Badmovies.org Forum

Why is it that we all enjoy watching crappy movies? I mean, I purchase and watch (multiple times) movies that most other people wouldn't even watch once, even if they were free! And the rest of you are all guilty of the same thing!

So, what is this demented attraction to crap? Why have I only seen CASABLANCA about 3 times, but I have seen PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE about 15 or 20 times? Why will I stay up until 3 a.m. watching a "Something Weird" double feature? Why am I familiar with Tor Johnson, Arch Hall, Jr., Rudy Ray Moore, Dick Miller, Al Adamson, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and other "celebrities" from the world of bad filmmaking? Why do I watch painfully terrible movies . . . but I refuse to turn them off before the end?

When the Lumiere Brothers and Thomas Edison were making their early films, I'm SURE that they didn't intend for people to make movies like ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES and BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. How did we end up in this embarrassing situation?????

Ummmm....

Maybe it's a genetic thing we all have...

Back after a surprisingly busy summer.

Hmm, I guess I enjoy watching crappy movies strictly to be able to put my brain in park and be entertained.  I do enjoy High Art at times, but other times I just want to see some zombies getting whopped upside the head.  Hey, at least it isn't gladiators slugging it out for real in the Colosseum.

Like 'raj' I enjoy the 'brain in neutral' aspect.

Also, since I was a kid I've enjoyed the 'sci-fi' and 'fantasy' aspects.  It wasn't until I got older that I realized that most such movies are actually pretty bad :), but I still enjoy those aspects anyway

Also, I find that people in real life don't really talk like they do in movies, or act, or respond.  So I find movies that try to be realistic rather annoying because I find myself caught by the glaring 'un-realism' of the character actions in a hundred little ways.  

For some reason, once you throw in some time-travelling cyborgs, I find myself detached enough from 'reality' that I really don't care whether anyone says 'goodbye' on the phone or not

o/` That's Entertainment!!!!! o/`

Freep makes a good point. I've loved sci-fi and fantasy (mainly sci-fi) since I was a kid, and horror as a teenager. At that age, it was all good to me, and in those years, a lot of unlikely stuff was still getting aired regularly on TV.

An ironic sense of humour also plays a big part. It really is a pleasure for me to watch a really messed-up movie, especially when its taking itself very seriously.



Post Edited (08-26-03 20:03)

You guys bring up a lot of good points.

I think a lot of people are like us.. but they don't know it yet.  I've watched a lot of crappy movies with people who usually don't do it and more often then not they end up having a blast.  Now granted they don't become die hard fans of bad movies, but they enjoy it nonetheless.  

I think it has a little bit to do with untapped potential, for lack of better words.  Show a bad movie to 'em and they might come out a fan.  Otherwise, us die hards'll do just fine.

Nick

I think its because for some reason Tor is fun to watch on screen :)

Because it´s fun to see how bad the movie can get.

Because we rule and everyone else are a bunch of wussies, that's why.

Brother R

And, face it, we all think we could do better.
Also, as most of us are MST3K types, we reconise a straitline when we hear one. If the film can't keep us from "Altering its course" by riffing a line that changes how we look at the procedings, it kinda deserves what ever it gets.
One good riff, and the willing suspension of disbelief has left the building!

lol too true flange.

I bet The Burgomaster never watched"Mystery Science Theatre 3000"...

One good riff, and the willing suspension of disbelief has left the building!

I watched "Dark City" for the third time last night, and made my wife watch it for her first with me.  Now, I  love the movie, but as it was going along I kept thinking of good comeback lines for some of the character lines.  It was hard to not blrut them out but out of respect for my wife, who was still enthralled in what was developing, I restrained myself.

My one-liner while watchin the Little Blue Scene from"Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets"was memorable.

That is the key. We enjoy the strange, weird, bizarre, and just plain demented.

The thing is there are not enough strange, weird, and bizarre movies. It is neat to see a film that can stretch something without being rediculous and boring. Pulling off a convincingly bad film in the most sincere way. The unwittingly bizarre is always a favorite.

I've always been a fan of bad movies and so-called bad movies. On my 20th birthday, two of my cousins (1 who's into movies but not as much as me and another who's just a very casual movie watcher) and I went and saw Cutthroat Island at the $1 movies. We thought it was freakin' great! Not only super funny, but with great stunts as well! I haven't seen it since though, and I don't know how it would transfer over to the small screen.

Paul Hotbranch wrote:

"I bet The Burgomaster never watched"Mystery Science Theatre 3000"...

Unfortunately, you would lose that bet. In fact, if they released every episode on DVD, I would buy them all, regardless of how much it cost or how long it took me to get them all!

iIn fact, if they released every episode on DVD, I would buy them all, regardless of how much it cost or how long it took me to get them all!

Yeah, but you'd probably do that for "T.J. Hooker"

Then why do you ask why we do this?

Why, using The Burgomaster's example, because I like "Plan 9 from Outer Space," and I don't like "Casablanca." Even though the former is regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, and the latter is regarded as one of the best movies ever made; therefore, I'd sooner watch the former over the latter. And I think it's that way with alot of the movies listed at this site. I find alot of them more enjoyable, then some of the more highly regarded movies, which are not found at this site.

1. Appreciation of the absurd.

2. Brother R. is a genius.

3. I would buy a T.J. Hooker boxed set.

<<3. I would buy a T.J. Hooker boxed set.>>

I would buy one as well! I was a huge fan of that show growing up despite Shatner (who strangely sometimes wasn't even annoying). I watched for James Darren and Heather Locklear.

Ha....Shatner was tops!!! Shatner is the guru of cool, James Dean and Steve McQueen got nothing on Shatner! I became a cop just to follow in Shatner's footsteps! Was going to try to join the space program to follow in Shatner's footsteps, then found out they had to do math. I am praying for the day I get to ride on the hood of a car or throw a baton at someone without a UOF review board!!!

Absurd does make for film viewing and Shatner as Captain Kirk is the best. With his ever present battle music.

What is Shatners Best(Worst) Film?

Shatner's Best Film W/ About 10 sec Of Screen Time: Judgement at Nuremburg.

Shatner's Best Film As "Leading Man": The Intruder

Shatner's Worst Film: White Comanche. (the horror, the horror)

Shatner's Best Star Trek Film: Star Trek IV

     Exactly.
As to "why", AFAIC, I do believe that some of us have an affinity for the odd, and the absurd. I think especially if you grew up in the 60's and 70's, when the boundaries of what practically everything was were being tested. 

I originally posted this topic 8 years ago . . . and I'm still in here . . . I need to step back and examine my life.  Seriously.

Burgomaster, eight years is the blink of an eye for an eternity of badness. :)

For me, it depends on the kind of movie.  I asked a similar question a few years ago.  I like watching 70's and 80's b-grade movies because I (supposedly) grew up in that time, and there's a lot of nostalgia value for me there.  I like more recent b-grade movies for the 'brain in neutral' aspect that was brought up earlier in the thread.

I watch a lot of scifi and fantasy movies, action movies, and martial arts movies.  I enjoy stunts and skill, as well as crappy special effects.  'Fun factor' rates with me, boredom does not.

There is a difference between a movie that is bad but fun, like Van Damme's No Retreat No Surrender, and bad but awful, like Jerry Trimble's Live By The Fist.  I can't describe the distinction between quirky direction like the many American movies directed by HK directors in the 80's, and just plain crappy direction in movies like those terrible Filipino movies, but I think you guys know what I'm talking about.

Tonight I will finish watching the last episode of Kindred: The Embraced, then probably tuck into some lighthearted autopsy romance from season six of Bones.  On a tangent, I miss Mark Frankel on TV.  He was only 34 when he passed away.

because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for my money unintentionally hilarous bad movies are usually miles ahead of my most comedies

My favorite William Shatner film-as a crazed gigilo/pedophile in IMPULSE (1974)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7EIL1AhN2Q

I actually saw this mind melter at the theater!!!!  :buggedout:

As to the question WHY???

Well...because-like many-as a kid I didn't realize some movies were bad....I actually enjoyed (and was scared!) of stuff like The AMAZING COLLASAL MAN and the BRAIN THAT WOULDNT DIE-(the ending terrified me!!!). Others-like ASTRO ZOMBIES and DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN-which I also seen on late night tv in the early 70's-I knew were crap...but I would suffer thru them anyway-just to see Lon Chaney or John Carradine-hoping it might somehow get better. I recall seeing FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR on uhf late one nite-waiting for the Frankenstein monster to show up.....he never did! Just a cheezy werewolf! Like watching a car wreck-it's awful-but I gotta look.
And...well...I'm an addictive personality-once I get hooked to something-even though it may be destroying my mind and of no value at all-I can't stop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUgIN8YlWXY
(-And folks wonder why I'm weird...I saw this in 1973....my mallable mind was being molded into weird shapes.)

I'm sure I've answered the original question before, but I'll do so again.

I watch crappy movies for two main reasons.

1) They weren't crappy (or at least I didn't think so) when I first saw them or other movies like them. Eliminators, Kingdom of the Spiders, Star Crash, Godzilla, etc. were all good movies when I first saw them. At least, my friends and I thought so.

2) I got an appreciation for unintended humour and riffing on bad movies from older siblings. And there was a TV station that aired Plan 9, Creeping Terror and other such dubious classics once a week for that purpose when I was a kid.

That's a good point about the movies not being bad when we saw them.  At the time they just seemed cool.

I remember being 6 or 7 and watching reruns of Blood From The Mummy's Tomb and Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers on TV.  Later came Star Wars, Logan's Run and Battlestar Galactica.  As a teenager I loved 80's action movies like Commando and Revenge of the Ninja, as did my friends.  We used to wait for the next Van Damme or Stallone movie with bated breath.  Other friends introduced me to movies like The Devil's Rain and Pink Floyd's The Wall.

In my late teens and early twenties I was avidly watching a local TV show called Eat Carpet that featured short experimental films from all over the world; strange and arty things which sometimes seemed like Surrealist or Dadaist art on film.  Fun times.

And I did watch the last episode of Kindred: The Embraced last night.  It's been about ten years since I've seen the series, and on one hand I am now surprised to recognize the times of unrealistic dialogue and overacting, but on the other I have a much better appreciation of when everything was good.  That final episode was powerful.

Because it makes me feel better about my own writing.

Because I actually kinda enjoy watching them. I don't know they're just more fun in a lot of ways.

Joe Bob Briggs nailed it - it's the "Three B's" -

Blood, Breasts, and Beasts.

Yeah, if we're talking about Joe Bob Briggs, the three B's definitely ain't the Better Business Bureau

That nails it. Just because I like them. Theyre FUN. And Lord knows- we all need just to have FUN.

This topic has been resurrected after eight years? There must be a reason.

A reason so FANTASTIC...

SO INCREDIBLE...

THAT YOU HAVE TO SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT!!!

(A CAST OF MILLIONS!)

I love movies that are brilliant and challenging, the movies that put you through the mill of human emotion when you sit down and watch them. They're my life blood, and make movie-watching worthwhile.

But I don't want to see them every time I sit down to watch a movie.

Sometimes (most times) I just want to sit down and watch something that will flip all my entertainment buttons. Those buttons involve goofy sci-fi plots, monsters, a ton of gore, and more than any movie's fair share of T&A. And, surprise, those goofy movies are often times some of the best movies ever made.

Whenever I sit down and try to make a list of my five favorite movies, I always include Seven Samurai, which is one of the greatest movies ever made. Everything good about movies is present in that movie, and it's a thoughtful and stirring meditation on life. But right next to Seven Samurai in my list is Return of the Living Dead, which doesn't really have anything I need to see in a movie, but has everything I want to see in a movie.

Guess which one I have seen way more than the other.

(Of course, one has a young and very nude Linnea Quigley in it. If I had to sit down and choose between any two movies, you can bet I will always pick the one with the nude Linnea Quigley. The human experience is vast.)

I don't know.  I just don't seem to enjoy movies with beautiful naked women in them.

I try not to look like I'm enjoying them. That is, if my wife is watching with me.

Plain and simple, I love Sci-Fi, Fantasy a Horror and the traditional FX that went into making these movies but most of all I love monsters and most B-movies have monsters! I'll always love monsters!

I realize you said that in jest, but I am working very hard to bite back my anger at such a statement. Naked ladies in bad movies are manna from heaven. Especially if they are Linnea Quigley.

T&A in exploitation movies may be the greatest thing ever created. Single-handedly created an industry! I don't ever want to hear a single bad word aimed at beautiful naked women!

Kidding aside, I have watched a very large amount of truly terrible movies solely for the promise of female skin. In fact, if I put as much energy into chasing women as I have in chasing bad movies, I'd be a much more successful horndog. Sadly, I got a taste for goofy movies.

I'm still single, but I have a large collection of T&A obsessed B-movies.

I should amend my previous statement to add that my wife finds just as much entertainment as I do in some types of movies with female nudity. Specifically, we both get a laugh out of old nudie cuties and nudist camp films of the 50s and 60s, particularly the ones that go out of their way to appear educational as they show naked people picking flowers, playing chess and engaging in all manner of wholesome and utterly staged activities.

I'm just the type of guy who'd rather watch Garden Of The Dead than, say, Star Wars for example (not to knock it, though). I think it's a cerntain sensisibiblty that we all have here. A je ne se quois, so to speak.

I watch bad movies because I will never, ever see a "good" movie that entertains me as much as something like Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

I'd never heard of this movie so I did a bit of Googling.  Oh. My. God.  How can something this cool exist and I not know about it???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOjSSTbhCIk

Keep Googling.  There are cheap Turkish and Indian rip-offs of many movies, including Superman, ET, and The Exorcist.

I have been trying to find that for a while now

Its on Ebay all the time.

There are various websites that sell this on DVD-R.

You...made me post this ...its all...your fault...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nziS8brN00

AND...when a flick lives up to this kinda promo...ya gotta love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79_ljVC5Wk

I had a conversation with my boss that made me think of this thread.

My boss knows I love bad movies. He has passed by and seen me on this green site during breaks many times and has asked about. He has asked "why do you watch bad movies?" He'll ask things like "do you just watch them to make fun of them?"

I answer, "well, yeah, but there's more to it than that." That's an understatement and a half. I can't fully explain this strange fixation with b-movies. I'm just glad that I've gotten my wife to at least partially embrace this pursuit. This pursuit is a complex mix of nostalgia, cheap amusement, and genuine fascination for these films that actually got made.

However, in this conversation yesterday with my boss, I think I turned a corner in him understanding my bad movie habit. Out of the blue, he asked me if Beastmaster was a b-movie.

Holy s**t! I said "hell yeah that's a b-movie, and a damn good one. Now you're talkin' my language." And we laughed. He confessed that it is one of his favorite movies of all time and that he is sometimes reluctant to tell people. When he said that, a little light flicked on in my skull. I think the difference between us and others is that we fully acknowledge and celebrate those movies that others would be ashamed to say that they like. That is, we carry no guilt about it.

I told him that he should be proud to love Beastmaster. I also told him that the same director is responsible for Phantasm, one of my all-time favorite bad movie franchises.

I've always like my boss, but I've always felt that we don't really have much in common or relate to each other on a personal level very much. I think I've found a connection.

For most of them, it's just good ol' fun. Plan 9 is just horrible in a good way. You know it's low budget and made fast and it shows, sometimes they can be over-the-top flicks that makes the word absurd seem like a compliment. These are the films that has no redeeming value except for fun. But then there's others which fails in the public eyes, as Xanadu and Halloween III, because of ignorance from the film makers and or audience. There can't be a good film because there isn't any top 'oh my god, this is the best ever period!' film out there that we, as the viewers, can agree on. Bad movies makes us feel good inside, as to bring out our inner child from time and time again. These are our guilty pleasures and proud about it!

Sort of goes along with what I said about some of these movies being considered good at one time. Beastmaster got a theatrical release, and I remember it being aired frequently on the pay channels. Somebody obviously liked it. All my friends saw it at least once, and not all of them continue to be active b-movie fans. I think the difference is that what entertained me then still entertains me now.

And I have noticed something similar to your experience with your boss. I'm sure some people might be a little bit reluctant to admit liking the films they watched back in the day, but I think a big part of it is that they just moved on to newer titles and never looked back. But get them talking about it, and they'll name some surprising titles. Or you name a movie they loved but haven't seen or even thought about in years, and watch their faces light up.

I saw it with MAME and arcade games. People who could not be considered retro gamers by any stretch of the imagination would see the machine with all the old games on it, and they'd ask for that one special title. You can see the pleasure in their faces as the familiar graphics come up and they start to work the controls as if no time had passed since the last time they played.

Putting aside the weird, obscure and genuinely bad movies, a lot of what we like was mainstream entertainment when it was made. I have a hard time believing anybody who grew up around that time would not have gone nuts for at least one "bad" movie. For some reason, most just forget.

For me its all fun... Fun you watch, fun to make fun of, fun to see what some guy in a dress can do with strings and pie plates and a rubber octopus (I'm talking Ed Wood, not your last weekend and you know who you are).

I love seeing how someone tries to fit a huge imagination into a tiny budget, or what they will throw up ona  screen to see what people will pay for.  Its all escape, I much prefer it to "serious" movies or blockbusters.
-Ed

On a purely base level, they're fun in ways "good" movies aren't.

Getting more in depth, well, there's lots of reasons. First and foremost, I like that they don't try to trick you as much with special effects. Both the audience and the filmmakers acknowledge that it's just a guy in a rubber suit and keep going. I love it when the effects are particularly bad; it lets me enjoy the absurdity of someone being menaced by a sock puppet. Mainstream films that use special effects, though, try to make you think it's real all the time, so the film suffers when something goes wrong with the effects.

Getting outside of the look, there are entirely different ideas you can present in a "lower" movie that you couldn't get away with in a mainstream film. We have movies that celebrate the freak as a hero, that explore issues that mainstream audiences don't even realize exist (and may not want to acknowledge). Transgender movies, for example, are absent in the mainstream, and movies about homosexual issues may be celebrated as something new and bold...but we know better. Those ideas, those movies have been in the cult film world for decades because somebody wanted to make those movies whether or not the world at large was ready for them. Anyone with a camera, a little money, time, and dedication can make a movie, and we're willing to watch these endeavors.

Lastly, it's okay to laugh in most b-movies even if they're not comedies. Lots of cult movies I've seen acknowledge that there can be a lot of humour in things most people wouldn't find funny...and it's okay to laugh if you do. Everything is absurd if you look at it just right.

And low-budget movies often have a purity of vision you don`t see in big studio pictures. Not so many cooks in the kitchen, trying to fix the movie or make it appeal to everyone. The people who made these films knew what they wanted to make and who they were making it for, and that was good enough. Hollywood movies today are so over-engineered to squeeze out every last drop of potential income, they just have all the life sucked out of them. Give me the days when Roger Corman would give some promising young director a budget and a deadline and then turn him loose.

I'd agree with that.  Lots of B-movies are just more pure to the artists vision, even if the artists vision was nothing more than "let's show some tits and people getting killed."  It's a more personal project for those involved so they put more energy into it and it shows. 

I agree with the above comments, and there's also the simple fact that the "bad" or "crappy" movies are just plain better than the movies most people like.

Strange, but true.
 :bouncegiggle:

     As the one who dug up this thread the first time (and again, now), let me add this....
part of the appeal, I think, is a response to the very absurdity of modern life. Sorta like Sidney Freedman's famous quote....

      "Anger, turned inwards, is depression; anger, turned sideways, is HAWKEYE."

     We laugh at the absurdity of these films because we cannot laugh at the absurdity of the world around us. The horror is too real, and the victims can't get up and have a beer when the director hollers, "CUT!"

     Cheese gives us a way to vent; else some of us might wind up like the guy I worked with , of whom another worker said, "That boy's got a water tower and a rifle in his future."