I was just thinking as I made my post about Evil Dead that the only reason I said "Evil Dead II is more of a remake of Evil Dead" was so that everyone would know I knew what I was talking about. I'm sure we all say stuff like that to make sure everyone else knows we know our stuff. Does anyone else have good examples of little B-movie trivia they sneak into conversation so they sound smarter?
Probably name dropping. Throwing in the director's name to show how well I know the movie, or referring to the stars in very familiar terms, such as Arnie (Schwarzenegger) or Bill Shatner.
I think referencing something Bruce Campbell said in an interview is a pretty common way in which people establish B-movie street credibility on this site.
I usually don't bother. I am not very B-movie educated by the standards of this message board, and if I pretended to be, someone would see through it.
I just talk about movies I like...
On a side-note, Evil Dead II is a completely different film than Evil Dead. Listen to it with director's commentary. Sam explains that the only reason the first 10-minutes were a run-down was because they couldn't get the rights to the original movie for some reason and needed to make sure people knew what was happening.
From the interviews and commentary I have heard, EDII was supposed to be a completely different film, but due to the copyright issue they had to rewrite a lot of it to make people understand what was going on. Therefore "it ended up looking more like remake than a sequal," according to Bruce Campbell.
Any time someone makes a reference to Plan 9 From Outer Space or Ed Wood as the worst whatever ever, it throws up a red flag. Those two topics have become so popular to talk about, everybody is saying something of the sorts, comparing a 'bad' movie to "not as bad as Plan 9" or a bad story to "something that Ed Wood would direct." It upsets me whenever I hear those kinds of statements, because I know it's just someone trying to sound like he knows what he's talking about. We all know there are plenty worse movies out there, movies which make us cringe to think about, and plenty worse directors out there, people who are well known for their work through the underground b-movies circuits.
But what REALLY gets me, is when people name off Mystery Science Theater 3000 movies and claim they are the WORST they have ever seen. They have NOT seen the movie, they have only seen a show, and the show has to cut the movie down to make it fit into a 1.5 hour time slot. That often takes out some points of the movie which makes it complete, and just a bit more understandable. However, when people claim movies like "OMG! Hobgoblins was soooo bad!" THEY HAVE NO IDEA! I can almost guarantee that only 5,000 people in the world have ever seen an original copy of Hobgoblins. And take a movie like Blood Waters of Dr. Z for another example. The movie was never released to video in the US, ever, so how can all of these people claim this movie was awful, when they have never seen it? More examples:
-Merlin's Mystical Shop of Wonders (this movie is bottom 100-IMDB bad?)
-Invasion of the Neptune Men (bottom 100-IMDB #6 #6? That is pack voting mentality if I've ever seen it)
-Space Mutiny (bottom 100-IMDB #17 granted, it was bad. I have a copy. But to consider this one of the worst movies ever made is laughable in itself)
-Time Chasers (bottom 100-IMDB #36 see comment above, and reiterate)
-Prince of Space (bottom 100-IMDB #46 Definitely funnier than bad)
-Quest of the Delta Knights (bottom 100-IMDB #57 Come on people, do your research)
So, you see my point by now. I'm not saying that it's not okay to not like a movie that was shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The reason they're on the show is because they're bad. But, if you're going to say it is bad, give good reasons, and for god's sake DO NOT quote the show when giving reasons. You're just proving your dependence on the show to give you reasons to not like a movie.
-Scott*
It's funny, because MST3K usually makes me like a movie more....I saw "The Creeping Terror" when I was younger, and I hated it. After I saw the MST3K version, I fell in love with it! (And believe me, this one's BAD). I guess it's because I love watching movies and inserting as many sarcastic comments as possible...but I'm not as good at it on the fly.
One thing I really hate is when people comment on movies they have heard about, or seen previews to, but never watched. Trhis guy one time gave me this whole lecture on why "Hannibal" was worse the "Silence of the Lambs." I agree with him, butas it turns out, He'd never actually seen "Hannibal." That angers me.
What amuses me most is when people mention mainstream, big money, big production movies like "Peal Harbor" or "Titanic" as "the worse pile of steaming crap ever" or some such grouping of adjectives.
Ed Wood it too obvious, but usually having a knowledge of who Roger Corman or Charles Band and some of what they've done is a litmus test to me.
Of course, I'm not really sure how "B movie educated" I am, myself
Band has yet to do anything that BAD. Same goes for Corman.
Also references to actors like Jeffery Combs, Tim Thomerson, and Lance Henrickson
(although less with Henrickson because between "Aliens", "Millenium", and regular TV showings of "No Way Out", he's probably more recognizeble then most actors who spend their lives in B land)
Scottie wrote:
> -Merlin's Mystical Shop of Wonders (this movie is bottom
> 100-IMDB bad?)
It very well could be. I tried to watch it once with my kids (long before MST took it on), and by ten minutes in it was a race to see which of us could get to the "STOP/EJECT/HELPMYEYESMYEYES" button first.
Well, this is a good topic. I guess I'm guilty as charged, as far as referencing Ed Wood goes, but that sort of objection does beg a bigger question: What if you really DO think that Mr. Ed (see:familiarity) should be considered some sort of bad-movie bellwether? I mean, when seeing a new bad film by someone I don't know as well, I find it useful to measure the effect of said with the question: "Okay, is this film as (Ineptly filmed/entertainingly awful/jaw-droppingly written/etc. etc.) fun as Plan 9 or Bride of The Monster?". What really sets Wood apart for me is the amazing consistency of his entire portfolio. Oh, sure, people like Corman may have used a poor take or left in a bit of inept dialogue, but you're still left with the feeling that they knew the difference between good and bad. Not so with Wood: From film to film, he continues to consistently make the same errors over and over again.
I'll be the first to say that I'm really not at all up to speed on the more modern slasher pictures, etc., plus my Italian repetoire could do with an educational boost. I often have never heard of some of the films discussed on this site that generate some of the most heated arguments. What I do have, though, is a vivid memory of the first times I saw a rubber knife bounce off a mummy with a visible zipper up his back, or saw the visible nylon strings attatched to the jaw of a giant spider (see: Cheepniz). These things gave me a warm, happy, fun feeling, as if the world were not all against me & somewhere someone was winking at me saying: Hey, it's not all doom and gloom.
So, no, I ain't got the chops to carry an argument on some of these films, but I got heart, Manny, I got heart . . .
peter johnson
Quest of the Delta Knights at least has been aired normally on SciFi. They claimed it was one of their originals even though I'd seen the box in a video store about 2 years before they claimed it was their original creation.
Fearless Freep wrote:
>
> What amuses me most is when people mention mainstream, big
> money, big production movies like "Peal Harbor" or "Titanic"
> as "the worse pile of steaming crap ever" or some such
> grouping of adjectives.
>
> Ed Wood it too obvious, but usually having a knowledge of who
> Roger Corman or Charles Band and some of what they've done
> is a litmus test to me.
>
>
I don't know, they usually sneer and say "Yeah, but that's not a REAL movie!" ???
You wanna punish, slip them something by Andy Milligan - that'll scald the eyes right out of their skulls...
You wanna punish, slip something by Andy Milligan -
Alburt Pyun ("The Sword And The Sorcerer" doesn't count...too mainstream)
I confess the only Andy Milligan I've experienced I think is "The Weirdo".
Given that *it* looked like a high school production, I suprised it's one of the later works in his long and glorified career
Fearless Freep wrote:
>
> Given that *it* looked like a high school production, I
> suprised it's one of the later works in his long and
> glorified career
>
>
All of Milligan's movies are like that (a mix of ham fisted theater and gutter scraping production values), the man had a self-destructive streak a couple of hundred miles wide. If you are into exploitation/b-movie history then check out James McDonough's book The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Andy Milligan, it's a jaw dropping look at a very unique and extremely troubled man. The ending will have you in tears, man even the scum of the earth deserve some kindness.
Ew, "Merlin's" is definitely deserving of its IMDB ranking. It has something a lot of the other potential Bottom 100 contenters can't claim: a healthy chunk of its running time is lifted from (at least) one other, older, wholly-unrelated movie. All the "killer-monkey-toy" stuff is taken from "The Devil's Gift," which, unfortunately, I saw--years before MST3K mashed up "Merlin's" and scrubbed my face into it.
The "Hitler Building" in "Invasion of the Neptune Men" constitutes bad judgment on a galactic scale, but I assume the production company was desperate for whatever stock footage it could find. "Space Mutiny" uses "Battlestar Galactica" footage, but only brief clips of SFX material that they very obviously couldn't otherwise afford. This is something else entirely. It's taking another, already-complete movie, gutting it, putting bookends on it, and marketing it as something new. It represented the next step in carbon-copy "sequel" thinking, and I hope never to see its like again.
<>
Another thing in the same vein is when a couple of episodes of a failed TV show are pushed together, tied by an incoherent voice-over or titlescreen and packaged as a movie. MST3K has done many of these and I've actually been duped many a time by clever (or devious?!) video covers.