I haven’t seen it, and I don’t think it’s a howlingly bad movie as described here – but in his review Roger Ebert says the latest Jurassic Park movie is, “in its own B-movie way it’s a nice little thrill machine.”
Which makes me wonder, what ARE the B movies of today? Anyone have a definition?
Howyadoin,
Let’s not forget Kentucky Fried Movie!
-Rav
Blaxploitation put the “B” in… aw, the hell with it.
You can’t go wrong with Shaft, Coffy, Superfly, Hell Up In Harlem, and the grandaddy of 'em all, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song.
Sofa King, you forgot some classics: Rudy Ray Moore’s movies. He’s the ex-stand-up comic behind such blaxploitation classics as Dolemite, Dolemite: The Human Tornado, Disco Godfather, and Petey Wheatstraw The Devil’s Son-in-law.
“Head” the Monkees only movie.
“Zoot Suit” a Hispanic musical starring Edward James Olmos when he still had hair.
“The Warriors” classic surreal film. Also by the same director,
“Streets of Fire” a “Rock and Roll Fable.”
“Serial” you have to have lived the 70’s to understand this one.
I just got one the other day, Blind Fury, with Rutger Hauer as a blind swordsman.
detop, for shame; that one is a classic film and should be on AFI’s top 100! 
Actually, that reminds me of another great Rutger Hauer B Movie: The Blood of Heroes.
It in turn reminds me of a fairly recent great B Movie: Six-String Samurai.
Why did TBOH remind me of S-SS? Because if I had a band, it would be named one of the two. 
Woohoo!
Shameful confession time. In college, I was one of the founding members and eventual president of the Boston University B Movie Association. We watched almost all of the movies already listed.
The best (worst?) part was every February, when, co-sponsored with the African-American student group on campus, we would host a Blaxploitation Film Festival to honor black actors. Shaft, Superfly, The Last Dragon, Black Belt Jones, Cleopatra Brown, et cetera, et cetera.
I’ll just list the two movies that have never gotten out of my mind:
The Gladiator (1986)
Tag: The Assassination Game (1982)
The Gladiator is a film about a man who soups up his pickup truck and becomes a vigilante after the Evil Black Car injures his brother. It’s crap. I’ve written a screenplay for a sequel.
Tag features Robert Carradine and Linda Hamilton (!) in a college dart-gun game that Robert takes a little too seriously. You’ve gotta love it.
The Blood of Heroes is still my favorite Rutger Hauer movie. 
I love Full Moon movies! I actually liked Oblivion, and I loved Highway to Hell. “That Pinto might get you to Hell, boy. But this car will get you back.” Hmm, that’s not showing up on IMDB as one of their’s. OW well, still a fun flick.
Also, Cast a Deadly Spell Lovecraft-esque flick with magic mixed with a Phillip Marlow stytle detective story. Good fun.
Hollywood Boulevard: Two trailer editors for New World Pictures, Allan Arkush and Joe Dante, bet their boss, Roger Corman, that they could make a movie cheaper than any movie he had ever made. Being Roger Corman, there was no way he could turn them down. The result is an extremely cheap, very funny parody of New World Pictures itself, focusing on the adventures of a young starlet who lands roles in such deathless classics as Machete Maidens of Mora Tau and Atomic War Brides. Half the fun is in spotting all the stock footage from real New World productions used to pad the movie; the other half is seeing Mary Woronov as The Bitchy Diva From Hell, Paul Bartel as The Pretentious Director, and the immortal Dick Miller as the heroine’s agent. With music by Commando Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. What more can you ask for?
(Incidentally, Allan Arkush went to direct Rock n’ Roll High School and Joe Dante went on being Joe Dante, god bless 'im.)
The Final Programme: Possibly the single strangest science fiction film ever made. Almost literally indescribable, except that it bears the same resemblance to the Michael Moorcock novel on which it’s based that an acorn squash bears to a Nissan Pathfinder. Very funny. Very weird. A must-see.
Both movies are now available on DVD. Jesus, I love technology.
Noises Off is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, really. I rented it for $.50 and laughed my head off. Carol Burnett, Christopher Reeve, John Ritter, Michael Caine. Hilarious.
Soapdish also has a great cast (Kevin Kline, Robert Downey Jr, Sally Field) and gets funnier every time I watch it. And I watch it pretty often.
Dead Again is a great one, too - clever plot and it’s fun to hear Kenneth Branaugh’s American accent before it turned into a Woody Allen impression.
Woo!! Right on, katiekilldare! That is such a wonderful movie, and only a handful of people seem to know it even exists. Though, I own a copy (bought it PV’d), so I’m slowly spreading the word, a few new people watching it at a time.
Wow, “Six-String Samurai” was a great movie in that it was original and bizarre.
In addition, I’d like to add “From Beyond”, based on a story by Lovecraft and appears to be directed by the same guy who did Re-animator. The lead actor is the same in both, and he fares about equally well in each.
You can’t forget “Night of the Comet” either. A delightful blend of “Valley Girl” and “The Omega Man” with a Tempest video game adding a wacky twist at the start/end of the film.
Then there was “Dead End Drive-In”, which was sort of a Roach Motel for the UK’s (I think it was there, it has been some time) riffraff.
And my favorite, most bizarre B-Movie is easily “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2000”. Besides the fact that not many people die (which you would expect in a slasher flick), the film had enough really bizarre scenes, and best of all, starred Matthew McConahay (“The Wedding Planner”) and Rene Zellweger (“Nurse Betty” among others).
Yes it is.
You should try Motel Hell then.
I just saw the 1966 version of The Killers, which should have been a B picture even if it wasn’t. Hell, it’s got… well, you’ll see.
Anyway, I think this film is a case study of why some second rate films can age like a fine wine. This film should suck, but I would argue that it doesn’t any more. Here’s why:
The bad guys are the good guys! Or they’re bad, but the others are worse! Or something like that.
Lee Marvin is doing his latent-H tough-guy bit. I can’t even claim to have gaydar, but I’m willing to bet that Anthony Perkins tied this guy up and whipped him at some point. His sidekick is doing a Richard Widmark routine that wouldn’t make the lounge at Cable Beach.
One shot of pure cinema history: Ronald Reagan, Angie Dickinson, and Mr. Roper sitting together pretending to watch a race.
Shelby Cobras racing at Riverside!
Ronald Reagan impersonating a cop!
Big, fat, wallowing American cars barreling through what looks suspiciously like Hazzard County.
And finally, a dramatic climax that appears to take place at the Cleaver residence.
Like I said, shoulda sucked, but now it’s cool. Forget the fractious plot, the rape of Hemmingway, and the Hollywood-mandated ending. You will find no capital “B” anywhere in the name Ronald Wilson Reagan, but it’s pasted on practically every picture he ever made.
this is my specialty, i LOOOVVE bad movies!!! i like good ones, too…
anyway:
skeeter
nice girls don’t explode
pucker up and bark like a dog
the incredibly strange creatures…yada yada
blood sucking freaks
orgy of the damned
vampyres
there’s nothing out there
eating raoul
barbarella
conan the barbarian
alien from LA
nasty rabbit
gothic
i’ll stop now. i could go on and on…
sad, huh?
How about Transylvania 6-5000? Geena Davis as the sexiest vampire this side of… well I can’t think of a sexier vampire, 'cause Geena is just so yummy. But except for her, the movie stank.
My God, I just realized that three-quarters of the movies I’ve seen came from this thread.
Speaking of Geena Davis, catch her in “Earth Girls Are Easy.” Based on Julie Brown’s song. GD first appears in a string bikini ::drool::
Rest of the movie’s pretty good, too.
And how come no Troma films listed yet? They’re the King of the B’s (alongside Bruce Campbell, of course).
I recently picked up Last Man Standing on DVD, for dirt cheap. Now, Yojimbo was a great film, and Fistful of Dollars was a fine remake after which wise movie-making souls would have left well enough alone.
Luckily, wise souls, especially of the movie-making variety, are fairly rare, so this Bruce Willis vehicle was made. People get too hung up on the bad remake factor–but I think it’s one of the great unrecognized comedies of the past few years. Willis gives a marvelous unpassioned performance wherein he wears pretty much the same slightly-open-mouthed blank grimace throughout the entire film, utters perfectly deadpan voice-over lines like “I wanted to stay sharp, so I switched from whiskey to beer”, and goes through action scenes in which he doesn’t so much pretend to aim his pistols at targets as the targets enthusiastically hurl themselves into his line of fire. Oh, and Christopher Walken, bless his freakishness, puts in a role in which he is…well, a Christopher Walken role.
Anyone ever heard of the movie Rollerblade? There might be more than one film with that title. The one I’m speaking of features semi-nude nuns fighting on roller skates. It’s an odd piece of work.