We (Heart) Bad Movies

It doesn’t happen in any other art form. You don’t see a group of people getting together and having a blast listening to bad music. People don’t line up outside museums to point and laugh at some awful painting. But we do it with films.

A few years ago at a friend’s stag party, we were refused entrance at a strip club because a member of our group was underage. So, what did we do? We bought a lot of beer, went to someone’s apartment and watched Masters of the Universe.

A good time was had by all.

Maybe it’s our rebellious nature. Anyone can extol the virtues of Citizen Kane or The Godfather. But, it takes a special person to love something like Robot Monster or The Brute Man.

It can’t be just any bad movie, either. A film featuring beautiful women, wooden acting and a thoroughly unconvincing rubber monster will inspire love and enjoyment in the hearts of a bad movie lover, while an over-blown and under-thought mega-blockbuster like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will make us ill.

What is the secret ingredient that makes the previous film palatable? Is it lack of pretension or lack of funds? Perhaps it is because the latter film had near-unlimited resources while the previous film had duct tape, bubble wrap and a three-day shooting schedule. They’re garage bands, emulating something bigger and more polished, failing miserably and loving every moment of it. They can get away with appearing at the high school talent show, leaping about the stage, more spectacle than music, telling themselves that the audience is witness to the birth of rock gods. If we were to pay thirty bucks (or more) a ticket to some band at the local arena…well, we expect a little more.

All lovers of bad movies like “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Hell, a lot of lovers of bad movies love bad movies because of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” This TV show, for those out there unfamiliar with it, aired from the late eighties through the nineties and featured some of the worst movies ever made, complete with a guy and two robots riffing on (that is, making fun of) them. If you’ve never watched an episode, do so now. Monster-A-Go-Go is a good one. So is Werewolf.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that “Mystery Science Theater 3000” is really the gen-x equivalent of the old horror hosts like Svengoolie, Son of Ghoul, Elvira, Zacherley, Vampira, Chilly Billy and so on. These men and women would “host” classic horror movies on late night television, often doing funny skits before and after commercial breaks and sometimes even editing themselves into the movies. Sometimes, they would show genuine classics like Bride of Frankenstein,  Dracula or King Kong, but, often it was things like Creature from the Haunted Sea or Pillow of Death. (For more on the old horror hosts, check out the documentary American Scary.)

A bad movie is not a bad movie when it knows it’s a bad movie.

Huh?

I’ll explain.

Take, for example, the output of Troma Studios, best known for films like The Toxic Avenger, Tromeo and Juliet and Terror Firmer. Troma has been making low-brow, low-budget crass motion pictures for over forty years and they have the kind of devoted following that no other studio can claim (well, maybe Disney). Because they know they’re making bad movies, they have fun with it, the kind of fun you get from telling dirty jokes in school. You can’t riff on a Troma movie, because it riffs on itself. The same can be said of movies like Army of Darkness or Bubba Ho-Tep. You can describe these pictures as “cheesy” or “campy,” but not “bad.” Not the way It Conquered the World is bad.

One of my favorite things to do is to hang around video stores, or the video sections of stores, and wait for someone to say something like, “Black Swan was the worst movie I ever saw in my life.” It’s at this point that I appear, bad movie imp summoned from lower level of hell. “Really?” I ask, gleefully rubbing my hands together. “Tell me, have you ever seen Manos: The Hands of Fate?”

And almost always, they have not.

Watching a good movie means you’re quiet, reserved, involved in the cinematic goings-on, like a proper well-behaved theater audience. With bad movies, we jeer, snigger, groan and roll our eyes like a vaudeville crowd. We’d throw tomatoes if we weren’t afraid of hurting our television. Perhaps this is the secret to our love of bad movies, the interactivity. It’s fun to be goofy, to point and laugh at the clown, to embrace our inner child, to make silly faces and to generally misbehave.  

Great care must be taken when selecting a bad movie. It can’t just be any old thing. There are no shortcuts. Even saying, “Oh, it’s a Roger Corman movie,” won’t suffice. What if it’s The Intruder or any of his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Vincent Price (which are gleeful Technicolor classics)?

“What about this one?” you ask. “It’s a Japanese monster movie.” Oh? Is it Gojira (aka Godzilla)? Because, I’ve got news for you, the original Gojira is actually a very good movie, easily on par with King Kong.

“Well, what about this one, it’s a low-budget horror movie?”

Halloween was a low-budget horror movie.

“What about Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory?”

Now you’re getting it.

For all those who love the works of Edward D. Wood, Jr., Coleman Francis, Ray Kellogg, Sandy Frank, Tor Johnson, or Rondo Hatton, I encourage you to spread the love, not everyone will understand it, but when you find someone who does, you will have made a friend for life.

For those about to riff, I salute you.

PS- Check out ilovebadmovies.blogspot.com!