As I’ve said numerous times on the SDMB, I have a Bad Film Festival every year. I’ve been doing it since LONG before MST3K came out. The challenge is to come up with entertainingly bad movies – ones you can easily make fun of with friends.
My Best of— list:
It Came from Hollywood – the Best of the Worst, with commentary by SCTV and SNL members. A good intoduction to this kind of thing
Zacherly’s Horrible Horror ** – another compilation with amazing stuff, like outtakes from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and ** Killers from Space. Hard to find, though. Zacherly (John Zacherle) was one of the pioneers of what would become the MST3K style.
Plan Nine from Outer Space – the classic
Robot Monster – the other classic. Hard to believe that Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven, among others) did the score for this.
The Giant Claw – arguably the worst 1950s monster film from a major studio. Take one look at the monster and you’ll see why.
** The Forbidden Zone** – mentioned above (although Danny Elfman did not direct. He did the music, and appears on-camera, too). I started showing this one and my wife begged me to turn it off during the opening credits. Our guests asked for me to keep it going, but five minutes later they asked me to kill it, too. It is almost impossible to describe this movie. You have to see it. I’m the only person I know who’s seen it all the way through.
The Crawling Eye Forrest Tucker in a British sf film from the 1950s. For some reason, a lot of these started off as TV serials (this one was originally The Trollenberg Terror), and a lot of them star Forrest Tucker, in his pre-F-Troop days. They also tend to involve aliens “possessing” people. I have a deep suspicion that the British hate aliens not so much because they’re slimy, people-eating, possessive monsters, but because they’re foreigners.
Star Crystal – awful Alien wannabee with the worst ET you’ve seen in a long time. But the real reason to see this film is the way the monster is defeated. For the first and only time I can recall, the beastie is stopped by being converted to Christianity. Must be seen to be believed.
Not of this Earth – there have been three versions of this, all made by Roger Corman. The first isn’t too bad, but the second (from the 1980s and starring Traci Lords (!!)) is wonderfully bad. I know that Corman must have set out to make this a wretched, campy version, but he succeeded too well.
This year I was thinking about a Bruce Kimmel film festival – The First Nudie Musical and Starship/The Creature that Wasn’t Nice/The Naked Space. Kimmel wrote, directed, and starred in these works. He also wrote the music, then convinced Cindy Williams (yep, Shirley from Laverne and Shirley) to star in both. Ron Howard has a cameo in the first, and Patrick MacNee and Leslie Neilsen star in the second. Kimmel must have a hell of a blackmail collection.
But I decided to go with a George Pal festival, perhaps because of the new Time Machine. I loved George Pal’s films when I was growing up, and many still have much to recommend them. But if you haven’t seen Doc Savage, Man of Bronze, then you are missing a treat. Try to watch this without groaning or cracking up. There’s even a website devoted to its “MSTification” that’s worth downloading while you watch this. I also plan to show Atlantis, the Lost Continent. Awesome spectacle, wooden dialogue, and just plain silliness. Look for all the costumes and props taken from Forbidden Planet.
