Focus Groups Demand New Ending In Which Both Affleck And Lopez Die”:
srv
Wait for the redone ‘Directors Cut’ coming out in Dec. This will be the third or fourth version.
Bruce Moomaw
God, yes. If anyone ever made a movie that actually communicated Philip K. Dick’s ideas, they’d have to declare martial law in every state to deal with the screaming, panic-stricken, drooling mobs. (Also, did anyone notice that in the opening credits for “Total Recall”, they MISSPELLED HIS NAME? Poor Philip.)
As for “The Cat in the Hat”, the best review I saw of it was in “Slate” (“This movie’s makers deserve to be paraded naked through the streets and spat on.”)
MNPundit
It’s not that it was bad, it’s just that it was so mind numbingly insipid–take the regular limpidness of the Nancy Drew books and combine them with mainstream Disney intrepidness and you’ve got Nancy Drew. Even my 12 year old sister refused to see it–and she likes the Zack and Cody tv show.
MNPundit
Regular Nancy Drew INSIPID-NESS.
Mainstream Disney INSIPID-NESS.
This is what I get for using the Firefox spell checker. Good god, it rendered my post unintelligible (occasionally that kind of of thing is noticeable).
Also “From Justin to Kelly” has got to be near the body of the barrel.
r€nato
close. “Rotoscoping”. (see top of thread).
Tom Hilton
–and–
Just to clarify, In the Mouth of Madness is not a Lovecraft adaptation (and has nothing to do with At the Mountains of Madness). It’s sort of meta-Lovecraft–that is, it’s about a horror writer working in a Lovecraftian vein (the writer is also partly inspired by Steven King, though).
Tax Analyst
That’s a great review of the recent “Nancy Drew” movie.
Tom Hilton
1971 was a great year for biker horror movies.
jcricket
Cult Classic: Motel Hell. I like the tagline – “It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters”. And i like that it’s called Motel Hell because the “O” is burned out in the neon sign for the motel.
And all the talk of rotoscoping reminded me of another terrible, terrible movie: Cool World. Brad Pitt, Kim Basinger, Gabriel Bryne and a whole mess of Ralph Bakshi animation set to techno music.
Question: How does one reload a shotgun with only one hand?
Answer: You don’t.
fecapult
Nothing says unintentionally bad like “Twister”, starring the immortal Bill Paxton along with a in-her-prime Helen Hunt. Cary Elwes cameos as the evil corporate storm-chaser scientist (you can tell they’re evil by the black Astrovans they drive).
Enjoy such classic lines as
“He can feel the storm! He knows what it’s thinking!”
and
“We have cows!”
And then witness two noobs survive the worst tornado in all history by strapping a belt to a metal bar and holding onto it.
This movie was so awful, so unintentionally funny, that my brother and I spread the mirth throughout the rather packed theater. Within 20 minutes of us not being able to keep it in any longer, people had stopped grousing at us laughing at lines which weren’t supposed to be funny and were joining into the mirth.
Quick trivia question –
Name any film in which Liam Neason plays a role that doesn’t die.
Cain
Actually he did! If you noticed at the end, Starscream made no move to help Megatron when he got nailed. Starscream stilled pwned the skies at the time. So where the hell did he go? Starscream clearly was out to take control. Someone is going to betray him in the next movie and revive Megatron.
cain
Stooleo
The one Lovecraft movie that I dont think was mentioned is “From Beyond”, which if I remember had a great scene with Barbra Crampton in a leather teddy. This move also had Jeffery Combs who was in the Re-Animator. I think the Re-Animator has one of the wildest scenes ever. Basically the mad scientist gets decapitated and then after becomiing re-animated, takes his severed head and performs cunilingus on the female corpse on the table. Twisted.
malraux
For those who like Lovecraft, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society did a pretty good version of Call of Cthulhu as a silent B/W movie. HPLHS They are currently working on a The Whisperer in Darkness. Check their website for trailers and the like.
Zifnab
Yeah, that totally doesn’t count for two reasons. 1) All Starscream betrayals must occur on screen with ample opportunity for him to laugh maniacally and 2) All Starscream betrayals must fail pathetically and disgustingly, normally resulting in Starscream getting the living shit kicked out of him by Megatron.
Honestly, none of the Decepticons got even remotely enough screen time. The god damn FBI shmoe got more lines than the entire Decepticon cast.
I didn’t mind the rather slow and subtle lead-in, but the moment you start putting Transformers on the screen, I see no reason for you to start taking them off until the credits roll.
jcricket
Love Actually.
Darkman.
RSA
Also to appreciate the 1980s standard for teenage manliness and feminine beauty. And security-Daleks.
JPRICE VINCENZ
It’s kind of odd that Phillip K. Dick stories are tough to produce visually but many have been made, and some with questionable casting (Arnie, I’m thinking) are still very much watching. I thought that cartoonish quality was an interesting decision to start the movie, but after it persisted, I pegged the movie’s less than satisfying feel on Downey Jr, who, since the addiction began to run deep, has lost his acting ability (see Short Cuts for a comparison), but even his questionable acting wasn’t the real problem. Something was wrong there, but it exceeded the irritating graphic-novel look and the overall lackluster acting, but I’ll bet anyone next year’s world series (since I won this year’s back on April 18, 2007) that it wasn’t the story idea or plotline/character development. Just finished Drawing Restraint, a docu about Matthew Barney–interesting indeed.
Breschau
Rob Roy
Dreggas
And appreciate those moral lessons. You know, the ones that say pre-marital sex and drugs will lead to death by killer robots?
Dreggas
If you hung around for after the credits, Star Scream took off into space. It’s the latest movie trick, they make you watch the credits to see the real, real ending.
Dreggas
Regarding Transformers.
Honestly…The video game ruled.
RSA
It sounds as if we see (and like) all the same movies, Dreggas!
The Other Steve
I was living in Ames, Iowa when that movie was filmed. Didn’t see it until years later, and you are right… it sucked.
It’s so typical of bad hollywood science. Although I didn’t mind Contact so much.
The Other Steve
Transformers movie was pretty bad. I liked the kid and the girl, but the robots and everthing else was poorly done.
Dreggas
I can’t help myself, when it is just so freaking bad you want to claw your eyes out in horror it’s actually good. I mean they couldn’t even keep their continuity right in that one, complete with the same robot shooting a blue laser one moment and a red one the next. It was a scream of laughter.
Fruitbat
I realize that this concept has been hinted at and teased out in some posts during this thread, but I think it should be stated now as a sort of bad movie rule of thumb.
In order for a bad movie to truly make one cringe, squirm, and revel in the brand of shock and awe that that only an 80+ minute train wreck can inspire in a viewer, that movie must have been made in good faith as a work of non-knowing, non-ironic filmic art. In other words, it just isn’t the same when you recognize that some of the people were in on the joke of how bad their movie is.
Using McLaren’s list, then, we can lift up “Manos: The Hands of Fate” as being a singularly misguided, tragic example of what happens when nobody’s around to point out that the wheels have come off the tricycle. But with something like “Barn of the Blood Llama,” it’s pretty obvious that the filmmakers were in on the wretchedness from the word go. (Clive Barker appears as himself in it, for crying out loud.) That makes this film somewhat less of an achievement than “Manos” is, no matter how tastefully done the bestiality may be.
Viewed through this lens, we can see why Ed Wood is such a compelling, improbable artist. Most of his films were within the idiom of his time, and he never thought for a moment that they didn’t measure up to the best of the era while he was making them.
For further discussion on this topic, I recommend seeking out Patton Oswalt’s latest stand-up comedy CD, “Werewolves and Lollipops,” and listening to his dissertation on the minds behind the classic sexual horror flick, “Death Bed: The Bed that Eats.”
mclaren
Incidentally, Army Of Darkness was even more awesome in the original unfilmed script. First, the original title was an all-time classic: The Medieval Dead. As you’ll recall, this film was the follow-up to the instant classic The Evil Dead, in which Bruce Campbell stares into a mirror and says, “It’s okay. It’s okay! Everything is fine!” Then his reflection in the mirror talks back to him and shout, “You just killed your satanically possessed GIRLFRIEND with a CHAINSAW. Everything is NOT FINE!”
But the original ending of Army of Darkness / Medieval Dead is what really makes the film. In the original ending, after screwing up the incantation that’s supposed to get him back to his own time, Bruce Campbell gets transported back to Earth in the 20th century…only to find himself standing in a desolate post-nuclear wasteland right after a nuclear war!
Sam Raimi rocks and Bruce Campbell is God. That ending would’ve made this one of the best ever Raimi/Campbell outings. But the suits in the studio freaked, and demanded the lame ending with which the film got released, involving a silly shoot-out at K Mart.
For more Bruce Campbell awesomeness, check out Bubba Ho-Tep in which Elvis (Bruce Campbell) and JFK (who has had his skin darkened by the CIA so he looks like an African-American) find themsevles trapped in an old age home in Texas with an ancient mummy who sucks old peoples’ souls out through their butts.
Bombadil
Agreed. I hope some cable channel has the sense to start running “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.” marathons.
BIRDZILLA
How about OLIVER STONES big time stinkeroo ALEXANDER i mean i understand that movie was a absolute bomb and after two great movies the movie SUPERMAN IV THE QUEST FOR PEACE was a bomb and SANTA CLUASE THE MOVIE was real flop
GotWolfy
If you want a movie completely awful you just look for
JESUS CHRIST VAMPIRE HUNTER
Nothing is worst than this movie so bad it’s funny.
The main line is ” The power of Christ impale you”