Got the idea for this thread watching “Remo Williams” (it had Captain Janeway in it . . sheesh, who knew ?) on some cable channel this weekend. It was over all pretty silly, but damned if there were not parts of it that were pretty cool. (Statue of Liberty fight scene). The funniest part of it were the “advanced computers” that filled up an entire floor of a huge NY bank - hey it was the early 80’s. Anyone else love some pretty bad films ? Perhaps we can call it the Ed Wood Disease and get ferderal funding to study it.
“A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject.” - Seneca
Well, you all remember my recent tribute to the horror that is Kiss Her Goodbye . . .
Other favorites are—
• Queen of Outer Space (“Ay hay dot qvinn!”)
• Trilogy of Terror
• Cobra Woman (“Giff me dot Cobra Jool!”)
• Night of the Lepus
• Demi Moore’s Scarlet Letter (in fact, anything with Demi Moore)
Now how could Elaine May, Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty combined come up with Ishtar?
With Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Carol Kane, and who knows which others to boot?
You’ll see Rose MacGowan naked, copulating in a hotel, in a car, in a bathtub, in an abandoned warehouse in a threesome.
You’ll see a young man ejaculate into his hand and then eat it.
You’ll see the decapitated head of a grocer vomit, trying to speak long after death.
You’ll see Nazi skinheads.
You’ll see blood, guts, violence, depravity.
You’ll hear more curse words in ninety minutes than you ever thought possible, including some never-before-heard variations and combinations.
You’ll marvel at how every time they go into a store, their total is $6.66.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you won’t believe you actually sat through the whole thing.
“Amazon Women On The Moon” and “Top Secret”. They are both given one star by most main-stream reviewers. I never, ever get tired of watching these movies.
Plan Nine from Outerspace - consistently listed as one of the worst, if not THE worst, movie of all times by film critics. Main character is a guy in a gorilla costume with a fishbowl on his head.
I haven’t seen this, but I want to after reading the review in Maxim:
Death Race 2000 (1975) Fast cars, loose women, and pointless violence: This is as high-octane as a B-movie gets. NASCAR is nutless compared with the Transcontinental Death Race, in which drivers (including David Carradine and a pre-Rocky Stallone) win by splattering pedestrians. Money shot: A driver dodging wheelchair bound fogies- so he can mow down a row of nurses.
The most rewarding part was when I got my money!
-Dr. Nick Riviera
Squee,
you are speaking of a Roger Corman movie, he did many, most as socially redeeming as “Death Race 2000”, you should check out his bio and flicks, he is the Ed Wood of our times, with perhaps a bit more money
I’m an MST fan, so the choices are difficult. Here’s a few choice selections:
Operation Double 007 (aka "Operation Kid Brother)–starred Neil Connery, Sean’s brother. He actually played a character named Neil Connery! Co-starred M, Miss Moneypenny, Emilio Largo, Kissy Suzuki, and the chick from “From Russia With Love.” I am not making this up.
Secret Agent Super Dragon–a bizarre 60’s spy flick, like Austin Powers on peyote.
The Mole People–it’s actually kind of scary, except for the fey albino Babylonians. And just who the hell told John Agar to become a movie star?
Puma Man–Remeber, if you ever become a superhero, make sure your costume includes courderoy pants.
I have always been partial to the post-Karloff Mummy movies from Universal Studios, these being THE MUMMY’S HAND, TOMB, GHOST, and CURSE.
No redeeming social or artistic value, just 60-70 minutes of Tom Tyler or Lon Chaney, Jr., stomping around in bandages and strangling people, and a string of High Priests cookin’ up the Tanna Leaves and falling in love with the ingenues. Then the Mummy strangles THEM! Then the Mummy gets burned up or falls in a swamp! Cool, huh?
High marks also for the series of Mad Doctor films Boris Karloff made for Columbia in the late 30s-early 40s: THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG, THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES, BEFORE I HANG, and THE DEVIL COMMANDS.
“Wouldn’t it be great if Boris Karloff sould come back to life for JUST ONE DAY, so we could throw him a BIG PARTY in Hollywood?.. But he CAN’T, so RENT A BORIS MOVIE TODAY!” – Obscure Underground Comic I Just Barely Remember
I kinda liked “The Last American Virgin”. One of the many movies given to us by the dreaded team of Golan & Globus. It’s one of the few teen movies where the good guy gets
shafted at the end. Of course, the pharmacy scene was hilarious as the three guys try to tell the old guy behind the counter that they need something for crabs.
The Abominable Dr. Phibes - Vincent Price plays a man out to kill all the members of the surgical team who were operating on his wife when she died. One of them is skewered by the horn of a unicorn bust, and when the detectives pull it out of his chest, you can hear one of them mutter “left threaded”. Classic!
I also love Night of the Comet, which is grand in its cheesiness.
Bo Derek’s Tarzan is pretty hysterical, especially when she wonders aloud whether Tarzan is a virgin, like her.
Lots of folks do. In the “Favorite dead periodicals” thread, Ukelele Ike mentions Psychotronic Video, a pretty good magazine published in the mid/late '80s that was devoted to precisely this subject (there’s some evidence it’s still around), and publisher Michael Weldon wrote the definitive Psychotronic Encycolpedia of Film back in 1983, and has followed it up with the Psychotronic Guide to Video.
The syllabus for the “Incredibly Strange Films” course I co-taught (winter of 1988, IIRC) included (from memory, so I’m probably going to miss one or more):
[ul][li]The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, directed by and starring the equally incredible <A HREF=“http://us.imdb.com/Name?Steckler,+Ray+Dennis” TARGET=_blank>Ray Dennis Steckler*.[/li][li]Attack of the 50-Foot Woman</A>*, with [url=“http://us.imdb.com/Name?Hayes,+Allison”]Allison Hayes and Yvette Vickers, along with Attack of the Giant Leeches, also starring Yvette Vickers.[/li][li]our Ed Wood double-feature, with Plan 9 from Outer Space of course, paired with either The Sinister Urge or The Violent Years; I think we may have given the nod to The Sinister Urge since Wood directed it (he only wrote The Violent Years), but I can’t be sure at this remove.[/li][li]Invasion of the Bee Girls*.[/li][li]Rock ‘N’ Roll High School; any one of the first three names on the cast list (P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten, and Clint Howard) is enough to guarantee a bad movie; throw all three in, and add Mary Woronov, Paul Bartel, and Dick Miller, and you’ve got a great bad movie. Besides, we could use this one to claim to have covered Roger Corman (exec. prod.) so it let us compress things a bit.[/li][li]Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom; not bad in the way that the others were, but definitely strange, and any movie that effectively ended the career of a well-known and respected major director (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, Stairway to Heaven and nearly 50 more) is worth some attention. Powell never directed another feature film in Britain, and only a couple in Australia and Germany. It’s hard to imagine how disturbing this film must have been to audiences in 1960 – Psycho, which is often credited with breaking new ground in being disturbing, was released the same year – and Peeping Tom is probably harder for most people to take.[/ul][/li]
That’s six nights, and the course was either six or eight weeks, so I’ve either remembered them all or forgotten a couple of weeks worth.
(I’m gonna be stunned if I got all the codes in this right.)
Apologies to anyone who liked it because they thought it was good, but Armageddon was one of the most hilariously bad movies of our time. As for Death Race 2000, I thought I’d hate it when my husband wanted me to watch it, but I was totally engrossed.
What?! No votes for Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire. I’m shocked. This movie is the horrible but we watch it for the sheer entertainment. There’s nothing like watching a really bad movie to make you laugh.