You know you’re guilty of it. There is at least one movie in your collection that you hide when people come over (no, not porn), or if it comes on TV you have to watch it the whole way through. I’ve got several movies that I love even though I know they’re bad. I’m just gonna pick one out of the many and talk about it.
Hudson Hawk
Everytime I watch this movie, a supposed comedy, I rarely laugh. The movie has only so-so acting, a plot that’s near incomprehensible and a number of poor jokes, and yet I love it and have it on DVD.
The only parts that get a serious laugh out of me is when Andie McDowell talks to the crucifix and it lights up and talks back to her, and when I see the kid beating the hell out of the stuffed animal in the Vatican. Other than that the only reason I can think of for liking the movie is because it’s so whimsical; the people in the movie just seem to be having a good time, and that’s enough.
So, what’s your guilty pleasure? Loved Battlefield Earth? Can’t get over the song and dance routines in Ishtar ? Do you feel that Plan Nine from Outer Space is underrated? Just let loose!
Roger Ebert complained about the cheesiness of the monsters. Well, duh, it IS Lost in Space after all. Just because they spent $65,000,000 on the movie doesn’t mean the monsters should be any better than the TV show. Heck, they could have been attacked by herds of six-foot carrot guys!
I do like Plan 9 From Outer Space; it’s a Halloween tradition in our house. Cheesy, cheap, messy – but Wood put his heart into it, and really cared about it. It’s a case of reach exceeding grasp, and the movie is fun.
I also love Ishtar, but it’s not a bad movie. Some parts of it are hilarious (especially the songs). And the gun auction scene is as close to classic humor as you can get. Too many people reviewed the price tag and never saw the movie.
I also found The Last Action Hero to be a hoot, but I’m a sucker for metafiction.
The Dan Akroyd / Tom Hanks version of Dragnet. I’ve watched this movie at least five times. It’s just so amazingly silly that I can’t see how anybody could possibly fail to enjoy it.
**Love Potion #9 ** , with Sandra Bullock. I bought the video and showed it to all my friends, and none of them liked it. But I’ve watched it at least 10 times.
Rumble in the Bronx . Like many Jackie Chan movies, it’s completely stupid and cheesy. But I can’t get enough of those fight scenes!
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom . Everyone I know thinks this is by far the worst of the three Indy movies. And while it is a FAR cry from Raiders, I actually like it–a lot better than The Last Crusade.
Plus any of the old, 50’s sci-fi movies about irradiated grasshoppers, spiders, etc. that grow to tremendous size and terrorize mankind. A recent release in that vein was Eight Legged Freaks (which I thought was entertaining). And my favorite of all time is Night of the Lepus , a 70’s flick in this genre about giant, horse-sized, carnivorous rabbits. It is a classic.
Geez, most of my favorite movies would be classified as “bad movies”- I love Hershell Gordon Lewis’ gore movies, Doris Wishman sexploitation flicks, almost every sort of exploitation movie.
My favorite wrongly maligned movie is Cabin Boy, the Chris Elliott movie. Most of the reviews claimed it was stupid, but like Green Acres it was so stupid it was surreal. It was a kind of tribute to the old Ray Harryhausen movies, with even odder things than were ever in those movies- a talking, tobacco spittin’ cupcake; a shark-man; a six armed sex godess… it was brilliant.
I’m with you all the way on Big Trouble in Little China (“Mistah Burton, you were not put on this earth to ‘get it’.”) but have to disagree with Vampires. I hated that movie. I mean, usually I don’t get all that bent out of shape about such things in fiction, but the misogyny in that was just nauseating. Half the movie is the chubby Baldwin brother beating up Laura Palmer in a dirty hotel room; what’s to like?
I actually own this on DVD (it was a gift, but only because I hadn’t yet bought it for myself.) A truly awful, amateurish movie that somehow Jeremy Irons wandered into. The incompetence is staggering.
Showgirls, a an exercise in bad taste that is excruciatingly, wonderfully awful. Yet another product form the misogynist minds of Paul Verhoeven and Joe Ezsterhas, Showgirls chronicles the rise of Nomi Malone, played by the wooden Elizabeth Berkeley, from stripper to the headliner of a Las Vegas topless revue. It’s a shamelessly cheesy version of the backstage drama that is showbiz, with delightfully bad dialogue:
“I’m erect, why aren’t you erect?”
“I just got a problem with pussy.”
"It must be weird, not having anybody cum on you. "
YES! Finally someone else who’s seen this. I’m still looking for a copy of Them.
I still think Big Trouble in Little China would have been better as the sequal to one of my favorite guilty movies The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
I also own a copy of Hudson Hawk.
How come no one has mentioned the greatest B movie of all time? The Army of Darkness! Bruce Campbell rules! Why he and John Carpenter have never worked together I’ll never know.
Them is available on DVD for $14.99 at your local video retailer. But this thread is about bad movies, and Them is actually a pretty decent monster flick. SF is not an automatic signifier of badness, although Jah knows there’s any number of bad SF movies. As Roger Ebert so wisely said, “It’s not what a film is about, but how it is about it.”
I love bad films. I have a Bad Film Festival every year, and have been holding them since well before MST3K was on the air.
Some of my choices:
**Doc Savage, Man of Bronze
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Robot Monster
Altered States
The Monster that Challenged the World
The Mummy** and The Mummy Returns
I love John Carpenter flicks, and, while I like Big Trouble in Little China, I don’t think it’s really a Bad Film. Ditto for Them!, which is usually recognized as one of the best SF films.
I strongly recommend compilations that snip out the best scenes of bad films, like It Came From Hollywod or Horrible Horror.