Last night, several friends of mine and I were thwarted in the quest for the proverbial Good Bad Movie. This is the same group with which I watched The Room, which is that very thing, in spades. But the thing about Good Bad Movies is that the possibility of something really fucking terrible existing without your awareness will drive you, the aficionado of Good Bad Movies, to watch some of the most godawful crap ever created, in search of someone who can out-Ed-Wood Tommy Wiseau.
The picture we watched, on advice of two separate parties, one there, one not, was called After Last Season. Actually, “watched” is the wrong word. We threw the DVD on, saw the badly animated Times New Roman production company logo about five times, and then this incredibly long, incoherent scene involving a purported MRI machine made of plywood and butcher paper, and a guy playing a doctor who must have said “I'm holding an MRI” about thirty times. Not one person in the room—including the sober people—could figure out what the fuck was going on, so at about the ten minute mark After Last Season departed our collective consciousness forever.
This is the thing about the Good Bad Movie quest. You need to know, as our hostess explained, when to just let it go. There is, after all, no point in watching something unless it's enjoyable on some level or other. With bad movies, the fact that they really suck is an occasional obstacle. But remember, there are orders of suckitude. As a public service, your (amazingly, almost divinely) humble author will proceed to delineate some of the different types of Good Bad Movies. Without further ado, let us begin:
The Cheap, Haphazard Piece of Shit
This probably covers the largest number of Good Bad Movies. (EDIT 3/22/10: And it certainly covers these.) Devotees of the now-legendary Mystery Science Theater 3000 are, by the sheer volume of MST3K they've seen, automatically experts on the CHPoS. SF movies from the 50s where the Martians are played by washed-up wrestlers in lobster costumes, pretty much every biker picture from the 60s except The Wild Angels and Easy Rider, blaxploitation pictures from the 70s where they didn't have enough money to hire Jim Brown or Pam Grier (and even a few of theirs kind of qualify), and the magical, lit-by-the-smile-of-God run of consistent shit-tastic genius that was Cannon films in the 80s all qualify. Here is a prime example of that last.
Firewalker (1986) dir. J. Lee Thompson
For a proper Good Bad Movie, certain elements need to be present. For one, we need shitty acting, and lots of it. Chuck Norris fits the bill perfectly, as whenever he has to convey any type of emotion other than amusement or rage he looks like he's passing a kidney stone. And phwoa baby is his delivery stilted. He's about as comfortable with language as John Mayer at the Source Awards. Melody Anderson provides an essential service, as the Hot Chick Who Can't Act, a trope Cannon employed with particular devotion. In spite of the fact that she's running around in the jungle for the whole movie, not one hair is ever out of place, her makeup is always immaculate (though not particularly flattering, since it is a shitty movie) and her clothes only get torn to show leg and/or tit.
One thing I always like in a Good Bad Movie of this type, because I'm kind of a prick, is the random Actually Talented Person who shows up with a let's-get-this-rent-paid grim determination. Here, it's Lou Gossett, who actually can act. Also, even though he ain't exactly Howard Hawks, J. Lee Thompson made a couple pretty good pictures once upon a time: The Guns of Navarone, the original Cape Fear, and probably a few other half-ass competent programmers. Nothing, though, makes a bad movie like the presence of one or two people who you know are capable of better.
The plot is twelve kinds of retarded. Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett are adventurers, or soldiers of fortune, or treasure hunters, or something. They bicker like an old married couple. Chuck Norris' character is dumb as a box of rocks but can kick ass. Lou Gossett is a former teacher or something and is thus “smart,” even though he's helpless in a fight. One or the other of them, I think Chuck Norris actually, is a hilariously bad shot—this one shot ricochets around the room twenty times before accidentally killing the bad guy.
Melody Anderson comes by and tells them about some massive treasure out in the middle of nowhere in the kind of Latin American country that's so Latin American the writers have to make one up. The kind where Aztecs, Maya, and voodoo witch doctors are all the same thing, all the people are these illiterate slapstick Catholics, and the jungles hide massive bands of benevolent guerrillas. Since only Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett know their way around a country so fictional and stereotyped, she hires them to help get her to it. They go bug Will Sampson while the poor guy is dying of cancer, and then Billy from Predator chases them all over the place doing things variously supernatural, menacing, pointless, or all of the above. Eventually they kill Billy (who was also Billy in 48 Hrs . . . talk about typecasting, he always has the same fuckin name!) and escape to a beach with the treasure so they can sip mojitos and get sunburn forever after, but not before Chuck Norris does a lot of fancy kicking, Chuck Norris, Lou Gossett and Melody Anderson pose as priests and a nun to get past some commies (and Lou Gossett says the mass in pig Latin . . .) and a whole lot of shots of Billy with his shirt off.
Sound retarded? That's because it gloriously, magnificently, spellbindingly is. I've probably rewatched Firewalker a good ten times, and it never disappoints. The Cannon era was a great one. American Ninja 1 & 2. Bloodsport. Breakin'. The single greatest title ever, and the generator of a meme wherein its second half can make any “#2” sequel hilarious: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Actually, fuck it, just read the Cannon Films Wikipedia article, it's really good readin' (even if it's a little light on citations, most of that stuff is actually verifiably true).
The Camp Classic
Not as many Good Bad Movies fall under this purview, as the criterion for determination is, as indicated by the singular form, very specific: a Camp Classic has to make homosexuals flip the fuck out in delight. The process is simple. If you think you have a Camp Classic on your hands, find a gay. Show said gay said movie. If the response is “meh” or “God, you straight people are weird,” you fucked up. However, if your gay can quote at least three-quarters of the movie, do an imitation of the lead actress, or sing the whole soundtrack, you have a winner! (Crying is also an indicator, but sometimes that means the movie's actually good, so you can't conclude Camp Classicism too fast)
Careful readers of this blog will note that the author, despite his enthusiasm for women, can be kind of a gigantic 'mo at times (the author, after all, is an actor). So I can speak with a resident alien's authority about the Camp Classic, since I own a few of them (some of which my actual gay friends have called me a faggot for owning). Some general guidelines: the entire resumes of Joan, Bette, Judy (not Barbra though, most of her movies are too fuckin serious to be campy, and none of them are any fun), earlier Liza I guess. 50's melodramas. Musicals, though the good ones are actually good and the bad ones are fuckin horrible, and depending on the company in which you watch them you're liable to get a lot of “it's so much better on stage.”
I probably fucked up the above a little bit by generalizing, but one thing I can assure you, this one totally counts:
Mommie Dearest (1981) dir. Frank Perry
In which it is revealed . . . Joan Crawford was not a nice person!
*wanders out into traffic in shock*
So, yeah. Apparently Joan Crawford's adopted daughter didn't really like her all that much. Christina Crawford, shortly after Joan's death, came out with a book dripping with gossip, allegations of abuse, and just all kinds of wonderful stuff. Paramount said, let's make a movie. They got Faye Dunaway (whom Joan herself had singled out in the early 70s as the only potential “true star” of her generation), Faye Dunaway got some plastic surgery and had her makeup team do her up like she was playing Cruella de Vil in Planet of the Apes. And the movie got fucking awful reviews. Roger Ebert, being straight, said, “I can't imagine who would want to subject themselves to this movie.” Variety had its claws out and its bitch heels on, critiquing Lady Faye thusly: “Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, costars and all.” Meow.
In one of the nimbler maneuvers in advertising history, Paramount turned around and started rebranding it as camp, vanishing all their previous “this is a serious biopic” silliness. And it took off from there. Forever after, no one will ever look at a wire coat hanger the same way. For those with the patience to sit through something slow-paced, a few minutes too long, and featuring some seriously fucking carnivorous and solipsistic acting on the part of its leading lady, Mommie Dearest is a treat indeed.
However, mistaking anything in this movie for fact would be dumb. Most of Christina's book was bullshit fabricated or embellished in revenge for being cut out of Joan's will. Or very well could have been. Even getting past that, a lot of events in the movie were telescoped so the damn thing wouldn't be ten hours long or they were restaged for dramatic effect. But hey, it wasn't a documentary. And Faye Dunaway is so fuckin' weird-looking in it that even for that alone it'd be worth a look.
An Achingly Sincere Work of Mindboggling Incompetence
This last heading is for things like The Room. Tommy Wiseau fucking meant it when he made that movie, and on his planet, The Room is a Tennessee Williams drama with deep insights into the human character. On this one, it's something we heckle for its weird tics and utter ineptitude.
But, as always, A Challenger Appears. In this case, many. I saw this on The Huffington Post a while back, and figured I'd share with you. You'll notice After Last Season on there, but there's one thing the writer got wrong. After Last Season cost 4 fucking million dollars. That was actually why we watched it last night, that utterly bizarre budget figure—much like The Room's alleged 6 mil—creates a level of interest, even if that interest is just "what the fuck did they do, light that money on fire?" As for the others on that list, I have to admit, Praise Band looks fucking tremendous. I want to see it for the same reason, as one of my friends was the first to mention last night, I kind of want to see Kirk Cameron in the Left Behind movie(s).
I'm not going to go into too much depth making fun of one of these movies, just because it'd be kind of mean, considering how deeply their auteurs felt making them. I mean, sure, we make fun of The Room, but it's The Room. It's special. Someday someone's going to make a movie about Tommy Wiseau just the way Tim Burton made a movie about Ed Wood. I'll let those trailers on the HuffPo link speak for themselves.
In the end, as much as I like Good Bad Movies, I still have to admit, I'd far rather poach my more masochistic friends' research than actually watch the bad movies myself to find the gold. It's for that reason that I love Bill Pronzini's books Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek; he read the worst that mystery and crime fiction had to offer so we didn't have to. So I'll let others sit through the wannabe Rooms out there, and when they find something that looks right, I'll show up, with a thirst for whiskey and the anticipatory smile attendant upon sitting down to watch something really, really Good Bad.
The picture we watched, on advice of two separate parties, one there, one not, was called After Last Season. Actually, “watched” is the wrong word. We threw the DVD on, saw the badly animated Times New Roman production company logo about five times, and then this incredibly long, incoherent scene involving a purported MRI machine made of plywood and butcher paper, and a guy playing a doctor who must have said “I'm holding an MRI” about thirty times. Not one person in the room—including the sober people—could figure out what the fuck was going on, so at about the ten minute mark After Last Season departed our collective consciousness forever.
This is the thing about the Good Bad Movie quest. You need to know, as our hostess explained, when to just let it go. There is, after all, no point in watching something unless it's enjoyable on some level or other. With bad movies, the fact that they really suck is an occasional obstacle. But remember, there are orders of suckitude. As a public service, your (amazingly, almost divinely) humble author will proceed to delineate some of the different types of Good Bad Movies. Without further ado, let us begin:
The Cheap, Haphazard Piece of Shit
This probably covers the largest number of Good Bad Movies. (EDIT 3/22/10: And it certainly covers these.) Devotees of the now-legendary Mystery Science Theater 3000 are, by the sheer volume of MST3K they've seen, automatically experts on the CHPoS. SF movies from the 50s where the Martians are played by washed-up wrestlers in lobster costumes, pretty much every biker picture from the 60s except The Wild Angels and Easy Rider, blaxploitation pictures from the 70s where they didn't have enough money to hire Jim Brown or Pam Grier (and even a few of theirs kind of qualify), and the magical, lit-by-the-smile-of-God run of consistent shit-tastic genius that was Cannon films in the 80s all qualify. Here is a prime example of that last.
Firewalker (1986) dir. J. Lee Thompson
For a proper Good Bad Movie, certain elements need to be present. For one, we need shitty acting, and lots of it. Chuck Norris fits the bill perfectly, as whenever he has to convey any type of emotion other than amusement or rage he looks like he's passing a kidney stone. And phwoa baby is his delivery stilted. He's about as comfortable with language as John Mayer at the Source Awards. Melody Anderson provides an essential service, as the Hot Chick Who Can't Act, a trope Cannon employed with particular devotion. In spite of the fact that she's running around in the jungle for the whole movie, not one hair is ever out of place, her makeup is always immaculate (though not particularly flattering, since it is a shitty movie) and her clothes only get torn to show leg and/or tit.One thing I always like in a Good Bad Movie of this type, because I'm kind of a prick, is the random Actually Talented Person who shows up with a let's-get-this-rent-paid grim determination. Here, it's Lou Gossett, who actually can act. Also, even though he ain't exactly Howard Hawks, J. Lee Thompson made a couple pretty good pictures once upon a time: The Guns of Navarone, the original Cape Fear, and probably a few other half-ass competent programmers. Nothing, though, makes a bad movie like the presence of one or two people who you know are capable of better.
The plot is twelve kinds of retarded. Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett are adventurers, or soldiers of fortune, or treasure hunters, or something. They bicker like an old married couple. Chuck Norris' character is dumb as a box of rocks but can kick ass. Lou Gossett is a former teacher or something and is thus “smart,” even though he's helpless in a fight. One or the other of them, I think Chuck Norris actually, is a hilariously bad shot—this one shot ricochets around the room twenty times before accidentally killing the bad guy.
Melody Anderson comes by and tells them about some massive treasure out in the middle of nowhere in the kind of Latin American country that's so Latin American the writers have to make one up. The kind where Aztecs, Maya, and voodoo witch doctors are all the same thing, all the people are these illiterate slapstick Catholics, and the jungles hide massive bands of benevolent guerrillas. Since only Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett know their way around a country so fictional and stereotyped, she hires them to help get her to it. They go bug Will Sampson while the poor guy is dying of cancer, and then Billy from Predator chases them all over the place doing things variously supernatural, menacing, pointless, or all of the above. Eventually they kill Billy (who was also Billy in 48 Hrs . . . talk about typecasting, he always has the same fuckin name!) and escape to a beach with the treasure so they can sip mojitos and get sunburn forever after, but not before Chuck Norris does a lot of fancy kicking, Chuck Norris, Lou Gossett and Melody Anderson pose as priests and a nun to get past some commies (and Lou Gossett says the mass in pig Latin . . .) and a whole lot of shots of Billy with his shirt off.
Sound retarded? That's because it gloriously, magnificently, spellbindingly is. I've probably rewatched Firewalker a good ten times, and it never disappoints. The Cannon era was a great one. American Ninja 1 & 2. Bloodsport. Breakin'. The single greatest title ever, and the generator of a meme wherein its second half can make any “#2” sequel hilarious: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Actually, fuck it, just read the Cannon Films Wikipedia article, it's really good readin' (even if it's a little light on citations, most of that stuff is actually verifiably true).
The Camp Classic
Not as many Good Bad Movies fall under this purview, as the criterion for determination is, as indicated by the singular form, very specific: a Camp Classic has to make homosexuals flip the fuck out in delight. The process is simple. If you think you have a Camp Classic on your hands, find a gay. Show said gay said movie. If the response is “meh” or “God, you straight people are weird,” you fucked up. However, if your gay can quote at least three-quarters of the movie, do an imitation of the lead actress, or sing the whole soundtrack, you have a winner! (Crying is also an indicator, but sometimes that means the movie's actually good, so you can't conclude Camp Classicism too fast)
Careful readers of this blog will note that the author, despite his enthusiasm for women, can be kind of a gigantic 'mo at times (the author, after all, is an actor). So I can speak with a resident alien's authority about the Camp Classic, since I own a few of them (some of which my actual gay friends have called me a faggot for owning). Some general guidelines: the entire resumes of Joan, Bette, Judy (not Barbra though, most of her movies are too fuckin serious to be campy, and none of them are any fun), earlier Liza I guess. 50's melodramas. Musicals, though the good ones are actually good and the bad ones are fuckin horrible, and depending on the company in which you watch them you're liable to get a lot of “it's so much better on stage.”
I probably fucked up the above a little bit by generalizing, but one thing I can assure you, this one totally counts:
Mommie Dearest (1981) dir. Frank Perry
In which it is revealed . . . Joan Crawford was not a nice person!
*wanders out into traffic in shock*
So, yeah. Apparently Joan Crawford's adopted daughter didn't really like her all that much. Christina Crawford, shortly after Joan's death, came out with a book dripping with gossip, allegations of abuse, and just all kinds of wonderful stuff. Paramount said, let's make a movie. They got Faye Dunaway (whom Joan herself had singled out in the early 70s as the only potential “true star” of her generation), Faye Dunaway got some plastic surgery and had her makeup team do her up like she was playing Cruella de Vil in Planet of the Apes. And the movie got fucking awful reviews. Roger Ebert, being straight, said, “I can't imagine who would want to subject themselves to this movie.” Variety had its claws out and its bitch heels on, critiquing Lady Faye thusly: “Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, costars and all.” Meow.In one of the nimbler maneuvers in advertising history, Paramount turned around and started rebranding it as camp, vanishing all their previous “this is a serious biopic” silliness. And it took off from there. Forever after, no one will ever look at a wire coat hanger the same way. For those with the patience to sit through something slow-paced, a few minutes too long, and featuring some seriously fucking carnivorous and solipsistic acting on the part of its leading lady, Mommie Dearest is a treat indeed.
However, mistaking anything in this movie for fact would be dumb. Most of Christina's book was bullshit fabricated or embellished in revenge for being cut out of Joan's will. Or very well could have been. Even getting past that, a lot of events in the movie were telescoped so the damn thing wouldn't be ten hours long or they were restaged for dramatic effect. But hey, it wasn't a documentary. And Faye Dunaway is so fuckin' weird-looking in it that even for that alone it'd be worth a look.
An Achingly Sincere Work of Mindboggling Incompetence
This last heading is for things like The Room. Tommy Wiseau fucking meant it when he made that movie, and on his planet, The Room is a Tennessee Williams drama with deep insights into the human character. On this one, it's something we heckle for its weird tics and utter ineptitude.
But, as always, A Challenger Appears. In this case, many. I saw this on The Huffington Post a while back, and figured I'd share with you. You'll notice After Last Season on there, but there's one thing the writer got wrong. After Last Season cost 4 fucking million dollars. That was actually why we watched it last night, that utterly bizarre budget figure—much like The Room's alleged 6 mil—creates a level of interest, even if that interest is just "what the fuck did they do, light that money on fire?" As for the others on that list, I have to admit, Praise Band looks fucking tremendous. I want to see it for the same reason, as one of my friends was the first to mention last night, I kind of want to see Kirk Cameron in the Left Behind movie(s).
I'm not going to go into too much depth making fun of one of these movies, just because it'd be kind of mean, considering how deeply their auteurs felt making them. I mean, sure, we make fun of The Room, but it's The Room. It's special. Someday someone's going to make a movie about Tommy Wiseau just the way Tim Burton made a movie about Ed Wood. I'll let those trailers on the HuffPo link speak for themselves.
In the end, as much as I like Good Bad Movies, I still have to admit, I'd far rather poach my more masochistic friends' research than actually watch the bad movies myself to find the gold. It's for that reason that I love Bill Pronzini's books Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek; he read the worst that mystery and crime fiction had to offer so we didn't have to. So I'll let others sit through the wannabe Rooms out there, and when they find something that looks right, I'll show up, with a thirst for whiskey and the anticipatory smile attendant upon sitting down to watch something really, really Good Bad.
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