Just got this book by Roger Ebert. Love it. I am not a movie person so don’t know almost any of the movies he is talking about (and his reviews are so brilliant) some of the movies sound so bad I want to see them just for the hell of it.
What bad movies do you enjoy?
Escape From LA
Humanoids from the Deep. I don’t know why. Perhaps I’m sick.
Pretty much everything produced in China by Run Run Shaw or Golden Harvest Productions.
I just purchased a bunch of 60’s Gamera movies on DVD (not the MST3K versions), no one around me understands why.
At the time, Hudson Hawk. Not sure how I’d feel about it now.
As a former Quaker, The Trial of Billy Jack is my favorite exercise in self-deprecatory humor. (Add more than a dash of “Maud Muller” without the resignation.)
Leaving aside the whole Ed Wood genre, 50’s monster and juvenile delinquent flicks:
Lizstomania has to be seen to be believed, especially the whole Frankenstein/fighter jet ending.
Red Dawn is a fun ride, and you can riff the ultra-right as well.
Atomic Cafe is by no means a bad movie, but the nuclear propaganda it showcases is incredible and tremendously bad.
KISS and the Phantom of the Park is another WTF? movie, and I have just got to see it again!
The Oscar, Valley of the Dolls, and Imitation of Life are all hilarious How-I-Lost-Everything-By-Being-Successful movies I can watch again and again.
These, and many many more.
Caligula
Roadhouse
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - A flower power soap opera directed by Russ Meyer, with a screenplay by … (wait for it) Roger Ebert!
Odd trivia bit: It eerily predicting Phil Spector’s murderous rampage about 35 years ahead of time.
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in the Fourth Dimension - this attained some kind of cult status, and I don’t know why THIS one instead of a zillion other worthy candidates
Mars Attacks! - see above.
There are just so many, many choices, in all genres. (Makes me yearn for late night ‘Up All Night’ on the USA channel (?) years ago, which never showed a good movie even by accident.) For movies that have no redeeming value at all, not even historical, I would suggest one of those grainy old black-and-white nameless police procedurals sometimes shown in the morning on TCM. The kind with hard-bitten old police detectives spitting out late 40’s slang, coppers patrolling the streets with nightsticks, guns firing in all directions, and a platoon of shrieking Black Mariahs (police cars) converging on the cornered bad guy, at the end.
The Hidden is a B movie’s B movie! An alien criminal is hiding in people’s bodies, enjoying fast cars, loud music and fatty foods as he robs banks and terrorizes the people of Earth. An LAPD detective and an alien detective chase him; Michael Nouri and Kyle MacLachlan star. A silly, low-budget fun with a surprisingly powerful ending.
Good stuff.
Machete.
Enter The Dragon
I don’t love Point Break because it’s bad. I love it because it’s awesome.
Most of the old film noir genre were B movies, but you had to love the way they were shot.
Oh, I love Dodgeball. I cringe every time Ben Stiller is on the screen. I think that qualifies. Napoleon Dynamite is the awful movie everyone loves, too.
There is a movie being shown recently on cable, Circle of Iron. I had never heard of it before and it is truly a bad movie, but one worth watching (if only for the scene with Eli Wallach).
The Hidden isn’t a sucky movie (obviously – you like it), it’s just an underappreciated and not-well-known movie. It’s pretty damned good low-budget SF, in my book, even if it does rip off Hal Clement’s Needle too much, without attribution.
Freddy Got Fingered. Loved it. What do I win?
UHF!