I recently watched Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? because I was had been looking at the credits for Sally Douglas and wanted to see what the hell an “Automation Bunny” is.
That movie is strange.
Piranhas 3-D, was it bad that I recognized the pornstar getting her legs eaten off? The dude from Sliders I think? Also gets his junk eaten off.
The movies listed here are noble efforts. But we must bow down and do homage to the true masters of bad, bizarre cinema – China and Japan. Years ago, a co-worker and a friend lived in the apartment below mine. He had a massive, 500+ collection of Asian sci-fi and fantasy DVDs, which he shared with me on occasion. My Google-fu is weak, so I can’t find the name of the Chinese sci-fi/wuxia/historical fiction/whatthefuckery that he showed me once, but it featured medieval ninja samurais invading China in a bamboopunk transformable submarine. Christian missionaries being converted by simply hearing a goddess’ name. And what he assured me was the nearest thing that genre got to a sex scene: two beautiful people (possibly a man and a woman, possibly two men, possibly two women; they were so made up and tightly coiffed that I couldn’t figure out genders) embrace, and one, gently, sensually, lovingly, let a long string of drool trail from his/her mouth into his/her partner’s. From about two feet. (Hey, whatever gets your freak flag flying.) Also, Japanese vampires apparently hop after their victims. Typical wuxia films are a little weird anyway, but this was as far beyond them on the WTF scale as Eraserhead was to When Harry Met Sally. And my bud had hundreds more like that, lovingly and expensively imported from Asia.
On the other hand, he also showed me Zhang Yimou’s Hero, two years before it came out in the U.S. (And with, I thought, superior translation in the subtitles). That and Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, another movie I would never have seen without him, were two of the most hauntingly beautiful films I’ve seen.
I enjoyed Jupiter Rising. It was dumb fun. I also enjoyed the Rollerball movie with the robot with the big eyes (I cannot remember the name but apparently it angered the people who read the book) and put it in the same category: Sci-fi that’s disappointing to sci-fi fans. That’s a different thread. A different thousand page thread because sci-fi fans are ridiculous in their expectations.
Just thought of another WTF am I watching? movie that I ended up kinda liking: Flesh + Blood with Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It’s a historical set in Medieval times during a plague. It’s a romance. A violent, brutal, rapey romance that includes catapulting festering dead dogs over stronghold walls and horrible violence. Did I mention it was a romance?
“Killer Klowns from Outer Space” is actually good once you realize that it’s exactly what it says on the tin.
Chinese vampires, aka Jiangshi, hop. The idea is that they’re in permanent rigor mortis. There may also be some idea that they’re restricted by tightly wrapped burial shrouds/clothing.
Back in grad school, a friend and I traveled to the western edge of Moscow to see this movie, which was agreeably wretched. Filmed in Chinese and dubbed into English, it had an awful (hilarious) Russian voice over. On the way home, I asked my friend “You didn’t like the film?” He replied “The only reason I went to see it was because you wanted to.”
A Christmas Prince. This is on Netflix. I am not typically a fan of romantic comedies, but oh man, this movie. It contains almost every Hallmark movie cliche you can imagine. Dashing prince in a far - off land? Check. Earnest journalist with sassy best friend? Check. Dad is owner of a quaint family restaurant? Journalist tutors the Prince"s special needs sister? Charming snowball fight where it is revealed the prince helps orphan children? Oh, an adoption plot why not! The hero even rides a white horse! Oh, it’s perfect.
Logical. But silly.
For reasons I won’t detail, after a sporting event I was watching ended, the video feed changed to a movie already in progress: Expendables 3. I really don’t watch movies but I noticed some familiar faces and then some more. It was a terrible shoot 'em up movie but a really solid cast.
Some names:
Sly Stallone, Mel Gibson (the villain), Statham, Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, Kelsey Grammer (?!), Ronda Rousey.
Just awful but I had to keep watching to make sure the good guys won.
There’s the 2003 film “The Room.”
I have it on Blu-ray, but haven’t yet watched it.
Supposedly it’s pretty bad.
My son keeps trying to get me to watch The Room. I’ve seen excerpts. Horrible, horrible excerpts.
“You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!”
I was disappointed, because it’s very bad, but not really in a fun way. And those sex scenes are something you can never unsee.
In the 1980s, “Night Flight”, which was on another cable channel and played stuff in the overnight hours that was too edgy for MTV, often aired a B&W film-school project called “I Was A Zombie For The FBI” and TV Guide rated it 1 star and described it as “Aliens steal the formula for a popular soft drink.” That pretty much sums up the plot, plus it featured the monster from the ZZ Top video “TV Dinners”, and all the hair and clothing styles were from 1982 when the movie was filmed, and all the cars were from the 1950s.
I think ‘Jaws: The Revenge’ (#4) easily tops 3D in sheer ridiculousness. Maybe not in watchable badness though, I don’t remember 3D very well. But I remember well the absolutely WTF plot of ‘Revenge’:
A relative of the shark that Chief Brody killed takes revenge on the Brody family. Not just in the original town the family is from, it somehow tracks Brody’s widow to the Bahamas.
This is the movie of which Michael Caine memorably said "I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”
This movie has been discussed recently in another thread. Apparently,
There’s a scene that didn’t make the final cut establishing that the shark has been summoned by a voodoo curse that a bokor places on the Brody family
I wonder why that scene didn’t make the final cut-- it would have added some context as well as make the movie even more batshit crazy watchable.
Dune
I actually really like this movie, but admittedly it makes zero sense. It’s one of those movies I would watch as a kid and have absolutely no clue what was happening, but I loved it because everything in it was just so strange. It still doesn’t make any sense as an adult, but I still love it for the same reason.
The Happening. Terrible concept, badly written, abysmally acted. At first I kept watching because I thought, “Surely the guy who made The Sixth Sense has some tricks up his sleeve that will redeem this.” But after a while I kept watching because I was curious how much worse it could get. I was not disappointed.
After thinking about it, it seems all sci-fi or fantasy movies have an inherent WTFness about them. Like the movie I mentioned earlier that I cannot remember the name of and I can’t find because I don’t know anyone’s name in it. It was a relatively new movie with a big budget. Murderball playing robot girl with big eyes. Bounty hunters are also involved. Please help me name it.
Another movie I don’t know the name of. It isn’t American, it’s Indian. It is about a robot cop/soldier and is the movie that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow should have been. I’m not exactly clear on the plot since my son made me watch it without subtitles. I’ve tried searching for this one as well but it seems robot cop/soldier is its own genre in India and there are many, many of them. But this particular one had excellent production values, unlike all of the others I keep finding.
Things about this movie that might help someone name it for me-- the robot has super duper physics defying abilities. Like he can shoot a hundred guns at once and triple kick cars into the air. He falls in love with a young student. He gets a bad red chip put in him. If anyone can help me find this movie (in English? with English subtitles?) I’d be forever grateful. It is truly in a league of its own in WTFness.