Badmovies.org Forum

Well, I don't drop in here on the Board as often as I used to, so I'm certain there were probably several loonnng threads about "Taken", all of which I missed --
So this is not really about "Taken", but about annoying repetitions of heard-it-all-before dialogue.
Now, I thought "Taken" started out really really great, and it held my interest until episode 7, and then fell apart completely by episode 10.
No fault of Dakota Fanning, who I love, and who has a great career ahead of her, but, good lord, were the writers under a threat-of-death deadline or what?
Specifically, I'm talking about the 34 times the words "little girl" are repeated in reference to Fanning when she could be called "the target", "the objective", "my daughter", or any number of other terms & the other 89 times characters ask other characters "are you alright?" when they could be easily saying something -- anything! -- else.
The only other time I've been more annoyed by repetition of the same thing over and over was the 248 repetitions of the Big "F"-Word in "Magnolia".  Find something else to say, damn you!!
Surely this has happened to other people here.  What movies do you find characters repeating themselves over and over and over again until you wish to run screaming from the theatre/room?
I mean, it's alright . . . are you alright? . . . alright?  Are you alright . . . .?
peter johnson/denny crane

How about "Paul!" in PIRANHA (1995, the version with William Katt and Alexandra Paul).

Or, in general, it annoys me when actors on TV or in movies repeated say another character's name when they are talking.  I don't talk that way (nor do I hear others talking that way):

David, want are you doing.
Nothin.
David, you want to go bowling?
Nah, not into bowling.
How about skiing, David?
Okay.

Ad nauseum.

Sheesh.

That was one of my problems with the TV show "sports night" it seemed if you took all of the repeat dialouge out of the show it would have cut the show by 75%.

I liked "Sports NIght", but I can see how that type of dialogue can get old. Aaron Sorkin seems to have people set each other up by constantly having people make partial or cryptic statements and then other people keep asking questions that are variations on "What do you mean?" and "Would you tell me more?" I'm surprised at the acclaim he gets for this when it's just a fancier version of the style of dialogue that Jack Webb filled "Dragnet" and other shows he produced with.

My attempt to replicate it:

"I'm not gonna do it, Casey."
"Do what, Danny?"
"What you asked me to do."
"What did I ask you to do?"
You asked me to go visit Dana."
"When did I do that?"
"Just after I said that I was over her."
"Just after you said you were over her."
"Just after I said I was over her."
"But that was two days ago."
"Just wanted to make sure you remember."
"Just making sure I remember."
"In case it comes up again."
"In case.....it comes up......again."
"Now I'm walking away slowly, to show that I mean business."
"You really think that's what it means."
"Indeed I do, Casey. Indeed I do."
"You are a strange, strange man, Danny."

If you want to be annoyed to the point of madness, try watching the entire series of POLTERGEIST movies in one sitting.  Listen for how many times they say the name "Carol Ann" (especially in the final POLTERGEIST movie).  Also, listen for how many times someone says "don't go near the light."  This ordeal is worse than fingernails on a chalk board.

Aiieee!!
I'd forgotten about "don't go into the light"!!  Oh, no . . . .
Okay, how about any time there's a disaster in just about any low-budget film, there's some woman screaming in the foreground or background:
"My baby!  My baby!!"?  This was even old by 1972, when Frank Zappa had Phlo and Eddie shrieking "My baby!  My baby!", appropos of nothing, whenever the live music got violent.
I haven't seen the films Yaddo42 is talking about, but it reads EXACTLY like a Sanford Meisner (Meisner Technique!) acting exercise.  If anyone has ever taken Meisner Technique, the theory is that via mindless repetition & commentary on ones actions, one allows the "true" character to rise to the surface -- it's sort of a Zen thing, supposed to separate the observer from the action, isolate the Ego, etc.  However, as far as I know, Meisner never intended these exercises to SUBSTITUTE for actual writing!
Oh, and in "Beloved Infidel", people sometimes call Gregory Peck/F. Scott Fitzgerald "Scott"  5 times in one conversation!!  I'm not kidding!
My baby!  Don't go into the light!!
peter johnson/denny crane

That's a pretty good replication. I'm having flashbacks

Makes my think of think of the guy in "Godzilla Vs.MechaGodzilla...."My House!"
Yeah, would ya rather be in there when G turns it into kindling?
The house is gone...deal with it!

It seems to me that in half hour shows, actors emote and speak at the same time, but in hour long shows, they first say the line, then do the emotion seperately to take more time. "I'm very angry", then they stare at the guy baring their teeth like GRRR. "I love you", then the drawn out loving gaze. Also, they say "look at me!" They have to have the person looking right at them before they can tell them anything.

Here are some timeless cliches:

* Follow that car!

* Don't let him out of your sight.

* If you go near her again, I'll kill you.

* Something just doesn't add up.

* I have always loved you.

* Mom always says, "don't play ball in the house."  (Oops . . . that's from the Brady Bunch . . . how did that one get in here?)

My personal fav.  "If you harm a hair on her head......"

- Let's get out of here (this place gives me the creeps)!
- Hot chick with glasses is repugnant until she takes the glasses off.
- Stomach turning robot humor: Robots drinking lubricant like it's refreshing, having a crush on a pinball machine, head falls off...
- Robot cries at the end of the movie to show that it's magically become human.
- Look at me.......I love you!
- In the 80s: Computers are magic. You can hack into anything. You've got a computer, but there are no phone lines, if you're enough of a genius you can type really fast and make the bad guy's car blow up somehow.
- Third wild guess is the correct password.
- All teenagers are getting laid. Even the nerds, just not quite as often, and they're "stuck" with the really tall girl who wears glasses.
- All bloggers are obsessed with plugging their blogs: http://davemunger.blogspot.com

Cliches:

1. A kid will always know more than an adult
2. A match or lighter will have the power to illuminate  manhattan
3. When an intruder is in the house the person will either spend the whole time trying to dial 911 and find a weapon vs. actually getting out of the house
4. movie hero's in action films are always divorced, but their ex still loves them
5. Cats are always strategically hidden in closets and cabinets
6. Cars always burst into flames, even if upside down in a swimming pool
7. Anyone having a nightmare will always sit upright with their eyes wide open and yell "NOOOOO!"
8. No matter if someone is beaten on the head with a sledgehammer, they never have a concussion with vomiting and brain damage
9. Single women living alone always shower with their bathroom door wide open
10. Keys. either you don't have them or you spend about a solid minute in the car fumbling through your keychain to find the car key - when in reality most people's car key is LARGER THAN ANY OTHER KEY. But why bother? The car won't start anyways, not until the villian has lept onto the hood of your car as you speed backwards out of the driveway



Post Edited (07-26-04 19:15)

>What movies do you find characters repeating themselves over and over and
>over again until you wish to run screaming from the theatre/room?

Not a movie, but this happened in the show My So Called Life. Many of the characters used the word "like" about 20 times per sentence, especially the nerdy next door neighbor. I recall one scene where he did it so much that I wanted to strangle him. It was like, really, like annoying how he, like used the word "like" every, like couple of, like words while, like he was, like trying to, like talk to, like Claire Danes.

>Hot chick with glasses is repugnant until she takes the glasses off.

And then magically no longer needs them.

>Robot cries at the end of the movie to show that it's magically become human.

That one thing I liked about the ending of Terminator II, "I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do."

That's something I loved about it too, I think it was specifically in reference to that cliche. Also, Rutger Hauer at the end of "Blade Runner" - "All these memories will be lost, like tears in rain". Implying that he's crying (which is fine with me, since he's not really a machine), but you can't tell because it's raining. The horrible "Millenium" (I think based on a John Varley short story called "Air Raid" that was probably good) is my favorite example of this. Probably the worst robot in cinema history.

Corrolary to Susan's Ninth Cliche: She'll also leave a window open, keep her eyes closed the whole time, and act kind of sexy and vunerable.

Just bought Jack L Chalker's "And The Devil Will Drag You Under", mainly because I liked the Well Of Souls books that I've read so far, and the first line is:
"When the end of the world is near, spend the remaining time in a bar."

Munger's First Law of Dispensationalist Drama: When the Rapture occurs, you WILL be on an airplane.

Don't forget that when a killer is chasing a woman, 90% of the time she's going to fall at least once.

". . . and there's always a girl who falls down and twists her ankle.  (Laughter) Sure there is!  You knon how they are, the weaker sex and all, falling down on behalf of the little ice-cream cone . . . "
-- Frank Zappa in "Cheepniz"(1973), a meditation on the creature in "It Conquered the World" -- an "inverted ice-cream cone or sort of a rounded-off pup-tent affair" -- and monster movies in general.
peter johnson/denny crane

Whenever someone is running, and being chased by someone in a car, they always continue to run down the middle of the street.  Um, ya know, if you ran into the woods over there...or even just got on the sidewalk, behind all those parked cars.

***Hijack***

Ah, "Cheepnis", great song!

"The suits & the hats & the tie's too wide
And too short for the scientist man
The chemistry lady with the roll-away mind
And the monster just ate Japan"

Here Fido, here Fido, here Fido.....

That song should be the theme song of all b-movie fans, anyone here who hasn't heard, should definitely seek it out.

that sticks in my craw every time I see it is when someone in a relatively light car is being chased by someone in a much heavier vehicle (especially a semi).  They always try to outrun the heavier vehicle going straight, and remain 'targets.'  Add to this if the bad guy is shooting at 'em.

Light cars stop quicker than heavier ones.  They are also often more maneuverable.  It's also much harder to hit (with a firearm) a target that is darting about unpredictably.

So, do SOMETHING other than just jam your foot to the floor.

Also, lots of times, slamming on the brake would do a LOT...many vehicles can stand being rear ended with only superficial damage ('74 Pintos being a notable exception), but most 'chase' cars have the radiator right up front.  Get 'em to hit you, and you likely damage that crucial piece of equipment.  (Of course, depending on the weight discrepency, this could be very risky indeed).

The bottom line is that most people in movies that are being chased (on foot, in a car, etc) don't act like they don't want to get caught.

A couple more I'm completely sick of -

"...for a crime he/she didn't commit"  Hey, it would be more interesting if they actually were guilty you know.

And the neverending woman giving birth in the middle of a natural disaster / plane crash / in a stuck elevator etc.

And those old wooden bridges spanning a deep crevasse in the jungle.  Has anyone ever gone over one of those things without one of the boards breaking loose, then the 5 minute scene of the one hand reaching towards the other hand?  I've never seen it.  It would be such a novelty if it ever happened.

* The car never starts when the victim is trying to escape

* The villain always tells the hero, "We are very much alike, you and I . . . "

* The world's greatest scientists cannot figure out how to destroy the alien menace, deadly microbe, etc.  But the "average guy/gal" hero stumbles upon the solution

* Cops work about 20 hours a day, eat Chinese food out of cardboard containers at their desks at 2:00 in the morning, and are awakened in their apartments at the crack of dawn by their partners (who are usually carrying coffee in styrofoam cups)

* There is usually a scene in which the villain is sitting on the deck of his yacht with a beautiful woman in a bikini sitting on his lap while he talks to one of his henchmen on his cell phone

* People who get shot very rarely fall unconscious.  In fact, they just wrap a rag around the wound, it magically stops bleeding, and they continue running and shooting

* To remove a bullet from your body, simply pour whiskey on the wound, bite down on a piece of wood, and dig the bullet out with a pocket knife.  No need for costly emergency room fees and surgery!

* It would be great if the police captain would believe his two best detectives JUST ONCE instead of suspending them for two weeks

* Whenever there is a high speed car chase through the city, you can bet that a trailer truck will back up and block the street just as the cars turn the corner

* Whenever there is a high speed car chase in a rural area, you can bet that one of the cars will crash into a truck full of chickens

* While plummeting out of an airplane without a parachute, it is easy to have a fistfight in mid-air with your opponent

* High school janitors work all night and usually get killed by monsters

* The smartest people have the worst haircuts and clothing (usually frizzy, uncombed hair and corduroy jackets with patches on the elbows)



Post Edited (08-01-04 10:32)

You forgot that urban car chases will also always pass through sidewalk cafes, fruit stands and, if it's on the waterfront, stacked boxes of produce.

Cops, no matter how idle and bored, will completely ignore any account of a murder given by two plainly terrified teenagers, because some of the details were kind of far fetched.

I love scenes of people in cars being terrorized by bikers. The bikers will be kicking the car doors or swinging things at the windshield and the people in the car, usually women, are screaming in terror. I want to grab them and scream, "They're riding two wheeled vehicles that weight a fraction of what your car weights! Compared to them, you're driving a tank! Swerve the wheel! Knock them off the sides of the road! Step on the brake and watch the ones behind you go flying over your roof!"

Usually in a horror movie with kids/teens/college aged as central characters:

About midway through the flick, with no real idea what is going on (friends just disappearing or turning up dead, etc), they magically find a (book)(janitor)(ex-cop)(unpopular kid) that tells the whole story.  Usually, this is with no foreshadowing or anything.

i noticed that everyone has that good old zippo lighter to light someone up when  thier dosed with gasoline.

"I know I know ive been exposed permeant psychoses..
at least the colors are nice"- Aeon Flux

I love the old "I'm not going to tell you, you won't believe me" routine that always ends up with the person telling the other the story they weren't going to in the first place, followed inevitably by the "I don't believe you"

Used in all numbers of situations, from monsters from hell to the ever popular travelling in time.

And not once will somebody believe them.  It makes you wonder why they bother in the first place.

How about stupid speeches given by the bad guy as he prepares to blow away the good guy, thereby giving the good guy a chance to escape or the calvary to come to his rescue.  Really, what's the point of explaining your motivations to someone who is going to be dead in a few minutes?  JUST KILL 'IM, DANGIT.

Just thought of a variation on the previously mentioned "We're the same, you and I" villain line -- "I was once like you."

Another good cliche: someone who fights crime because he was the victim of a crime learns that his current foe just happens to be the guy who wronged him years ago. Small world.

Disappearing bodies - The star keeps seeing dead bodies, but all trace of them is gone by the time they summon help. Not once do they stay with the body, or whip out a camera/camera phone and snap a picture to prove that they're not seeing things. Also, the bad guy's whole plan to discredit the star by making them seem crazy depends on them not doing any of the above so that they WILL look crazy when they try to tell people about it.

Trying to convince people of the supernatural - The star sees a monster/vampire/alien/etc then tries to convince the police/doctors/family of what they saw, seeming crazy in the process. Not once does it occur to them to fudge the details in order to make their story sound more believable. Like saying that they saw someone DRESSED as a monster/vampire/alien/etc.

Great list Burgo... there is one in there that I have to comment on, though.

* Cops work about 20 hours a day, eat Chinese food out of cardboard containers at their desks at 2:00 in the morning, and are awakened in their apartments at the crack of dawn by their partners (who are usually carrying coffee in styrofoam cups)


This is pretty accurate.  20 hour days aren't so unusual (I work 16's quite often), we like our chinese food, and coffee just doesn't taste as good when it isn't in styrofoam.

:)

Very true. It's almost as if they're trying to sound crazy. Why is it necessary to insist that somebody was killed by a monster, when all it would take to mobilize the authorities would be to say that you saw him attacked? These characters should realize how silly they sound, but the story requires that they be disbelieved, so they tell the crazy truth, in the most unbelievable way possible, and complain that nobody believes it. The original Blob has a great example of this.

Of course, even if the story is unlikely, most real cops would feel obliged to check it out. A reported murder is a serious matter, even if somebody claims a monster did it. Most movie cops don't see it that way, however.

Same thing when somebody drives up beside someone and tries to push them off the road.  Hey, hit the brakes and watch them fly off the road because you're not there anymore!

And the bad guy hanging on the roof.  Hit the brakes!  They'll still be going 60 mph - it'll be fun to watch!  And your car's tires will screech loudly on the dirt road!

No matter how slow a monster is (i.e. Frankenstien), the monster will ALWAYS catch up to you... even if  you're young and in shape.

When in a haunted house, people will always go into the room with the big scary doors.  Similarly, when lost in a remote area, people will always look into the dark hole or go into the creepy house.

The young couple having pre-marital sex usually get murdered at the beginning of a film.

Nobody has mentioned the cop who lost his partner and now only works alone, then gets a rookie partner, who he treats like dirt at first but then warms to them.
 
The group of phrases to really annoy me are in just about every slasher movie ever made, usually when some female character is alone in a dark place "Tod, is that you"? "c'mon guys, Quit playing around, this isnt funny"  "Who's there"?

Almost every time I see a car chase, I tell the people being chased to put on the breaks (even though I am a caucasian). Sara Conor in Terminator 1 was the first movie character to obey my comand.

I think the running in a straight line thing comes from Cary Grant and the crop duster in "North By Northwest". Even there it seems kind of dumb, although I can see why Hitchcock did it that way, very dramatic and Cary Grant had a cool way of running.

I had a dream one time when I was wee where a monster was chasing me and I ran into some other people. Even in the dream I knew not to tell them it was a monster, I said a guy was chasing me and would kill them too.

A lot of cliches seem to originate in some really good movie everyone tries to copy, like Psycho's shower scene.

Big, sweet retarded guys KILL EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH! From "Of Mice And Men", I think.

I'm guessing the slowly shambling monster comes from an early mummy movie, where spooky emphasis is placed on the mummy representing the inexorable working out of some millenia old curse.

odinn7 wrote:

> Don't forget that when a killer is chasing a woman, 90% of the
> time she's going to fall at least once.
>

i LOVe that, i had forgotten because ..well you don't see many slasher films anymore like in the 80's. I remember we used to pop in those slasher horror films way back when and would see the girl run and give a sideline commentary. "She runs, she trips, she falls. She runs, she trips, she falls!"

Doesn't matter how fast she runs either, the killer can easily stroll and will inevitably catch up to her. Usually he'll end up in front of her becaus eventually she'll stop running and walk backwards looking for the stalker, only to turn around and run into him.

"She runs, she trips, she falls. She runs, she trips, she falls!"

Which always sorta amused me that "tripping and falling down while being persued" is one heck of a bad survival trait.  If the human race was really that bad we'dve dies out a long time ago.

Under stress, humans tend to get adrenline going which improves senses and reflexes.  The 'fight or flight' reflex works wonders at improving our survival potential.  Movies that show people turning to whimpering, incompentan, jelly when facaed with danger kinda irritate me

Doesn't matter how fast she runs either, the killer can easily stroll and will inevitably catch up to her

I think Ken coined the phrase "Offscreen Teleportation" to describe that.

Dinosaurs tend to breathe fire unless they're especially realistic.

Fire extinguishers are more effective weapons than fire arms are.

CEOs murder more people than mafiosa do.

Burgomeister mentions that the monster always gets the janitor at night -- Bill Cosby does a fantastic riff on that fact -- already a cobweb-covered cliche in 1967 -- in "The Chicken Heart"(That Ate New York City) on his "Why is There Air" albumn . . . .the janitor knocks over the vat containing the chicken heart, which immediately grows to enormous size and devours him.  It gets better/weirder from there --
Ulthar bemoans the villain who must speechify the reasons for killing the hero, giving him time to escape.  Remember the scene in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" wherein some guy comes in on Eli Wallach in a bath & starts to do just that:  "You dirty dog, I've been tracking you for years, you killed my brother, etc. etc.", and Wallach blows him away with a gun he's got under water in the tub with him & says:  "If you're going to talk, talk;  If you're going to shoot, shoot!!"?
And, oh, I'd forgotten how much I despise the "giving birth everywhere" business.  What the hell are you doing on the Amazon Death Cruise in the first place if you're 9 mos. pregnant?!!?!?
Anyway, I've laughed my head off at a lot of these -- keep 'em comin'!!
peter johnson/denny crane

Cars, especially if driven by the hero, are bulletproof

Cars shot by the hero intantly expode like the Hindenburg.

Pie Chart

Evil overlord list I read a long time ago and thought I might not be able to find anymore.

I like this thread, sue me.

Dave,

FYI, this phorum does not seem to recognize raw html; if you want to embed links, try the bbs style tags instead.  In each of the examples below, the tags are shown in curly braces, {}, but you would actually use square brackets, [].

To embed a link: {url}linktargeturl{/url} where linktargeturl is the link you want, such as http://www.badmovies.org.

To embed bold, {b}bold text{/b}, such as BOLD TEXT.

For italics, {i}italic text{/i}, such as Italic Text.

And there are some others, too (like for images).

Hope this helps, :)

Thanks, man, I always kind of wanted to know how to do that, some of the blog comments sections I go to are like this too. If it works I'll be using it all the time.

http://one38.org/1000/issue05/pies/supervillian.html

http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

This information that you posses wouldn't happen to enable me to put images up on a blog's comments, would it? Because I'm not sure if that's something I ought to know or not...

Dave Munger wrote:

>
> This information that you posses wouldn't happen to enable me
> to put images up on a blog's comments, would it? Because I'm
> not sure if that's something I ought to know or not...

Not sure; I'd guess it depends on the blog software.  Those bracket tags are popular on a lot of bbs-es, especially when the admins don't want raw html to be enabled.  I'd think (and just a guess) blog sw is similar.