Badmovies.org Forum

 Being film fans,movie memorys stick with us. Your first theater experiance for example. But being this is BAD movies....do you recall your very first realization that the film you were watching was godawful ? When I was little, I would watch drek like the dubbed Mexican monsterpiece PUSS AND BOOTS  or the GIANT GILA MONSTER and not realize it was drek. But at about the age of ten,I saw three films that I realized from the get-go were sh!t. My cherry popper I caught on channel 41 Shock Theatre-ASTRO ZOMBIES. The first glimpse I saw of the rubber masked zombie creatures-I thought it was a joke. Like a kid was wearing a mask to scare someone. Nope. That was the Monster. ACK!. Later that year I caught a double feature on channel 28 during the day. A golf game was pre-empted because of rain-so the local station ran FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR (which Really p**sed me off-no Frankenstein in the whole movie!) and the anti messterpiece DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN. Drac had a fro,the Monster looked like a molty Halloween jackolantern ...awful...just...just awful. I was used to the Universal and AIP films from Creature Feature.

Of course,I hold all 3 of those films near and dear now. I guess Bad movies are like a devoloped taste...like whiskey and peanut butter and baloney sandwhiches.  :smile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHz_HvpOHO8

I guess the first truly awful movie I saw was Dino De Laurentis' King Kong in the theater, of course being only three or four at the time I didn't realize how bad it was until much much later. It wasn't until I was around ten or so that I saw Godzilla vs the Smog Monster and realized how ridiculous some of these films were. Now I love the Godzilla series, and the Willis O'Brien King Kong, but the '70s Kong has just not fared well over the years.

I saw the '76 KING KONG in the theater as well-I was 14 at the time. And I agree....it IS crap. I was soooooo p**sed there was no dinosaurs! And the quick shots of the giant,much publicised 'robot' Kong were ridiculous. But I still got fond memories of the experiance,as I had taken my 5 year old sister,Wendy, to see it with me-and she was crying because she was sad that Kong was getting wasted at the end. I told her that he was just acting...that the blood was just catsup,and that after the movie was over,Kong was OK and went home to his wife and kids. That made her feel better.  :smile:

In the theater, I think my first clear memory of having paid money for outright crap was OLIVER'S STORY, a really bad sequel to the incredibly sappy smash hit LOVE STORY (which I mostly kind of liked). I was an adult at the time.

But before that, there were a number of regular movie slots on TV (back when there were only three broadcast networks, children). I guess movies were convenient to fill programming slots. There was an early-Saturday western slot, the Saturday afternoon creature feature ("Monster Movie Matinee" in our town), and an after-school slot, around 4 pm weekdays. There were other slots, but they had at least some good movies.

At some point in my youth I think I came to realize that a lot of these movies in these particular slots were (a) crap, (b) full of plot holes, (c) completely forgettable and yet (d) had a peculiar charm to them.

I couldn't tell you any particular movie or moment when I came to this realization.

Yeah...I recall very well 3 network channels and uhf. Uhf was watched more in our household...as Dad was a big fan of Michigan Outdoors, Rem Walt's Green Vally Jamboree and Hee Haw...and I was hooked on Shock Theater on 41, Hopalong Cassady on channel 46, and channel 28's Double Creature Feature. Good Times. 

  memories...like the boners of my mind...misty watery memoooriieeeessss....!

The trouble with that is that I used to drink like a fish and smoke a lot of weed too  :teddyr:  But anyway, the first movie I remember liking while knowing it was terrible would be this gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3GaJGyvog4#

They don't show it in the intro, but this is about babes on roller skates, going through the desert.  Soft sand, tiny wheels, but of course!  It was about 4 in the morning and I was very, VERY well medicated.

I remember part of Alligator from the drive-in and from all the times it used to run on cable in the 1980s...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgby2AXt1kA

Thats ok....I'm very non judgemental.....being I have very likly done every drug with the exception of herion....not bragging.... just a sad fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHbTGw-Y06o

I need to be killed by fire....or something.

I thought I didn't remember but then it hit me - The Refrigerator!  That was the first movie that I remember sitting through and every 15 minutes wondering why I haven't turned it off yet. 

There's a part in it (I think) where the guy puts a fan in the refrigerator and sits in front of it and says something like "Po' man's air conditioner!" and I always wondered if that really was cost efficient. 

"Legend Of Boggy Creek"

I saw this at the Saturday matinee and was expecting to be scared from what I had been told, but remember shaking my head at most of it and thinking, "Why does this make me want to laugh?"  I have no idea how old I was, probably 10 or 11.

And if it wasn't that one, it had to be "Megaforce". I laughed through every bit of that crapfest.

There's two that spring to mind right away. 

Back in '96, I was around 12 years old sitting in a movie theater in the middle of summer.  The movie: Down Periscope.  A movie starring Kelsey Grammar and Rob Schneider about a group of NAVY misfits on a Submarine.  While I appreciate the movie now, I got about halfway through and was like, "Good God."

The other: The Toxic Avenger.  Granted, it's one of Troma's BETTER movies, and I have the 21st anniversary dvd, I saw this at the ripe old age of 8 back in '92, when USA's Up All Night was on.  It's a Friday (maybe Saturday, whichever Gilbert was on) night, and I see them talking about a movie with a superhero.  Then he mentions Toxie, and I was a fan of the Toxic Crusaders cartoon, so I'm all like, "Ooh a movie based on the Crusaders."  An hour and a half later I was like, "This could've been a hell of a lot better." 

Then, as I got older, I rewatched it and appreciated it much more.

Definitely NIGHT OF THE LEPUS.

The TV ads made this look like it was gonna be the most terrifying film ever unleashed on a bunch of ten-year-old kids. We dutifully filed into the theater prepared to be scared out of our lil' britches only to be confronted by a bunch of giant, well, you know...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIsI7CwjH3M

It became a brief fad to trick somebody into going to see it by telling them it was the scariest thing you'd ever seen.

"There's a herda killer rabbits comin' this way!" became something of a catch-phrase at our school.  :smile:

I have 2 moments: First, When I was a kid, my Mom and I watched 'Frogs' and I really liked it, as oblivious to it's badness as an 8-year old that thinks professional wrestling is real. That didn't start my venture into bad movies because I honestly thought that was a good movie.

My REAL start was in '90 when I was in the service and on special duty driving a fishing boat for the summer. A friend rented 'Bad Taste' and I watched the whole movie. He said "That is the worst movie ever, isn't it?", to which of course I answered 'yes'. He replied with "Then why did you watch it all?" and I blamed being dunk, to which he pointed out the fact I was (for the first time that whole summer), 100% sober. The next, obvious step was to go get a bunch of booze, which we did, and I sat down with a bottle of Jose and watched it AGAIN. He sat there in shock as I watched it, HIS idea was for us to get drunk and chase women.

15 years later I went looking for info on that movie and found this site.

The first bad movie that I saw, although I did not know it at the time, was a movie called "Evil Ed" and I still love this movie but when I saw it about a few days ago online... it was just awful. Everything about it was terrible, the acting, the voice dubbing, the plot, the gore, the everything but I still respect this movie because of some misplaced-sense of pride that I saw it. Although, there is a lot of good trivia in this movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9NKlKuSemw

There is violence, gore, vampires, film, guns, boobs, demons, gremlin things, basketball, dismemberment, E-Type and romance and it's all just terribly good fun. Hell, I think there is a song in here called "Donut Lady" by the Mango Kings that had nothing to do with the actual movie itself but it was a very catchy tune. :teddyr:

RC, my first bad movie memory was Charles Jarrott's musical remake of the Frank Capra classic film Lost Horizon. How the hell they convinced Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Sir John Gielgud and Andrew's favourite actor George Kennedy  :teddyr: to be in this piece of crap, I'll never know. And what the hell were they thinking, turning the bloody thing into a musical? :buggedout: :buggedout: :buggedout:

All I can say is:

1. I was six at the time (1973, I think)
2. I hated it
3. I became a movie critic right there and then.

The next year, my folks took me to the cinema to see a film. They had to drag me kicking and screaming in because I didn't want to go and then, when the film was over, they had to drag me kicking and screaming out, because I didn't want to leave.

The film? Sidney Lumet's Murder On The Orient Express.

The result? a lonely child got a hobby for life and indirectly, a job in the film industry.

Thanks Mom and Dad and thank you, Mr Lumet, your cast and crew!  :teddyr:

There was a Saturday afternoon TV show that ran the usual Universal suspects, with some AIP mixed in -- most of those we recognized as pretty scary stuff to our 9 to 11 year-old selves.  One afternoon, the station ran "Plan 9 From Outer Space". 

There was a gang of kids who all used to hang out together -- I recall some of us immediately, or about 10 minutes in to this thing, wanted to ditch and play ball -- "This is bad!  There's something wrong with this movie . . . I think they forgot some of it . . . etc.".  While 2 of us -- myself and Steve Crowther -- knew it was "wrong", but still wanted to see it play out.  It wasn't until I read Medved's "The Golden Turkey Awards" years later that everything clicked for me & was codified, but at least I was no longer haunted by the puzzling memory of enjoyment for "Plan 9" -- I knew who and what I was:  A Crap Movie Lover!!!!

peter johnson/denny crane

Ha! I guess George Kennesdy was in training for all those AIRPORT movies.

I remember seeing the LOST HORIZON musical remake on really late night TV sometime in the 70s. We had one station that seemed to like to run fairly new bad musicals at odd hours - the same station showed MAME before the paint was completely dry on Lucille Ball's face. I remember they ran PAINT YOUR WAGON all the time, too.

I found the LOST HORIZON sountrack album in a cut-out bin years ago.
I wish I still had it!

Well, I saw MISSION FROM SPACE in a theater at age 8 or so and walked out--I wasn't ready yet.

Then, in my teens, I used to rent (or have an older cousin rent) stuff like DEATHSTALKER and BARBARIAN QUEEN.  I realized they were bad, but I didn't care--I wanted to watch them because, well, you know, they were exploitation movies, and I was eager to be exploited.  I still wasn't ready.

Then when I was 17 I read they were screening PLAN 9 on TV and I thought it sounded like the coolest thing ever.  I started watching it but didn't "get" it right off.  My girlfriend was there, and we started entertaining ourselves, and--I guess I still wasn't ready.  I valued a little nookie above Ed Wood Jr. (such are the ways of the young and foolish).

Then, we broke up, and the same station screened GLEN OR GLENDA.  This time I watched it through, without distractions, and I was hooked.  What the hell was that on the screen?  (To this day I still haven't seen anything as strange as Glen's dream sequence!)

About that time--my first year of college--I discovered Joe Bob's column in the Dallas Observer.  He was recommending schlock right and left.  I saw RE-ANIMATOR, THE INVISIBLE MANIAC, and FRANKENHOOKER on his recommendation--I guess you could say I was finally ready.   :smile:

I have already posted my cherry poppers, but I'd like to amend those by blaming my brother for paving the way.

We had a show on a local station called Fantastic Theater http://tulsatvmemories.com/fantastic.html (http://tulsatvmemories.com/fantastic.html) that would show crappy older movies. I was a little, little kid, but if my oldest brother liked it, I had to be right there too. The theme music scared the living sh*t out of me and would result in me screaming like someone was stripping my skin off with Visegrips. But he would watch junk like "The Human Duplicators," "The 4D Man," and "Dinosaurus!" They scared me most of the time, but my brother would laugh and laugh at these things and occasionally, he would point out what he was laughing at and I kinda understood what he was saying, but then I would go back to being scared. So he planted the seed.

You HAVE to check out the theme music link on the site from above to get an idea why a little kid would be scared by it.  And check out these bits of freaky Tulsa fright film theater trivia:

Mazeppa, who also had Gary Busey as a semi-regular back in the day:  http://tulsatvmemories.com/mazeppa.html (http://tulsatvmemories.com/mazeppa.html)

Sherman Oaks and Creature Feature (this is where Jeanne Tripplehorn got her acting start, folks, so blame Tulsa):  http://tulsatvmemories.com/creature.html (http://tulsatvmemories.com/creature.html)

And Weird Al's "UHF":  http://tulsatvmemories.com/uhf.html (http://tulsatvmemories.com/uhf.html)

My mother used to be a school teacher, and when I was very young she would sometimes take me with her to work. In one of these occasions the students were being shown "King Kong vs. Godzilla" (I still can't understand the reason), and I watched it twice on two consecutive days. Lots of fun, I was in that kind of age (6-7, I think) when this kind of stuff looks fascinating. I tried to watch the film again not long ago, couldn't even recognise it.

And she also took me once to the movies, and for some reason she decided Chuck Norris' wonderfully bad Indiana Jones knockoff "Firewalker" was a good choice. I found it quite funny.

Of course, they're very old memories we're talking about. I didn't "get" the whole "so bad is good" thing until my late teens, when I watched "Evil Dead II" and some other stuff in the same vein.

I have watched so soo sooo many bad movies, I can't really recall my "First Bad Movie".  But I have some that do stick out in my head though.

All of the Godzilla movies from the 70s' and 80s'.  "I Come In Piece" and "Frankenhooker".

There have been many, many others.  I guess watching bad movies might not be a "taste", but something to do with genetics.  Maybe we should have a test done on a "Bad Movie Gene".

Hmmmm.

Later,

John

I recall being terrified whenever CHILLER THEATER came on when we lived in Milton,NY back in the 60's....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXi4NFgG_Vs

....though most of the films seem laffable now....it was quite terrifying to a six year old....!  :buggedout:

 :smile: Even if this film was available on DVD for free, I wouldn't buy it as that free cost would be too much.

My one enduring memory of the film is where one of the actors (I think it was Peter Finch) finds gold dust in a canal at Shanggriller. When he scoops some of it up in his hands, he shouts "Gol......." and then puts his hand over his mouth.  :question:

Maybe my first theatre movie ever was the 1976 King Kong.

Watching Godzilla vs Monster Zero at my Grandmother's house, eating spegettio'es. 

I think my first bad movie memory came from Troll 2 where I saw that girl melt into green goo and the guy says, "Oh my God..."  It is also possible that my first memory came from Nothing But Trouble when that guy is trying to rescue the girl from the junkyard.

I can distinctly remember seeing the 1960 version of "The Lost World" and the 1976 "King Kong" remake on TV when I was very young in Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon showings.

Watching either Flash Gordon or Ice Pirates as a kid.  I used to think those were two of the greatest movies of all time until I found out most people thought they were terrible.  I was really quite disturbed that people didn't like them. 

But don't worry,  I don't care what other people say, I still think they are a couple of the most entertaining movies of all time!

My first bad movie ... THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYebuwQ8RPw

I guess I was about 6 or so and I was watching it with my cousin in the basement and I kept freaking her out ... I opened the table up, you know where you pull it apart to put the leafs in to expand it and I stuck my head up threw it and call her name and go "Where's my body? Where did my body go?" and she screamed bloody murder and peed her pants she was a a year and a day young then me! Strange no one else thought it was funny... I still laugh about it.

Anyway that was the first bad movie I remember clearly watching and it was down hill from there.

Probably when I watched Robot Monster.

cq9IKsH9BXg

I recall seeing it on a Saterday afternoon in the dead of winter on a some uhf channel. My younger brothers,Richie and Jimmy, were watching it with me. When pinhead busted outta the closet,Jimmy screamed like a girl and hid behind the couch-and Richie ran outta the room! I laffed my ass off! For such a low budget piece of shlock-that scene is STILL pretty amazing!

My memory is a bit foggy on the actual first one.  However, I recall the local station on Saturdays running awful kung fu flicks in the late afternoon and horror films (ROTLD, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things) in the evening.  Though I was young, I'd sit and watch them with my father with great interest.   

I think the seeds were sewn way before that though.  My brother would let me watch more mainstream films like Poltergeist, Jaws, Friday The 13th, etc.  He also was a big Elvira fan which helped introduce me to more bad movies. 

Earliest memories were of the following stuff (not sure which came first):

King Kong (1976)
60s Spider-Man cartoon
80s Astroboy cartoon
Salem's Lot (1st mini to scare the beejeezus out of me)
Star Trek Original Series
The Starlost

Some show I can't even remember the title of but which featured kids piloting a spaceship (similar in many ways to Star Trek)

This is a weird conundrum... watching bad films as a kid, they weren't really bad. Not till I revisited them later in life did they become bad.

That made for TV Spiderman movie is pretty EPIC.  :wink: