This thread reads like my dream movie-marathon weekend.
Big Trouble in Little China immediately came to mind when I saw the thread title.
Six-String Samurai needs some love here. Elvis is king of Lost Vegas in a post-apocalyic world, and when he dies without an heir rockers come out of the woodwork to claim his throne, including a martial-artist, samurai-sword-wielding Buddy Holly lookalike.
Billy Madison will always be the epitome of stupid yet awesome to me. The entire premise is a grown man acts like a child for 90 minutes, and it works.
Four Rooms.
Cat’s Eye.
Every thread like this needs at least one mention of Tremors.
Objectively excellent movie.
The sequels, however…
It’s the second time that I hear this backstory. The last time was in the early 80s shortly after the movie came out. Was it frequently told at the time?
I disagree, RivkahChaya. I think that even if the lost footage could be restored to Freaks it would be bad in certain respects, even though it’s a great movie and might be a greater movie with the lost footage restored. I don’t think many of the films mentioned in this thread are stupid. I think some of them are good to great films. They just happen to have some aspects that are badly done. I disagree with what I might call the G.P.A. (grade point average) method of classifying movies. Some people think that what you should do is to rate a film separately on how well it’s directed, acted, photographed, edited, written, etc. and then produce an overall rating by averaging those aspects of the film. That’s not how any art form works, as far as I’m concerned. Some art works are brilliant overall despite being mediocre in certain respects. Some films, like some of those mentioned in this thread, are good to great movies despite failing in some ways because they do so well in other ways.
I vote for The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, although any Shaw Brothers movie would work as well.
for our Canadian friends, Strange Brew. “fleshy headed mutant are you friendly?”
I hope you all see Freaks sometime. Then you too might become a fan of it. Then I can say to you, “Now you’re one of us, one of us.”
[/QUOTE]
Gooba gabba one of us
Bubba Ho-Tep.
That’s what I came to say also. There’s a sequel coming out in December!
I was addressing only your specific comment about plot twists that go nowhere. I think the plot is confusing because of the poor editing, and if we could see it the way Browning intended, that particular problem would go away. I addressed other problems other ways-- the “weak dialogue” may be less of a writing problem than an acting problem, for example. Maybe not. But Daisy and Violet Hilton were certainly not great actresses. Chained for Life is a MST3K quality all around, but it certainly showcases the badness of their acting, among other things. Of course, Harry Earle is very good in some films like The Unholy Three, and he isn’t see good here either. But how many talking films did he do? I don’t know off-hand.
Yes, but it loses points for, well, this.
Bill And Ted belongs in this category for sure. So stupid. So amazing. How do you sell someone on that movie? Don’t tell them the plot. Tell them, “they cast Keanu Reeves as a stoner and George Carlin as a time-travelling guitar god”. If that doesn’t sell them on the movie, then they’re just not the target audience.
Does The Princess Bride qualify as “dumb”?
I have a deep and abiding love of Bad Films. I used to hold an annual Bad Film Festival, long before MST3K was a gleam in Joel’;s eye. But most aewesomely bad films aren’t really – awesome in terms of production. But we’ve been blessed by some very expensive bad films in recent years:
10,000 B.C. – unbelievably stupid. Even if you ignore the leaps and bounds over accepted history and take the film on its own terms, it’s still mind-bogglingly stupid. But the effects are gorgeous.
Sahara – This film, based on the Clive Cussler thriller, reminds me of why we qualify Cussler’s thrillers as “guilty” pleasures. You’d think that they would make great movies when you’re reading them, but this film and Raise the Titanic have proven that ain’t so. This film was Matthew McConaughey’s first attempt to get out of the RomCom ghetto by re-inventing himself as an action hero. It obviously didn’t work, so he starved himself and now has a string of highly acclaimed hits.
And it’s not very recent, but still wonderfully entertaining and silly:
Big Trouble in Little China
Shame on me for forgetting to mention** Hudson Hawk.**
How about The Fifth Element? It’s definitely awesome and its stupidity becomes apparent if you think about the plot at all. As I recall, the goal of that big rock moving towards earth was to end the universe. But in that case why would Zorg (the Gary Oldman character) cooperate with it? How would he gain from the end of the universe?
That movie makes perfect sense. Senior citizens Elvis (who didn’t die but switched places with an Elvis impersonator, who DID die) and JFK (who not only survived the shooting, but turned Black) battle an ancient Egyptian soul-sucking demon in a Texas retirement home. Who wouldn’t want to see that?
Two more for consideration:
Unstoppable. The acting is so over the top, the ever-swirling cameras get annoying very fast, the constant fist-pumping “fuck-yeah!” is just Picard face-palm inducing, but still I can’t not watch it when it comes on. The train action is, well, awesome!
Dude, Where’s My Car? I expected stupid, and got it, but there’s actually cleverness in there as well.
Any of the ‘Jaws’ sequels. Milk that cash cow for all it’s worth!
*The Expendables *and its sequels. Or as my friends and I call them “Old guys blowing shit up 1, 2 and 3”