bad movies discussions and comments
- Thread starter timothy
- Start date
"Joe vs. the Volcano" is one of the greatest underrated movies of all time. The writing is amazing (it was written by a terrific Academy Award-winning writer) and it's tremendously sweet and funny. This thread is off to a bad start.
Last edited:
Birdemic and The Room.
Nothing else even comes close.
Nothing else even comes close.
Surely the greatest "bad movie" is John Carpenter's They Live.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_K8prLfso[/yt]
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_K8prLfso[/yt]
I haven't seen Birdemic (I'm almost afraid to, after the trailer), but I finally saw The Room a couple weeks ago, and boy howdy, it's really, really fucking bad. It boggles the mind that any human being could spend $6 milion (seriously) and make a movie that inept. With all the arguments about quality and rants about the subjectivity of tastes that can happen on this board, it's kind of comforting to know that no one will ever argue that it's good.
ETA: And while I'm thinking about it, what the hell does the title mean, anyway? There were several rooms and a couple of outdoor locations. What's it referring to? Even the name of the movie is awful...
Now I'm curious bout Birdemic. I have my doubts that it could be worse than The Room.
Of course, this thread wouldn't be complete without Silent Night, Deadly Night 2. The entire movie uses a flashback format to show long, extended clips from the first movie (even when the character telling the story isn't present in the flashbacks). I'd wager that the movie is less than 20% original material--which might make it one of the only theatrically released clip-shows ever made. And the first movie isn't any good, either.
And, in case that doesn't make it sound bad enough, the original material includes this gem.
Oh come on, people! That's one of John Carpenter's best movies! It's not even close to as great as the masterpieces "Halloween" and "Star Man", but I actually like it way more than his popular "Escape from New York" and "The Thing". It's silly, but it's so fun and it's not stupid! There's a real cleverness to it.
Birdemic is worse than The Room in almost every concievable way. It may actually even be worse than Manos: The Hands of Fate because even at least that movie has an ounce or two of "redemption" in it.
Birdemic is just terrible on all levels of pre, during and post production. Nothing is done right. Well, okay, he picked a hot lead actress, every thing else is just utterly terrible and it sounds like the production was a nightmare to do. (At one point when filming they're shooting in a park and during shooting park patrons were interrupting the shot (since they didn't get a license to block off the part of the park they were filming in) and the director was yelling at people about messing up his movie. The actress told the director he couldn't just yell at people who weren't working for him, director got upset and ended up sending an All-Caps filled e-mail to her pretty much saying he'll only be directing her by proxy through the lead actor from now on. The lead actor and actress share the screen for the bulk of the movie. Which means after this incident the director dircted the actress by saying, "Alan, could you tell the actress to [do this]." while the actress was standing right there!
There's some speculation on whether or not Birdemic was intentionally done to be bad in this manner, I don't buy it. I'd argue that it's very hard to make a bad movie on purpose like this because it'd take real-talent to sell it especially when you factor in the commentaries and other BTS stuff.
For all of it's faults The Room actually has an ounce of "merit" to it. Sure it's got a Soap Opera-ian plot, bad acting and 75% of the scenes in the movie have no impact on the plot (ex: Lisa's mom having cancer) but at least it was produced. There's an ounce or two of art-direction to it, some beautiful establishing shots of San Francisco and there's something of a story and a plot behind it.
It's similar to argument I make for "Manos" that there's elements of a "good movie" there that could've came out in more competent hands. With better actors and a couple more drafts of the script The Room could pretty much be your average Lifetime movie or some art-house piece of crap you never see.
Birdemic has none of that. Not one, single, thing is done right in Birdemic. Nothing. Something as simple as not wanting to show the brand-name labels of candy section is pulled off (in spite of all the other branded packaging that's clearly seen) in this movie they simply blur-out the candy section. They do this rather than strategically placing the camera at another angle so the candy isn't exposed or doing something as simple as turning the candy wrappers over or covering them in a manner that the names aren't see. Nope even something as simple as this the movie fucks up.
One of the minor-characters' actor quit in the middle of shooting so she's written off the movie by being killed while taking a dump.
Ugh. It's just terrible. It's hard to say which is the "better bad movie" in terms of entertainment value just by watching it, I watched The Room with a friend of mine last night who'd never seen it before and there's just those universally bad moments like the Flower Shop scene where you just have to watch it again to "grasp" it. Him and I were riffing on it as much as Mike, Kevin and Bill did. I could say Birdemic could easily be the same, offering a lot of material on it's own too, but ugh.
Anyway, get Birdemic and watch it. (It's available through Netflix, though not streaming) I'd recommend watching the director's commentary (oddly with as terrible of audio as the movie itself, this director had no grasp of the center channel it seems) and certainly watch the actors' commentary they riff on it pretty good too.
And, of course, get the Rifftrax, even the "host segment" at the beginning of the trax and the riffing over the end credits (rare for RT to do) is golden. It's probably the most "MST3K-like" they've ever been.
Birdemic is just terrible on all levels of pre, during and post production. Nothing is done right. Well, okay, he picked a hot lead actress, every thing else is just utterly terrible and it sounds like the production was a nightmare to do. (At one point when filming they're shooting in a park and during shooting park patrons were interrupting the shot (since they didn't get a license to block off the part of the park they were filming in) and the director was yelling at people about messing up his movie. The actress told the director he couldn't just yell at people who weren't working for him, director got upset and ended up sending an All-Caps filled e-mail to her pretty much saying he'll only be directing her by proxy through the lead actor from now on. The lead actor and actress share the screen for the bulk of the movie. Which means after this incident the director dircted the actress by saying, "Alan, could you tell the actress to [do this]." while the actress was standing right there!
There's some speculation on whether or not Birdemic was intentionally done to be bad in this manner, I don't buy it. I'd argue that it's very hard to make a bad movie on purpose like this because it'd take real-talent to sell it especially when you factor in the commentaries and other BTS stuff.
For all of it's faults The Room actually has an ounce of "merit" to it. Sure it's got a Soap Opera-ian plot, bad acting and 75% of the scenes in the movie have no impact on the plot (ex: Lisa's mom having cancer) but at least it was produced. There's an ounce or two of art-direction to it, some beautiful establishing shots of San Francisco and there's something of a story and a plot behind it.
It's similar to argument I make for "Manos" that there's elements of a "good movie" there that could've came out in more competent hands. With better actors and a couple more drafts of the script The Room could pretty much be your average Lifetime movie or some art-house piece of crap you never see.
Birdemic has none of that. Not one, single, thing is done right in Birdemic. Nothing. Something as simple as not wanting to show the brand-name labels of candy section is pulled off (in spite of all the other branded packaging that's clearly seen) in this movie they simply blur-out the candy section. They do this rather than strategically placing the camera at another angle so the candy isn't exposed or doing something as simple as turning the candy wrappers over or covering them in a manner that the names aren't see. Nope even something as simple as this the movie fucks up.
One of the minor-characters' actor quit in the middle of shooting so she's written off the movie by being killed while taking a dump.
Ugh. It's just terrible. It's hard to say which is the "better bad movie" in terms of entertainment value just by watching it, I watched The Room with a friend of mine last night who'd never seen it before and there's just those universally bad moments like the Flower Shop scene where you just have to watch it again to "grasp" it. Him and I were riffing on it as much as Mike, Kevin and Bill did. I could say Birdemic could easily be the same, offering a lot of material on it's own too, but ugh.
Anyway, get Birdemic and watch it. (It's available through Netflix, though not streaming) I'd recommend watching the director's commentary (oddly with as terrible of audio as the movie itself, this director had no grasp of the center channel it seems) and certainly watch the actors' commentary they riff on it pretty good too.
And, of course, get the Rifftrax, even the "host segment" at the beginning of the trax and the riffing over the end credits (rare for RT to do) is golden. It's probably the most "MST3K-like" they've ever been.
Last edited:
Great bad movies:
Little Nicky
The Cable Guy
Little Nicky
The Cable Guy
Oh come on, people! That's one of John Carpenter's best movies! It's not even close to as great as the masterpieces "Halloween" and "Star Man", but I actually like it way more than his popular "Escape from New York" and "The Thing". It's silly, but it's so fun and it's not stupid! There's a real cleverness to it.
I love it, I just know a lot of people that don't care for it, and it wasn't a hit or anything. I do find the last section a little dull. The fight scene is legendary.
All of these are in my "cheesy" DVD section and I've watched them all many times.
Also, Evil Alien Conquerors (example below) & Killer Klowns From Outer Space.
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrRNBH6xJyQ[/YT]
Correction: the aforementioned hot lead actress does spend a couple scenes in her underwear.
Aside from that, though, you're correct.
Psycho Cop. Definitely one of the worst films I've ever watched. Which makes it one of my favourites. I love watching so-bad-they're-good films and Psycho Cop is definitely one of those. Terrible script ("Looking for a cop?"-"It can't be.."-"But it is" and, when someone's trying to run away from the killer cop, "Uh-oh, suspect fleeing the scene"), terrible acting, terrible make up effects, terrible everything.
The Deadly Spawn is another so-bad-it's-good movie. However, there is one moment that just completely makes me cringe even now, years after I watched it. One of the characters in the film is supposed to be a massive fan of, and expert on, movie monsters and all things horror related. At one point, someone asks him who his favourite monster is and he says 'Frankenstein' rather than 'Frankenstein's Monster'. Most of the time, I try not to let mistakes like that bother me, but if the character is supposed to be an expert it really grates on me when they make a noob mistake like that.
As for just plain bad movies, Two Minute Warning starring Charlton Heston. Far too slow paced, and far too predictable. Found myself rooting for the bad guy about 15 minutes into it.
And I've seen some pretty terrible t.v movies in my time, but then again, a good t.v movie is a rarity in my experience.
The Deadly Spawn is another so-bad-it's-good movie. However, there is one moment that just completely makes me cringe even now, years after I watched it. One of the characters in the film is supposed to be a massive fan of, and expert on, movie monsters and all things horror related. At one point, someone asks him who his favourite monster is and he says 'Frankenstein' rather than 'Frankenstein's Monster'. Most of the time, I try not to let mistakes like that bother me, but if the character is supposed to be an expert it really grates on me when they make a noob mistake like that.
As for just plain bad movies, Two Minute Warning starring Charlton Heston. Far too slow paced, and far too predictable. Found myself rooting for the bad guy about 15 minutes into it.
And I've seen some pretty terrible t.v movies in my time, but then again, a good t.v movie is a rarity in my experience.
You folks must be a bunch of youngsters. There were plenty of bad movies made before 1980, you know!
How about the glorious 1966 cheesefest The Oscar, starring Stephen Boyd, Elke Sommer, and Tony Bennett in his only feature-film acting role? After seeing Tony’s performance in this picture, you’ll understand why he decided to stick to singing.
The cliché-ridden script (believe it or not, Harlan Ellison was one of the writers), soap-opera-level acting and ludicrous dialogue make this a bad movie fan’s must-see. Oh, and there’s that early scene of luscious Jill St. John doing a striptease.
How about the glorious 1966 cheesefest The Oscar, starring Stephen Boyd, Elke Sommer, and Tony Bennett in his only feature-film acting role? After seeing Tony’s performance in this picture, you’ll understand why he decided to stick to singing.
The cliché-ridden script (believe it or not, Harlan Ellison was one of the writers), soap-opera-level acting and ludicrous dialogue make this a bad movie fan’s must-see. Oh, and there’s that early scene of luscious Jill St. John doing a striptease.
That reminds me of movies where a character who’s supposed to be a professional biologist or oceanographer mispronounces “coelacanth.”
Don't worry. Nobody worth mentioning is in it.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy-9YLpC5uM[/yt]
Similar threads
