I hadn’t seen this in years so I went looking for it to watch. For those of you not in the know, it’s a clipshow style movie with skits by contemporary comedy actors including John Candy, Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner. It’s a sort of homage to the b-movie. I used to own the film on vhs that someone had recorded off telly and I must have watched it 20 times. I still remembered most of the dialogue even after 15 years. A few things I noticed on watching it again. Much of the dialogue in the modern skits is quite adult, references to handjobs etc. The modern skit bits seem mostly dated and dull to me now while I can better appreciate the effects in the older films. Sure some of them were terrible (Plan 9 et al) but some of the films they show clips from were great for their time (The Day The Earth Stood Still). I don’t know if this film was an inspiration for MST3k but it contains similar humour.
“Eek! A brain!”
I love it. It was a staple at my Bad Film Festivals (which I was doing long before MST3K, as were other people. The idea of riffing on bad films has multiple roots.)
It was released on VHS, but I understand that the trouble of getting permissions has kept it from DVD release. I still have my copy that I taped off the TV.
It was inspired by Harry and Michael Medved’s The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time and its sequels. It was less interesting than the Medved’s books. I was quite disappointed by it.
I taped it the last time it was on one of the movie channels. I used to love it when I was a kid but either it or I haven’t aged well.
A companion piece of sorts is 1984’s Terror in the Aisles, a clipfest of horror films narrated by Donald Pleasance and Nancy Allen. I have that floating around on VHS somewhere too.
I have next week off; maybe I’ll schedule a little double feature.
If you can find it, Zacherly’s Horrible Horror is another great clipfest of bad movie moments, including some stuff it’s hard to find elsewhere (outtakes from Killers from Space, for instance)
Zacherly (John Zacherle) was one of the original horror hosts, first on CBS, then on New York’s indy station WPIX (where he hosted Chiller Theater)
Another good one is The Best of Sex and Violence, a collection of trailers from B-movies from the late 60s and early 70s. I suspect most of the movies are really bad, but some of the trailers are hilarious!