Badmovies.org Forum

Don't worry, there are a lot of our favorites here so most of the arguments will be about their numerical order.


Empire's 50 Greatest Independent Films (http://www.empireonline.com/features/50greatestindependent/50-41.asp)

I've only seen 8 of them:
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Mad Max
Nosferatu (have DVD)
She's Gotta Have It
Night of the Living Dead (have DVD)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (have DVD)
Clerks
The Terminator

raj Wrote:
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> I've only seen 8 of them:

Then I would recommend:

Sex, Lies and Videotape
The Blair Witch Project (of interest at LEAST due to the way it was made..no script, just 'story points').
Slacker (if you ever lived in a college town, this is a MUST - I knew people like the ones in this flick).

Also, glad to see Darkstar made the list.

I personally did not care for "She's Gotta Have It," but I can see the artsy types going for it.

What? Mad Max wasn't number 1? I am outraged!

I'm pretty sure I've seen this list before. The main problem I have with it is how loose a definition of "independent" they use-- Slick, Miramax-y productions are put right alongside truly homemade stuff. Sideways may be "independent" by Hollywood standards, but it's not truly independent in the same sense as, say, Bad Taste or Pink Flamingos.

That said, there are some interesting choices on there-- I probably wouldn't have thought to include Life of Brian, which is a truly interesting case of circumventing the system (no studios would touch it and the Pythons were about to give up, when George Harrison gave them all the money he needed because he wanted to see it).

Also, I know it's not a favorite around these parts, but Billy Jack really should be on there. And where the hell is Russ Meyer?

I'm really surprised that none of John Cassevetes' movies got onto the list. If you have seen any of his stuff, for the most part they are different than the bigger Hollywood movies he acted in.

Good to see Mad Max and the Blair Witch Project are on there.

Clerks was funny as hell too.

I haven't seen most of those.  I won't argue about placement, since "top" lists are all bulls**t, anyway.

Here are a few comments on some of the movies I have seen.

The Usual Suspects is just another crime movie.  The only thing it has going for it is the attempt at a twist ending ... the nature of which was obvious for the entire running time.

Clerks = s**t.  I wouldn't even wipe my ass with that movie.

The Blair Witch Project is a total failure as a movie.  Its marketing strategy deserves all the credit.

Lone Star is 100% filler.  And it's a long damned movie, too.

Mad Max was raw filmmaking.  It showed you what you needed to see.  Period.  More movies should follow this example.

akiratubo Wrote:
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>
> The Blair Witch Project is a total failure as a
> movie.  Its marketing strategy deserves all the
> credit.
>

My observation about TBWP is either you really liked it or you hated it.  I liked it, and disagree that is it was a total failure as a movie.  Granted, I laughed through most of it when seeing it at the theatre.  I was laughing because I was having FUN.  It was a FUN movie unlike anything I had seen before, or at least in a LONG time.

That's what I liked about it.  It was new - original - at least in its genre.  Pretty much improv: give the actors an index card with what is supposed to happen and let them go at it.  That kind of thing, at any level, is very risky.  I think it worked, as a fun movie (and yes, I do have my own copy of it); a lot of folks thought it did not work.

I sometimes wonder why the negative reaction is so strong, though.  Is it because it was marketed as 'it might be real' when during the film it is obvious it is just a movie?  (I mean come on, multiple catch lights in the pupils during night scenes?)  Well, if that's all it is, we should just throw away almost any horror film.  The marketing tag lines are always hype.

Anybody remember the one that goes "if this one doesn't scare you, you're already dead"?  My best friend turned to me halfway through it and said "I must be dead."

I guess with most horror movies we are asked to suspend disbelief 'just enough' to get into it.  Haunted house movie?  Well, many don't believe in ghosts but still like ghost stories.  Alien movie?  Many don't believe in ETL, but still like to see ET ripping the guts out of some whiney sap on a spaceship. But TBWP asked you to BELIEVE and view it as if it were real. It's not the first film I've seen do that, and they all pretty much 'fail' at that aspect (Wasn't there a Sasquatch movie like that ... shot like a documentary?).

So, my point is that I liked TBWP because it WAS different; if you want the big Hollywood exec types to take a risk once in a while and not churn out the same old mindless, formulaic drivel, maybe we, the consumers, should be a little more supportive of indies that take chances and stray from the beaten path.   At least supportive enough to say "hey, I liked that they took some chances here."

Speaking of The Blair Witch Project...
I just bought the Special Edition of it for $4.88 in the Wal-Mart cheap bin.

I watched it two days ago and hadn't seen it in at least 5 years or so.
I loved it then and I still love it now.

The scene when the tent starts shaking like crazy and they all run out into the woods screaming was truly horrifying.

Awesome film!  :)

If you think about it, Mel Gibson wouldn't be in the same place he is today if it weren't for "Mad Max".

I thought Star Wars was considered an independent film, and it's not on the list?

Anyway, as for the discussion of The Blair Witch Project, here's my two cents worth (Spoilers a-comin'):

It didn't really work for me. I rented it, turned off all the lights to enhance the spooky factor, and watched. The acting was quite good. It was ever so slightly over the top, but excellent for a film made on this level. I was impressed that they even showed a crying person with a snot-filled nose, just like it really happens (I can't think of any other movies that use this little touch, can you?) The mood of the film is nicely set with the creepy twig figures. In other words, there are some good elements to the movie. But ultimately, it's a movie about a psycho in the woods, not a witch, and that just ruins it for me. If the psycho were presented as though he thought he was the Blair Witch, it might work. But he isn't. There's a huge build-up about the legend of the Blair Witch, complete with weird twig men appearing, a sign that the witch is on the prowl, and then, suddenly, there's no witch; it's just Jason Voorhees on vacation. With all the hullaballoo raised by the wiccan community over the negative stereotyping of witches, you'd think there would at least be a witch in the movie.

It was a relatively original presentation, but the story just wasn't that scary as far as movies go. If I were in that situation, I'd probably need to change my pants quite often. However, watching it on the screen, it just didn't do it for me.

(Spoilers a-came and a-went).

*spoilers for the Blair Witch Project*





I think the Blair Witch is up for interpetation, some people see as whatever is in those woods is the Blair Witch or some Jason like guy.

I believe it was supernatural.

The legend went that this man killed 7 kids, didn't the crew come across seven piles of rocks then later three piles of rocks? I think that whatever shook their tent in the middle of the night (creepy scene btw) might have been the spirit of the seven children doing it, those brats!

That's just how I saw it.

Right.  That's the way I always saw it, too - that the entity in the woods was not 'of this world.'  I've watched that movie many times, and I never even had the thought that it was some serial killer or Jason type character.

In fact, that's the first time I've ever heard that interpretation.  Like I said before, it's one of those films that garners a love-it or hate-it without much middle ground.

And, you have to give it props for this, a notable distinction (from IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/trivia) )

This film was in the Guinness Book Of World Records for "Top Budget:Box Office Ratio" (for a mainstream feature film). The film cost $22,000 to make and made back $240.5 million, a ratio of $1 spent for every $10,931 made.

Derf Wrote:
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> I was impressed that they
> even showed a crying person with a snot-filled
> nose, just like it really happens (I can't think
> of any other movies that use this little touch,
> can you?)


In the copilation flick "Terror in the Aisles", there's a scene which I believe is from "Klute" (1971), in which Jane Fonda is listening to an audio recording of a freind's murder and starts to cry, and her nose starts gushing like a busted radiator.

Just for the record, I actuslly bought "The Blair Witch Project" on VHS and have seen it several times (mostly on Halloween).

And I NEVER thought they were dealing with an actual witch. I always thought they were dealing with a psychotic, hulking, Michael Myers-like human psychopath that toys with his victims and then kills them, using the Blair Witch legend to scare his victims.

That's what makes it so creepy: they went into the woods with all the intent of finding an actual witch, and they found a disturbed slasher that uses the Blair Witch legend to horrify his victims.

Witches are fictional. Deranged human mudereres are very real. Truth is always scarier than fiction.

I really don't see the 'slasher' angle in Blair Witch, just going on how it ends.  That one scene was worth the first hour or so of 'freaky' yet kinda slow and boring at the same time.  

I mean, I quite enjoyed it based on the end, which freaked the hell out of me [something that hasn't happened often since.]  I think seeing it at the cinema helped.

Plus you gotta admit, filming it in that way was darn impressive!  It's nice when people take a risk when making a film, in tems of style and how they did it: if we don't experiment with the media, it'll just become formulaic and stagnant.

dean Wrote:
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> > I really don't see the 'slasher' angle in Blair
> Witch, just going on how it ends.  That one scene
> was worth the first hour or so of 'freaky' yet
> kinda slow and boring at the same time.  

(And yet again with the SPOILERS)

It's been a few years since I've seen it, but the townspeople talk about an escaped lunatic teacher (student?) or something that made pupils stand in the corner and then tortured and killed them. The ending scene shows one of the characters standing in the corner while the others are killed. That's where I got the slasher angle. I know I'm mixing up some details, but the ending left me with the impression of a non-supernatural killer. I can see some of plan9's point on the reality of psychos, but the movie built itself on the supernatural angle, so I wanted supernatural. It's kind of the same
kind of problem I have with From Dusk Til Dawn--it builds up a story one way (bank robbers running to Mexico) and then suddenly switches gears and becomes a vampire movie with no further plot developments (I was enjoying the bank robber angle; the vampire angle was boring to me).

"The Blair Witch Project", for all we know, took place in the real world. In the real world, there are no such things as witches.

I mean, what do you consider scarier: Count Dracula or Jeffrey Dahmer? Freddy Krueger or John Wayne Gacy?

See what I mean?

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but The Blair Witch Project to me is nothing but a well-designed business strategy.

They designed their movie as carefully as possible to seem "arty" and "edgy" while still being incredibly cheap to produce.  Then they put together an amazing advertising campaign, the cornerstone of which was implanting the meme that the collection of video tape they were going to show you was real.  Then, shortly before the (cough) movie was released, they let it get out that it was all staged in a move that simply reeked of avoiding potential, bottom-line damaging lawsuits or protests.

The business model behind the film is amazing.

The movie itself is just some people with camcorders running around the woods.  Thousands and thousands of teenagers with video camera make that same "movie" every week.  The businesspeople behind The Blair Witch Project just managed to sell theirs on a large scale.

The idea I had when I first saw it, and I don't think this is discredited upon multiple viewings, is that the dude that killed those kids was an incarnation of the witch.  That is, the witch is a 'spirit' that takes over people to do its bidding.  Or something like that.

If you listen to the interviews and Heather's narrative of the lore, there were several people who did evil things near the town; the malevalence of the 'witch' was the common thread.  So yes, technically it was that man who killed the kids, while making one stand in the corner, but it was the witch acting through him. The evil things occured over a hundred years (or more? it's been a while since I watched it).  In other words, the bad stuff in that area predates that one man's lifetime and that's why I never thought it was an 'ordinary' person doing the killing.

Presumably, it was a newer incarnation of the witch that was killing Heather at the end - some speculate in the body of the one of them that disappeared.

I guess it must have succeeded in doing what it meant to do since we're still arguing over "what really happened" seven years after it came out.

Anyway, I can't argue with any of your interpretations; I can only say that the only interpretation I saw when I watched it six years ago was disappointing to me. As I said before, there were some good elements to it (yes, the marketing was probably the best element of the movie), but overall it didn't scare me the way Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version) or A Nightmare on Elm Street did.

Derf Wrote:
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> I guess it must have succeeded in doing what it
> meant to do since we're still arguing over "what
> really happened" seven years after it came out.

I was thinking that EXACT same thought as I opened this thread again!

>I can only say that the only
> interpretation I saw when I watched it six years
> ago was disappointing to me.

Fair enough; to each his own.  :)

Pink Flamingos...wow.  Has anyone else seen this John Waters film?  I remember where I was and who I was with when I saw that, and I remember I didn't care for eggs for quite sometime after seeing it...lol.  What is it with the chicken obsession anyway?

Although I am not one to truly judge what indie films should be in the top 50, I was glad to see and really liked the following

Happiness
Mad Max
Texas Chainsaw
Cube
Momento
Evil Dead
Roger and Me
Night of the Living Dead
The Usual Suspects
Resevoir Dogs
Life of Brian
Donnie Darko
Lost in Translation
The Terminator

Ones i haven't seen and would like to:

Drugstore cowboy (I can't believe I haven't seen this one yet!)
Nosfurato
City of God
The Descent
Eraserhead
Blood Simple


Curious about:

Bad Taste
Sweet Sweetback Baadaass

Not sure about the others...will have to look them up.

You know for some reason your post reminded me of M. Night Shylaman's whole scifi stunt before The Village came out.

I really wanted that movie to be good.  I really wanted to like it.  It would have been fine until well...I rather not talk about it.  Mixed feelings all around. :(

Sorry loyal1...I know you wanted to change the subject, but this Blair Witch stuff has my interest piqued.

Forget the human stalker in the woods.

------------------------------------------------------------------

From beginning to end, I've always believed that the Blair Witch herself manipulated the events that occured in the woods.

She did it herself...(even though we can't see her)

She messed with their compass and deliberately led them in circles....

The Blair Witch is an evil and sentient spirit that can act physically in our world...able to actually abduct one of us and mess with our psyche at will.

She can make us hear voices and other sounds...
She can also construct objects like those stick figures and hang them.
She can arrange rock formations around a tent.

She can interact with us at will.
She can induce deep fear.

She is real!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember the scenes where Heather & Mike can hear Josh's screams of pain and pleas for help in the middle of the night?

I imagine Josh really tied to a tree in the darkness, still alive...and hearing Mike yell, TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE JOSH!!! And he can do nothing about it.

I then picture Josh tied against a tree with brute force, his mouth forced open and his tongue, eyeballs and teeth pulled out by an unseen force.

This is how I perceived the events in the film.

There was no psycho killer.
It was the witch herself that haunted those woods.
She did it.

Many of you have totally missed the point of the Blair Witch Project in my opinion.

READ HERE FOR FURTHER CLARIFICATION (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19990716/REVIEWS/907160301/1023)

You STILL don't get it, do you?

The "Blair Witch" is as real as "Keyser Soze" was in "The Usual Suspects".

The killer in this movie is a psychotic slasher who uses the whole Blair Witch legend to horrify his victims, and then gut them and chop them apart. Think of him as a Scooby-Doo villain on acid.

There was no evidence whatsover that there was an actual witch in the woods.

Besides this movie (like "Unbreakable"), took place in the "real" world. And guess what? In the real world, witches are fictional, but insane murderers are VERY real.

plan9superfan Wrote:
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> And guess what? In the
> real world, witches are fictional, but insane
> murderers are VERY real.

And insane murderers live hundreds of years in the REAL WORLD?  The Blair Witch legend went back several generations, at least.  I think this comes out in the movie, too, but you can read that the Blair Witch story (http://www.blairwitch.com/mythology.html) began in 1785; Heather and company disappeared in 1994, so I guess your ordinary human 'real' insane slasher has lived over 200 years.

Do you dismiss The Amityville Horror in the same way?  I mean, after all, ghosts don't exist in the real world, at least not with any more certainty than witches do.

How about the dark paranoia of The Thing?  After all, shape shifting aliens that have been frozen for 300,000,000 years don't exist.

The point is that the CHARACTERS believe it is real. What makes it creepy to US, the viewers is exactly Roger Ebert's point in the link Ash posted: TBWP taps into our real, instinctive, fears - noises in the night of unseen 'creatures,' etc.  In the same way The Thing can be said to be more about paranoia, TBWP can be said to be about fearing the unknown.

No one pretends that the approach taken the producers the Blair Witch works for everybody.  But trying to argue "realism" about a fictional work of art is pretty short of substance.

"The Blair Witch Project" is realistic. It has no scripts, actors or special effects. It takes place in OUR WORLD.

"The Amityville Horror" and "The Thing" do NOT take place in our world, but rather in Movie World, an alternate univrerse where fictional movie characters live.

Yes, there was a Blair Witch legend. And the killer in the woods used that legend to his advantage, to scare his victims into submission before he kills them.

That what doesn't exist can't kill you. A real, flesh-and-blood insane msdman CAN kill you.

My pint is: there are NO "characters". That iswhat makesit so creepy: it could all really happen (unlike The Amityville Horror, that couldn't happen in a million years).

Huh? The Blair Witch Project is a MOVIE.  I guess I don't understand your distinction between OUR WORLD and MOVIE WORLD.  It seems like an arbitrary difference that you apply at will.

Though the Blair Witch Project was marketed as if it were real, it's still just a movie.  Just because it was done with no script does not make it real or any more part of "our world" than fictional movies shot to look like documentaries (I know there are others, but the only one I can think of at the moment is Sasquatch, The Legend of Bigfoot (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078203/), which I saw when I  was 12 years old and thought was real at the time).

But whatever.  That's part of the fun of a flick like Blair Witch - you get to fill in your own gaps.  This conversation reminds me somewhat of those endless nights my friends and I used to discuss The Wall and all its meanings, twists and turns.

Pretty good list. But where's Jodorowsky's 'Santa Sangre', 'Holy Mountain', and 'Santa Sangre'?

Those movies are the mother of all indie movies.

I guess cult movies and indie movies are 2 different things.

Was 'Repo Man' and 'Blue Velvet' on there?

plan9superfan Wrote:
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>And guess what? In the
> real world, witches are fictional, but insane
> murderers are VERY real.

Honestly, you are somewhat closed minded with this statement...it depends on your definition of "witch" as I know there are plenty in the real world. Perhaps they are not what you are thinking of...green skinned with worts on their noses and flying on brooms with fantastic powers...but the fact is, "witches" do exist.


I have to agree with Ash and ulthar...very well made points on this film. I didn't like it much when it came out because of all the hype surrounding it and how everyone I knew wanted to argue with me that it was real but for what it was, it was a well made movie.

ulthar Wrote:
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>I guess I don't understand your distinction between OUR
> WORLD and MOVIE WORLD.  It seems like an arbitrary
> difference that you apply at will.

Psst ... he's just trolling you.

Where's "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter".  That was a *lot* of fun

The first few times I saw Zelig, I thought it was real, then one day I was watching it with my mom, & she suggested that I read the closing credits. Boy, did I feel stupid.

Heh, all this talk reminds me of Jackson's co-production of 'Forgotten Silver' which he made with
Costa Botes which was a 'documentary' on Colin McKenzie, the 'lost' New Zealand director who basically came up with a whole lot of revolutionary filmmaking ideas back in the early 1900s before anyone else, but just wasn't recognised for it because noone knew about him until somebody 'found' his footage.

Forgotten Silver (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116344/) was a made for tv fake documentary which had supposedly real footage of McKenzie's exploits, and screened on TV as a documentary instead of a fake [they revealed it was fake only shortly after, when it became apparent that some people still thought it was real, even after watching it.]

It even had appearances from Leonard Maltin, Harvey Wientstien and Sam Neal, among others, to give it an air of authenticity.

It's an interesting little doco really, and just a bit of fun.  Even more so when you consider that quite a few people thought it was real!

But yeah, carry on...

Yeah, but Jesus should NOT have shaved his long hair and beard in that movie. Those are his trademark looks.

Shaved Jesus looked more like Connor MacLeod than the son of God.

Okay, I thought of a couple of other works that were at least staged to appear real:

Not a movie, but the radio show of War of the Worlds was believed real by a lot a people.

And This is Spinal Tap was a real-like staging of a documentary, but I don't think anyone believed it was real.

Should add in "Six String Samurai" as a great indie movie