Why?! Help me please, project for school!!

[Jeff]

I love bad movies. And I don't know why. Could someone please inform me of their ideas on why people are so insanely fascinated with movies that are not considered excellent? I could give my own reasons, but im not sure how global my opinions are. any thougts?

[Fearless Freep]

"Dropped as a child" comes foremost to mind....

[Funk, E.]

Good or Bad drugs depending on your point of view.

Honestly there are as best I can tell 3 main reasons why to like B-movies:

1) MST3K ability. Their fun to make fun of. Their failure makes them unintentionally entertaining.

2) T&A. breast have been called the cheapest special effect. Movies w/ dillusions of grandure tend to have significantly less titalation factor than a movie made on the cheap

3) Nostalgia. We remember them with fondness from our childhood and still have a fondness for them and their kin.

[Drezzy]

They (usually) have an overall "fun" feel to them. B-movies can both be cliché while being groundbreaking, and idiotic while being genious. How many Academy Award winners can say that their films are so stupid their classic? Not too many.

B-movies are also fun for the whole family. You can always sit back and laugh at the goofiness of the movie. I can't watch The Crying Game with my parents, but I can sure as hell watch Tremors with 'em.

[wheresthecarrot]

That's why I love 'em...they're just so much fun...chessy lines and bad special effects...they just put me in a good mood.

[Flangepart]

It takes a very odd sense of humor to enjoy this crap....i have one.
....In Bad Movie land, being easily amused can be a virtue. Trust me.

[mr. henry]

why are they so much fun to goof on??? i think because, unlike "blockbusters", they don't have to be focus-grouped into looking like other big budget stuff to better earn their large budgets back. they can take the chance to be different...whether because of limited budgets or otherwise.

personally, i got a bigger kick out of seeing a muffin pan used as spacesuit armor in "dark star" than i did from anything in Spider-man.

-mr. henry

[Fearless Freep]

personally, i got a bigger kick out of seeing a muffin pan used as spacesuit armor in "dark star" than i did from anything in Spider-man.

LOL, just saw that last night.  Great stuff

I also liked the sorta self-referential silliness of using a beach ball as an alien.  So when the alien is shot, they let it deflate and fly around the room.  Like the movie is saying "Ok, you know it's a beach ball, we know it's a beach ball...let's treat it like a beach ball" Which of course leads to the guy wondering how something like that could actually live.

[AndyC]

First and foremost, because B-movies are entertainment. They don't often try to be more than entertaining fun. When they do, the sheer ridiculousness of a cheesy movie trying to be important is very funny.

Likewise, it's funny when a movie is terrible, but you know the filmmaker thought it was the greatest thing he ever did, like Ed Wood and Plan 9.

That brings us to the amusing ingenuity involved in making a movie with no budget. Like the muffin pans and the beach ball in Dark Star, or the use of old footage of a dead Bela Lugosi in Plan 9, it's fun to see the lengths to which a filmmaker had to go to get the job done.

Then there are the movies that go against convention and possess the sort of dark humourous charm one would not find in many Hollywood blockbusters. That would include stuff from the likes of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, George Romero and even Roger Corman. As was stated earlier, the singular vision of such movies beats today's committee-made films by a mile.

Speaking of Corman, you have to respect a guy who made dozens of cheesy films over decades, and always managed to make money. The B-movies take us back to a time when movie theatres were not the exclusive domain of the big studios.

[Flangepart]

Good points all.
....Conciter this. There are a limeted number of "Star" directors in Hollywood. Thats a limet on the visions that can be experianced. However, add in the "Outsiders", and you get some new blood, so to speak. Roger Corman was an outsider who, kinds, became an insider. Look at his volume of work. Lots of good cheese!
....Sturgons law says, "90% of everything is crap". So... the more crap...you know, Fertile minds....the better the odds of something comming up  roses...even if the seeds were Petunias when they were "Planted".
....I think that makes sense.......

[Neville]

Like all phillias or phobias, it is difficult to racionalise this things. Anyway, here go several theories...

1) There's an unquestionable sense of fun related to any movie you don't have to take seriously at any moment. The "B" label allows viewers to switch off their brain while the movie rolls. This can be very attractive. 100% of normal movies demand you to take the whole thing seriously, no mather if it is really worth or not.

2) Fidelity: We all would love to see our favourite actors / directors to earn an Oscar, but most chances are that their careers will slowly fade away. Die-hard fans will still watch their movies when they reach the B-Movie arena. Examples: John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, etc. This also works the oppossite way: When a figure becomes famous, all the B stuff they did in the beginning of their careers becomes uncovered.

3) Blockbusters are boring. Between A movies, it is a good way to let your brain rest to watch B movies. They can't afford to make explode the settings every 10 minutes, so they have to look for other solutions, and they are not as obsessed as A movies to look PC or apply to all ages.

Hope it helps.

[Deadance]

I'm glad you ask well my  view on this is because bad, wired or stupid movies are happen to be different and usually big timers production company or whatever is to scared to take chances. If there do it might be a hit or a flop but who knows either way it might even be a cult classics if they are lucky or get to do a sequeals sorry about my spelling. But anyway is my view and  in case I like any movie as long it is entertaing to me.

[Pete B6K]

Another reason people like b-movies is the whole exclusive niche thing. If everybody started watching b-movies then I'm sure they'd lose a lot of their appeal.

Connected to that is the fact that because they are unknown and 'underground' you often have to search to find films you want, and read/research (like here) to find out about films you should get.

One of my favourite things about b-movies (apart from all the stuff mentioned like the self-aware humour, the so-bad-its-fun and the way they usually have no delusions of grandure) is the fun of introducing new people to b-movies, the memories of a roomful of the uninitiated laughing their arses off the first time they saw Dolemite and Killer Klowns.

Pete