How did you come to love bad movies?

[Leah]

My parents watched a lot of MST3K, so there's a start.

[316zombie]

my dad left the air force and we moved to my massachusetts hometown in early '66. and my big brother discovered uhf channel 56...from then on in,we were doomed with a love of bad movies,especially horror/scifi/fantasy stuff.
  july of that year, my momma found a drivein the next town over, and that was seriously it for her too, doomed, i say!
  i was 4, my brother 8 at the time. and i am proud to say that we passed our doom on to our baby sister as well. and al also proud to say that we contributed to the doom of their children,my 4 nieces,and are ALL now contributing to the doom of my greatniece and greatnephews.

I'm a life-long Massachusetts resident and grew up watching lots of trash on channel 56 and channel 38. We had at least 6 or 8 drive-in theaters within a reasonable driving distance of where we lived. Good times.

really? i grew up in middleboro, bottom of the cape, the drivein was in lakeville. and you?

[The Burgomaster]

my dad left the air force and we moved to my massachusetts hometown in early '66. and my big brother discovered uhf channel 56...from then on in,we were doomed with a love of bad movies,especially horror/scifi/fantasy stuff.
  july of that year, my momma found a drivein the next town over, and that was seriously it for her too, doomed, i say!
  i was 4, my brother 8 at the time. and i am proud to say that we passed our doom on to our baby sister as well. and al also proud to say that we contributed to the doom of their children,my 4 nieces,and are ALL now contributing to the doom of my greatniece and greatnephews.

I'm a life-long Massachusetts resident and grew up watching lots of trash on channel 56 and channel 38. We had at least 6 or 8 drive-in theaters within a reasonable driving distance of where we lived. Good times.

really? i grew up in middleboro, bottom of the cape, the drivein was in lakeville. and you?

I grew up in Saugus. So, we had drive-ins in Saugus, Revere, Lynn, Medford . . . all around the area. I spent a lot of summers down the Cape. My aunt and uncle had a summer home in Wareham.

[The Burgomaster]

This: saw it when I was six - hated it.



This: bleurgh. The Frank Capra version: 

George Kennedy? LOST HORIZON???

Unbelievable but yes 

Even more shocking: Bobby Van?????

Now we know what Bobby was doing in between shooting episodes of 'Match Game' and 'Tattletales':

! No longer available

And don't forget his short-lived show "Make Me Laugh."

[Raffine]

Perfect timing on my part.

I was a kid during the 70s growing up in a tiny town in north Alabama. We had one of the few locally owned movie theaters around, ran by the wonderful Bill Harris and his wife. During the week they'd run a current 'A' movie For us that meant stuff like BILLY JACK and WALKING TALL. These would play for months, it seemed.

Saturday was 'Kiddie Movie' time. Yes, this meant the latest live action Disney nonsense like THE COMPUTER WORE TENNIS SHOES, but was also got tons of PINK PANTHER and WOODY WOODPECKER cartoons. We also got many of the current horror movies like FROGS, DRACULA AD 1972, and NIGHT OF THE LEPUS mixed in with the Disney and the cartoons. Occasionally we'd get a classic like a GODZILLA movie or a Harryhausen SINBAD movie.

They also held several old fashioned 'Spook Shows' with old movies and people dressed like ghosts and monsters running around in the audience. A bonus was the theater was right across from the city jail. Yelling back and forth at the prisoners was a good way to pass the time when waiting for your mom to pick you up.

It was the PERFECT breeding ground for a bunch of Monster Kids and fans of weird movies.

[Fox Sake]

There used to be a film club at my university during my undergrad years (2011-2015). It would show different genres on a daily/evening basis. As I recall it was Wednesday evenings they had a "B-Movie Night" which was attributed to a book called "The Golden Turkey Awards" (Harry & Michael Medved).

I only went at the insistence of a couple of film-geek friends, but it was fortunate that on my first attendance they showed "Plan 9 from Outer Space", "The Swarm" and "Zardoz" - and that's when I realised what a B-Movie Bomb looked like.

[Trevor]

This: saw it when I was six - hated it.



This: bleurgh. The Frank Capra version:  

George Kennedy? LOST HORIZON???

Unbelievable but yes  

Even more shocking: Bobby Van?????

Now we know what Bobby was doing in between shooting episodes of 'Match Game' and 'Tattletales':

! No longer available

And don't forget his short-lived show "Make Me Laugh."

www.raru.co.za wants ZAR400 for a DVD of Lost Horzintally [about $40]: that is about ZAR399.99 too much.  

[beat_truck]

I'm 33.  So, a few things.

MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs, used to be on TNT back in the day.  Tons of 'not so good movies.'
MST3K--But, of course.

Also, there was a local station here in Philly, a UHF station of sorts, that showed all kinds of off the wall programming.  Like, mornings and afternoons were syndicated 60s sitcoms, nights might be religious programs.  Weekends were a hodgepodge of WWF programming, bad martial arts films, direct-to-vhs films, and old horror films from the 50s and 60s. 

Very similar here. 
I'm also 33.  I watched a LOT of random stuff when I was little, because I had an open mind and nobody told me I couldn't, I guess.  I also watched a lot of Joe Bob Briggs Monstervision on TNT.  As soon as I saw them play movies like the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead, I was hooked for good.   I used to watch and record every older scifi and horror movie that I possibly could from AMC and the Scifi channel before they turned to total crap.   I also rented lots of VHS movies, too.  I always liked the hunt of finding some odd ball movie that I enjoy that pretty much NOBODY else does.  Ever since I got the internet, I looked up, bought, and downloaded loads more.  And, most newer movies in general just don't interest me.  A lot of them are just CGI crap fests that lack the charm and personality that older movies had on a small fraction of the budget.  So, I happily keep searching for old movies that interest me.

[Rev. Powell]

Speaking of Joe Bob, he was a huge influence on my taste, but only in his printed column. Seldom watched him on TV. His appearance and demeanor didn't match the vision of him I had in my mind, nor was he as funny as in person as in his writing, and  on top of it all, the movies were edited.

[RCMerchant]

The thing is- I had SEEN lotsa so called 'bad' since 1967- on Double Creature Feature and Shock and Chiller- but I didn't think of them as bad until the early 70's.  I remember watching FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR on channel 28 on a Saturday afternoon when a golf game was cancelled- so they threw this on. I sat threw the whole thing straining my eyes waiting for the Frankenstein Monster. He never showed up.

Thank's Sam Sherman! 

[Pacman000]

Probably an extension of my interest in old Sci-Fi/Fantasy movies.

And I'm a cheapskate, so instead of being appalled at these films' quality I think "Hey, maybe I could do this..."

[The Burgomaster]

I remember watching FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR on channel 28 on a Saturday afternoon when a golf game was cancelled- so they threw this on. I sat threw the whole thing straining my eyes waiting for the Frankenstein Monster. He never showed up.

Thank's Sam Sherman!  

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my friend saw it at the drive-in. He told me it was a werewolf movie and the Frankenstein monster wasn't in it. I didn't believe him. Years later I read about it in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film and eventually I bought the DVD. He was right. No Frankenstein monster in sight. Just some half-assed intro that talks about "Wolfstein." Sam Sherman, you marvelous bastard!

[HappyGilmore]

I'm 33.  So, a few things.

MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs, used to be on TNT back in the day.  Tons of 'not so good movies.'
MST3K--But, of course.

Also, there was a local station here in Philly, a UHF station of sorts, that showed all kinds of off the wall programming.  Like, mornings and afternoons were syndicated 60s sitcoms, nights might be religious programs.  Weekends were a hodgepodge of WWF programming, bad martial arts films, direct-to-vhs films, and old horror films from the 50s and 60s. 

Very similar here. 
I'm also 33.  I watched a LOT of random stuff when I was little, because I had an open mind and nobody told me I couldn't, I guess.  I also watched a lot of Joe Bob Briggs Monstervision on TNT.  As soon as I saw them play movies like the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead, I was hooked for good.   I used to watch and record every older scifi and horror movie that I possibly could from AMC and the Scifi channel before they turned to total crap.   I also rented lots of VHS movies, too.  I always liked the hunt of finding some odd ball movie that I enjoy that pretty much NOBODY else does.  Ever since I got the internet, I looked up, bought, and downloaded loads more.  And, most newer movies in general just don't interest me.  A lot of them are just CGI crap fests that lack the charm and personality that older movies had on a small fraction of the budget.  So, I happily keep searching for old movies that interest me.

My buddies and I used to search through Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video for random Troma films.  Cheaper, yeah, but at least they weren't cheesy CGI knockoff films that we got in the late 90s.

[HappyGilmore]

USA Up All Night--I watched this a lot too.  Where I first saw some Troma films. 

[TYTD Reviews]

I think it was a gradual thing to be honest... one of my earliest memories is of watching a very fleeting clip of Mike nelson era MST3K on the Sci-fi channel in the UK during its very VERY fleeting broadcast over here...I suppose I really started to get into weird and bad movies when I was about 12 or 13...I really got into horror films starting with the mainstream ones (Nightmare on elm street, Halloween, Friday the 13th) and then after watching almost all of those (Pocket money couldnt afford me Halloween 6 or Jason goes to hell xD) I moved onto the slightly more obscure horrors (Hellraiser, Prom Night, Monsters crash the Pyjama party) but I wasnt perticularly well grounded it was pretty much a case of what I could find and what I could afford. I suppose I owe quite a bit of my exploration advice to James Rolfe and his "Monster Madness" series...as without him I probably would have never heard of things like "Tourist trap" or "House (Hasu)" or any of the Universal Monster Sequels. I suppose I should also toss some Karma over to Brad Jones (The Cinema Snob) as pretty much from 2008 to my graduation from university in 2014 he was terrifically helpful in finding some of the more goofier movies out there...So I dug away at various B-movies and lesser mainstream titles (It was at this time I discovered "Dolla Morte" what I thought was the worst film ever made until last year when I saw "Let's ruin Dads Day") through most of my teens and I suppose a breakthrough moment for me was when I hit about 18 years old and I reintroduced myself to MST3K (My first episode was Manos) and I was just totally hooked from then on in...from there I'd dig through the first 3 seasons with my flatmate before deciding to finally branch out and explore again for myself.

By sheer chance in the UK Arrow Video were just starting to come into prominence  and through them and several random searches through Flea markets I've been able to track down all manner of random good stuff :) and that brings me to the modern day :) where I watch bad movies pretty much all the time and i'm currently giving back to the community in the form of tracking down and reviewing very obscure films that either have minimal or no presence on youtube and google helping to pretty much pool all the information I can about them together into one bitesize video :) its really given me something fun to get on with and it stops me slouching about the house in my down time...my partner doesnt really get it, but she lets me get on with things (Unless the "To watch" pile starts getting a bit unweildy) xD so yeh...thats my story :)