As long as I’m on the “great” B-movie kick. Flesh+Blood with Rutger.
Oh, and* Split Second*, allso with Rutger. Though I believe Split Second had enough great scenes and great lines to put it in “the really great movie if only they had effects, a plot and pretty much anything but a few great scenes and great lines” catagory.
Two words:
Donnie Darko.
Silent Running
On the Beach
I really liked On The Beach. Made me read the book. The acting was a bit horrible in places, but all in all, a good movie.
Donnie Darko, I was under the impression, was a popular film? Or at least it was here.
How about one from last year?
I proudly nominate Serenity, which I think was way better than any other film made in 2005. YMMV of course. But how do you sum it up for someone who isn’t familiar with the 'Verse? It’s a space western… no wait, it’s the story of fugitives on the run from an oppressive government… no, it’s a story about action heroes versus zombies… Etc… The movie defies common description if the describer wishes to do the material any justice. Often the description ends up as “Watch the show and then you’ll understand.”
Now, first of, let me say that I like Firefly and Serenity.
But how on earth would you describe it as a movie that needs explanation?
It is a very straightforward sci-fi movie.
Having seen the show makes you understand and appreciate the characters a little better, but the movie in itself is very self-explanatory.
I would like to second Mulholland Drive and nominate another David Lynch classic : Lost Highway.
I still don’t understand what it’s about, but boy, do I like that movie.
I don’t know if this is really a B-movie. It had a decent budget, good acting, and good writing. The only thing that strikes me as B-movie is the odd inventions.
“Forgive me for misunderstanding a sign!”
The scene where David Warner’s Jack confronts Malcolm McDowell’s H.G. Wells is Oscar worthy: Back then I was a freak of nature. Here I am an amateur.
I am only going to address this one for now. Too much work IRL.
You know Popular does not = quality. By your definition Star Trek was the greatest TV show ever. I love Star Trek TOS, but I would never make this claim.
Jim
Exactly right. To use a business metaphor, B movies are about delivering the cheese – the cheese being whatever reward the movie offers its audience for watching. In a lot of cases, it’s heroic guys and gals beating the crap out of evil guys and gals. In romantic comedies, it’s about how a couple overcomes their neuroses or peculiar circumstances or whatever in order to have a satisfying sexual relationship/marriage. In the case of films about strippers, it’s naked women dancing. In the case of 80s sword and sorcery films, it’s muscular barbarians slugging it out over naked slavegirls in chains, basically. Deathstalker’s peculiar genius was in figuring out that that was where the cheese was, and in delivering more of it, and doing a better job of it, than other 80s sword and sorcery flicks. This is not to say that Deathstalker plumbed the depths of the genre – far from it. (I’m thinking a movie based on Norman’s “Rogue of Gor” about a professional boxer on Gor who makes a living beating up other Goreans in a ring. Typically, the prize, a naked slavegirl, is chained near the ring so both boxers have a clear idea what they’re fighting for. There’s also a plot about intrigue and stuff to string the fight and sex scenes together. Would be just about perfect for a B movie.)
This reminds me of a couple other films that need 'splaining.
Now, as I think we all know, the big problem with stripper movies is that there’s so little actual stripping in them. Movies like “Bare Witness” and “Stripteaser” are typically in such an ungodly hurry to get to the plot and/or the sex scenes that they zip right past the stripping, missing the cheese that’s specific to stripper movies in their haste to get to the generic cheese of softcore pron (which is of course sex scenes). What little stripping there is is often out of focus and in the background, seen behind the principal characters while they do all that talking and wooden acting that B-movie fans love to watch.
In fact, the movie “Striptease” with Demi Moore, an A-level stripper movie, had about five minutes of onstage stripping in it, almost all of it Demi Moore, and although she did a fine job of stripping, there just wasn’t enough of her or the other dancers to keep the film from mostly missing the cheese.
“Midnight Tease 2” at last shows how stripper movies should be done – the movie is a series of striptease dances by the main characters in the club they work at, with the plot sandwiched in between each dance. There’s easily a good 15-20 minutes of actual stripping in the movie, some of it by Julie K. Smith who does it about as well as anyone could. And we’re not talking background stripping, we’re talking foreground stripping. The plot-dance-plot-dance-plot-dance-plot format works perfectly – the plot advances and lots of women get naked and dance sexily. Toward the end of the movie there’s a preponderance of plot as they try to wrap things up, but I’m sure other filmmakers will soon fix that detail. (In fact, my knowledge of stripper movies, though impressive to the tasteful, is far from complete, and there may be some more worthy nominee out there.)
Okay, point one : Sword and Sandal flicks are not synonymous with bondage in a sexual context. A lot of that shows up in some of them, but not others. If we broaden our definition to include all fantasy films - Legend, Labyrinth, Willow, Dragonslayer - the importance of bondage imagery is further minimized. So dubbing Deathstalker the best fantasy movie of the 80’s just because it happened to be the first to echo the Gor novels? That’s kinda silly. Bondage and nudity predate Gor, anyway.
There was going to be a point two, but I forgot what it was. Let me summarize by saying the first movie to do something isn’t necessarily the best; the most influential movie in a category isn’t necessarily the best; and Deathstalker isn’t as influential on the fantasy genre as you make it out to be, I think.
With regards to the nudity in Clash of the Titans - it was tasteful, and nonsexual. The movie was originally rated PG - because in 1980, there was no PG-13 and nudity alone wasn’t justification for an R rating. Some other folks make a few mentions of other PG flicks with nudity, but the top two I’ve seen by quantity would be Clash, and Logan’s Run.
Oh, point two! Clash is a fantasy film, sword and sandal, one of the first of the 80’s, with a great cast, memorable characters, unique special effects… it does have nudity, and it does have bondage - though neither is overtly sexual. One could argue that the Kraken’s threatening to devour the princess has sexual connotations though. And, the movie was epic. It dared a lot, and achieved a lot. I think it answers your OP nicely, unless we amend it to specify “Best fantasy film of the 80’s, with regards to adapting the world of Gor’s ideals or, at least, having bondage and nudity in an explicit sexual context, because that’s apparently the measure of a good movie.” 
I guess I was uncelar in explaining why I nominated “Deathstalker.” Sword and Sandal flicks of course or not synonymous with sexual bondage. But they CAN, because of their historical nature and subject matter, include a lot of sexual bondage imagery if they so choose. Sexy slavegirls slinking around all over the place, just waiting for a heroic barbarian to or a bad guy with a gleam in his eye to do something exciting. Damsels in distress waiting to be rescued, or … whatever. Kickass heroines captured by the bad guys, who molest the heroine before she manages to escape and kick their asses.And it’s not necessarily just an audience of hardcore bondage fetishists who will enjoy such imagery. Most people will. The success of the Gor novels and later, Deathstalker and its imitators, showed that this was a sound idea.
As noted a couple of posts back, Deathstalker was a lot better at properly identifying and serving up the real cheese than any other Sword and Sorcery film, before or since.
I don’t think “Clash of the Titans” dared a whole hell of a lot. To tell you the truth, it struck me as more of a throwback to the fifties and sixties. I bet if you edited out the 30 seconds of nudity or whatever it would work just fine as a 1950s fantasy film. Nothing wrong with that – there were some excellent fantasy films in the 50s and 60s. But I don’t think any barriers were pushed.
Yeah, you and a couple of others have implied that it’s just the fetish thing, but I think you’re letting the bondage thing blind you. First of all, it’s mostly the nudity and sex, the slavegirl thing is secondary. Second of all, the people who made the films that way did it becuase they thought it would attract a wider audience, not just a narrow audience of fetishists. If they want to go after bondage fetishists alone, they would have had to put a WHOLE lot more sexual bondage content in there.
There’s nothing in the OP suggesting that the movie named can’t be popular.
Deathstalker was tripe. I enjoyed the hell out of the first Conan, Excaliber, and Clash of the Titans. I’ve never been able to make it entirely through Deathstalker before giving in to the urge to shut it off and do something else. Production values are low, the acting is atrocious, and the script is ass. The presence of a little bondage, even if I were into bondage, wouldn’t be enough to class Deathstalker as anything but shite.
If you’ll recall, the only time I’ve spoken up on the whole “fetish” kerfluffle, I was on your side. I do think you’re overstating the importance of nudity/sex to a fantasy/SF film. We might as well nominate Tron, as it was the first to make such extensive use of the concept of Cyberspace. Why is sex more essential to the scifi/fantasy genre than Cyberspace?
And we’re talking about best movie in ________ category, here. Not most influential. Best. Sure, it’s a nebulous term, but is Deathstalker a better scifi/fantasy film than The Empire Strikes Back? Is it a better fantasy film than Dragonslayer?
EC, I think you’re attributing far too much intelligence to the creators of Deathstalker. I doubt anyone involved with the production had ever heard of Gor. Instead, I think they saw Conan and said “Hey, let’s make that film again with 10% of the budget and add some boobies!” This is known as the Roger Corman Business Model, and it predates Deathstalker by a good many years.
Examples? For every Alien, there’s a Galaxy of Terror. For every Jaws, there’s a Orca, Phirana, Crocodile, Razorback or Night of the Lepus. Do you want to count the awful zombie movies made after bDawn of the Dead**? All the crappy post-apocalyptic sci-fi made after Mad Max 2?
Deathstalker has no distinction. It’s just another example of its genre: crap.
Look: I’m biased. I’m a fantasy literature geek. I want my sword-and-sorcery films to provide the same fully-realized worlds, the same epic stories, the same sense of awe as the best books (and by “best books”, I’m not referring to the John Norman ouvre). Conan and Excalibur delivered, or at least came close. Deathstalker provided incoherence, laughable art direction, poorly staged fights and naked Lana Clarkson. And while those things are often fun to watch - especially the last - I usually walk away from those films frustrated, thinking about what might have been.
Fantasy cinema could have taken off in the 1980’s, but instead, films like Deathstalker killed it. The genre needed almost two decades to recover.
Akkk! Killer coding!
Exactly.
I didn’t whip out the fetish thing to be an asshole - I whipped it out because it is the one thing Deathstalker has going for it over…anything. Naked women and half naked women tied to stuff. Naked women, half naked women, and soon to be one-of-the-above being attacked by Evil Guys.
Personally, I have no objections to any of the above - I’m quite fond of attractive women in various states of undress who may or may not be tied to things. However, it’s just absurd to claim that isn’t the main reason for liking Deathstalker. It’s also absurd to claim that Deathstalker was making any sort of…bold new move by doing so. A couple actresses (or in the case of Playmates “actresses”) nude and fondled is a whole lot cheaper than actual production values and the like.
Alessan - I have to disagree with you on the Lana Clarkson. I think by far the most appealing was Barbi Benton. Of course, maybe that’s because she spent more time tied up!
-Joe, prefers brunettes
Star Wars may be the most popular and one of the most influental SF Films ever made but not the best. Not only is Silent Running the best SF movie of the '70’s but may be the best SF film of all time.
Explaination: