I just watched the MST3K reboot featuring this awful, awful movie. The episode was okay but I found the movie fascinating (particularly when the actors appeared to express genuine pain as they were nibbled on and clawed by raccoons). Is it possible that the creators and performers thought for one minute they weren’t creating something positively ridiculous?
Yes. Cry Wilderness is a family VHS-release movie and I’m sure they thought it would be harmless fun and an adequate way for a family to spend some time watching TV.
My husband and I recently attended two “The MADS”* presentations at our local Alamo Drafthouse and this is essentially the question he had for Frank and Trace. “Do the makers of the movie realize it’s a stinking pile or do they think they made something good?” The (diplomatic, IMO) answer was that they thought the movie makers were sincere in their attempts to make a decent movie.
In some cases, you still have to wonder. I mean, sure you do the best you can with the technology of your time, so when we watch these old movies we should keep that in mind. But in other cases, with some really blatant stupidity like framing a scene so that things appear to stick out of the actor’s head or it looks like each shot was filmed in a different part of the world (as in the OP’s example), you just have to shake your head. Those mistakes should be pretty apparent during post-processing or initial screening, even if you don’t spot them during the dailies.
- “The MADS” are Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff from MST3K fame, taking the riffing experience on the road and doing it live in certain wonderful theaters like Alamo. I’m not an especial MST3K fan, but it was still a wonderful experience.
In most cases, the people working on the movie think they’re doing good work.
It’s very hard to judge your own work objectively, and the tendency is to overrate it. Look at all the self-published books on Amazon: Most are mediocre work at best (a tipoff – they begin with eith a prologue, or the main character waking up).
There’s a saying I’ve heard (and gone by): bad writers see what’s good in their work; good writers see what’s bad. And that applies to films. The people involved see what’s good (or, rather, what they think is good) and think they’re doing a great job.
There are exceptions. Some people realize they’re taking part in a disaster, but they’ve committed to it so they stick with it. Sometimes the movie is made quickly to cash in on a trend, with the idea that people will see it because it looks something like, say, Harry Potter. Some audiences are undemanding and have no problem watching a poorly made film.
It depends. I think that Ed Wood, Jr. (director of Plan Nine from Outer Space, Glen and Glenda, and other masterpieces) really did believe that he was making good and worthwhile pictures. The same for Phil Tucker (Robot Monster). It does show – in my opinion, these films are at least “enjoyably watchable”. I’d rather watch them than, say, The Star Wars Holiday Special*.
I suspect that the folks who made Cry Wilderness at least felt they were making inoffensive Family Fare, and believed in it to that extent.
Compare that to Larry Buchanan’s grade-Z bound-for-TV remakes of already awful movies, which were done as strictly contractual obligations. It’s hard to believe that anyone really believed in these films, and thought they were making something other than a fast buck. (Creature of Destruction, a remake of The She Creature; Zontar, the Thing from Venus, a remake of It Conquered the World, and Attack of the the Eye Creatures, a remake of Attack of the Saucer Men)
As for films like Manos, the Hands of Fate, well, I think Harold P. Warren did believe in his film, but his incompetence trumped his enthusiasm. It still ended up unwatchable.
*For years I only watched this in bits and pieces. It’s just too painful to take in one sitting. I finally have watched it all in one go, but it was with a group of people, and we were all yelling out comments. So you can sort of anaesthetize yourself against the awfulness. I’m sure that intoxicants would have helped, too.
Cry Wilderness makes me long for The Giant Gila Monster.
I think the director of Battlefield Earth thought it was a good movie, even though it is stunningly obvious that it is terrible.
He did. If you listen to his DVD commentary, he seems quite proud of his work.
I think the directors of all big Hollywood flops really thought they were doing good work.
I find it somewhat watchable, though, and with some script-doctoring (or, let’s be fair, script-major-surgery), it might have been decent. At the very least, reigning in Travolta’s bizarrely foppishness-prone performance would have been a big improvement.
As I recall, while the director might have liked it, the original screenwriter apparently realized that it was becoming a train wreck, at the point they fired him.
It really does bring to attention that, despite the vision (however deluded) of the “auteur” at the film’s helm, a lot of hands do go into the making of a movie. Some of them might not care about it as much as others…or they might be the only ones who were “in on the joke.”
I go to a sci-fi movie marathon every year. They have a mix of decent movies and laughable old or low-budget movies. It’s usually pretty fun.
The one movie I just could not stand out of the 100 or so I’ve seen over the years was last year’s showing of the 1998 *Godzilla *movie. It literally made me angry and I felt…cheated?
It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t such a “blockbuster” (or rather, in the format of a blockbuster) or if it had a tiny budget or if it was completely silly.
It was just BAD!! FUCK YOU 1998 GODZILLA!!
(It did prove that I will sit quietly and watch entirely anything that has Matthew Broderick in it. But I’m angry at him too!)
While I’m sure Ed Wood didn’t imagine his pictures would be the objects of ridicule/camp adoration they became, I doubt he was under any illusions he was making lasting art. There were all kinds of hacks like Wood (well, not exactly like Wood, but you get my meaning) operating on the fringes of Hollywood. For those guys, if a picture made enough money for someone to pay you to make another one, it was good.
I’m not sure. I think Wood thought he was doing much better than most people thought he was, as in the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film. Certainly he thought Glen or Glenda had something profound to say. But I don’t think he thought of himself as a fringe director just hanging on with nothing to say.
I think M. Night Shyamalan believes in himself and his movies. Split was excellent, but most of his recent movies have been just outrageously bad.
How can the same make that made Unbreakable go to dailies regularly and think The Happening is turning out well? Or that Airbender movie?
Eh, I’m sure the people making the latest Sci-Fi channel exclusive late night monster movie are aware that their work isn’t going to be the next Citizen Kane, or even the next Night of the Living Dead. But presumably they still like working on movies, even with limited resources, and do the best they can with what they got.
Plus, lots of later successful movie-folk got started making schlock. James Cameron, just to pick a random example, first movie was Piranha II (7% on Rotten Tomatoes).
At least a few of the filmmakers of movies featured on MST3K knew their movies were bad- or at least that they were pretty cheesy. Hobgoblins and Time Chasers were both recommended to the writers by their filmmakers. The Time Chasers guys even had a party to watch the debut of the episode!
RealityChuck writes:
> . . . bad writers see what’s good in their work; good writers see what’s bad . . .
Do you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect?:
There’s always been controversy surrounding auteur theory, and how it demands that the director is the author of a film, the one who necessarily has the most control over the end product. In some films, it’s demonstrably untrue, and in others, debatable, with multiple people having a strong creative input. There’s even an alternative theory, Schreiber theory, which focuses on screenwriters as authors.
If nothing else, you can think of it as a corrective: It certainly might improve things to give more credit to the people who come up with the stories, instead of focusing all of it on the people who instruct others in how to tell them.
Of course, the stereotype is that any film which has the input of multiple people must be a dog, and that only the films which are the pure product of one untrammeled genius can be worthy. This obviously means Citizen Kane, which was a collaboration of Welles, Mankiewicz, and Toland, must needs be a lesser creation than Manos: The Hands of Fate, which was entirely due to the unique genius of Warren.
Needless to say, I don’t have much use for such dogma, much as I don’t have much use for the dogma that sound, or color, or 3D, or being a sequel, or being a prequel, or being a remake necessarily ruin a film.