RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[M.10rda]

Such a wholesome-sounding film, yet I can't help but think of Blackie, the sinister madam from TWIN PEAKS,  or Gigantopithecus Blacki, the real historical "bigfoot" that exists in the fossil record...   

[Trevor]

If I remember right, it was one of the last films put out by Sunn Classic Pictures. Competent, but made cheaply to fill a market need, like a TV movie.

Had it VHS, & don't remember it being that bad. Then again, I remember little about it outside the box. 

Maybe I should see if I still have the tape, then try to get my VCR working. Or I can check Amazon Prime.

It's on YouTube, good quality too. 😊🐢

[lester1/2jr]

Exceptional Beings (2023) - Wow. wowowowow I haven't seen a bad movie that is so watchable and actually good since Troll 2. My praise doesn't come higher, or lower, than that.

I loved every minute of this thing, even the scenes that were objectively useless and bad. I'm a serial pause-er, but only did so a couple times in the one night this took. The Greek Gods Hermes and Athena are on Earth looking for some person who they think is some kind of secret god in hiding or something because she can see them. The dialogue is very "cringe" as the kids say. It's a style that could work in an off Broadway/ student play but is entirely distracting here.

Along the way we also meet Apollo, Hades, Poseidon, and Noah of Noah's Ark fame (edit: thats wrong it's...Methuselah? ) . There are some fun Xena: Warrior Princess type fight scenes and special effects. The end credits indicate this was made in some other part of the world and it's "outside" ness is ultimately the selling point. It actually starts off pretty conventional and compelling but gets bad and weird very soon.

5/5 yes I know I'm in the Bad section. I'm still trying to comprehend what I saw, cut me some slack.

[M.10rda]

You've earned infinite slack here, Lester! 

[lester1/2jr]

thanks, but I'm going to stick with more familiar fair. more made for tv tonight

[pacman000]

Finding Rin-Tin-Tin (2007)

A dramatization of how Lee Duncan found Rin-Tin-Tin durring WWI, with plenty of emblishments.

This was bad. Too much crude humor & too many long slapstick segments. There's a cloying kid & a mean slob of a cook. Acting was either wooden or over the top. Airplane scenes look like a video game.

The first 10-20 minutes actually were decent, if somewhat cheap & Masterpiece Theaterish, but, as it goes on, it just gets worse & worse.

Not even worth the price Amazon charged for the download, free.

[zombie no.one]

HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK (1980)

88Films recent fully uncut version... seeing this, I realise whatever version I saw about 15 yrs ago must've been the most heavily cut / censored / edited version possible, lol.

David Hess is a cinematic one-off. not a great actor (in fact a pretty bad one, apologies Dave if your ghost is reading) but he has a unique aura. he's got such a sleazy face. no surprise that he never really broke out of b-movie-dom, but I think he would've made a good Bond villain's senior henchman or something similar.

half way through it occurred to me this film is not a million miles away from a much earlier giallo COLD EYES OF FEAR, wonder if that was an inspiration... but this is way darker.

It also has the best attempt to re-wire a nursery rhyme that I'm aware of in a film:

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
And called the police
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her
And scared the s**t out of her

I think this just about out-does Steven Baldwin's riff on Old MacDonald in THE USUAL SUSPECTS?

[M.10rda]

HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK (1980)

David Hess is a cinematic one-off. not a great actor (in fact a pretty bad one, apologies Dave if your ghost is reading) but he has a unique aura. he's got such a sleazy face. no surprise that he never really broke out of b-movie-dom, but I think he would've made a good Bond villain's senior henchman or something similar.

He was indeed senior henchman to Louis Jourdan in SWAMP THING, and Jourdan was later a Bond villain.    Good call!

[zombie no.one]

He was indeed senior henchman to Louis Jourdan in SWAMP THING, and Jourdan was later a Bond villain.    Good call!

hah, the lesser known 'Six Degrees Of Cubby Broccoli' game... (the vegetarian alternative)

just saw that Hess died in 2011. remember the news, thought it was way more recently than that

[M.10rda]

THE DECAMERON (1971):
"Hey, this guy's killing me!" That's the English subtitle of the first line of dialogue delivered during the first shot of this Pier Paolo Pasolini flick which opens on a murder in progress. My spotty grasp of Latin (and classic Italian literature) made me presume THE DECAMERON was an anthology about the Ten Commandments, ala Kieslowski's DECALOGUE. Instead it's an anthology of ribald tall tales related over ten days of a plague-imposed quarantine (timely, eh?) though most or all of the Ten Commandments do get violated here or there or repeatedly.

The first story focuses on a fancy young lad played by Ninetto Davoli who chases a hot chick (who may or may not be his estranged sister) straight into a literal pit of feces. Davoli, who looks and acts a lot like Ron Palilo as "Horshack", spends the next 15 minutes smeared with poop while everyone who meets him complains about the stench. Yes, THE DECAMERON is an intentional farce from the man who brought us SALO: THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM. What follows is a parade of dudes lusting for babes, babes lusting for dudes, other dudes lusting for young boys, discreet female nudity, full-frontal male nudity (including close-ups of erect dongs), biological humor, one severed head (!), and a healthy dollop of sacrilege. When I got to the long sequence about horny nuns convincing a handyman to deflower them, I thought "Oh man, early 70s Italians must've hated this movie!"

...Nope! In fact THE DECAMERON was a smash hit in Italy and is still considered some kind of classic... just more evidence that large groups of people can often be wrong, even when it comes to foreign films/nominal "arthouse" fare. Mind you, I'm wholly favor of p**sing off conservative Catholics, but as trash goes, DECAMERON has less in common with John Waters and more in common with a Rob Schneider movie or an episode of "Hee-Haw". Neorealism is one thing, but this just looks thrown together haphazardly. A lot of the dialogue is delivered in close-up and directly into the camera lens, like you'd see in something made by some middle-schoolers. Sightlines are violated constantly and (rhythmically and dramatically) the whole damn thing is edited not even with a cleaver but with a truncheon. All of the acting is terrible, everything looks gross and unappealing (including most of the naked bodies), and the movie never gets funnier than that opening subtitle, or even close. If it was any more lowbrow it would be a goatee.

Somehow I've now seen more than half of Pasolini's films. This is the worst, but none of them seem worthy of his reputation. SALO was the first one I saw, it's a repugnant piece of filth, but it's also the closest to a credible piece of serious filmmaking. Can anyone actually defend this guy as a director?!

1/5

Actually, anyone want to defend Pasolini as a human being? Googling him again after watching this reminds me of plenty of dank trivia. He was repeatedly charged with having sex with boys under the age of 16 and started dating Davoli when Davoli was 15 (Davoli was 20 when they made DECAMERON). Although initially a pro-Labor leftist, Pasolini eventually took a hard right-turn towards being an apologist for Italy's corrupt police force and even a self-identified "anti-anti-fascist", which puts him ahead of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham by nearly half a century. As slick and reasonably involving as SALO is, it's also inescapably a celebration of aristocratic decadence, military might, and the commodification and consumption of the bodies of children. I dunno, is it time to chalk PPP up as a black mark on the history of cinema?

[Rev. Powell]

Can anyone actually defend this guy as a director?!

TEORAMA, and that's it. Although I don't dislike the Trilogy of Life as much as you do. The series important for bringing sex and nudity into mainstream film in a non-porny way. But as a filmmaker I find him visually bland most of the time--if they haven't found him a great set, he doesn't do much of interest with the camera. But I have always been a PPP detractor aside form TEOREMA, and I think SALO was a scam on the moviegoing public.

[M.10rda]

I appreciate that input, and recognize that TEOREMA seems to remain his claim to credibility. I watched it for the first time last year and was disappointed. He seems to completely lose focus well before the end of the film. (Granted he had many extracurricular interests, ahem.......)

I am curious to hear you write more about SALO as a "scam". I recognize a potential large degree of cynicism about it - either it's the most glamorous criticism of fascism this side of a Jerry Bruckheimer picture or it's an excuse to wallow in the thing it purports to condemn. That said, it reflects a lot more love and care than anything else I've seen him direct (which in and of itself is a grotesque statement)...

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Monster from Green Hell 1957
https://youtu.be/7jio_6DlExU?si=MzsgCOSX9zZAV-ua

Starts out with scientists losing a rocket full of bugs, then a few weeks later, a mission in Africa reports giant bug attacks...
A few months later, the scientists hear about the hubbub in at the mission in Africa & decide to to see for themselves....
Then, walking, walking, hostile natives, walking walking walking, contaminated water, more walking, a monsoon, walking, reach the mission, a pause, then resume walking.....
At one point, they run out of water, but they never run out of cigarettes....

Most of the excitement occurs during the first twenty minutes...

[zombie no.one]

THE WIND (1986) aka THE EDGE OF TERROR

Thought Nico Mastorakis could be relied upon to bring at least some kind of craziness or just off-the-wall randomness to any film, but this is just pure boredom! same 3 characters walking round in circles on a greek island and annoying each other. insufferable crap of the worst kind. 0.5/10

[lester1/2jr]

zombie - that sounds like a winner!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOu4knRopb0

Playing With Fire (1985) Someone uploaded this ^ ABC Sunday Night Movie taped off of Alabama TV. I wonder if they didn't get it from the TV station itself? I think I read that they worked to clean it up in some modern way, too.  At any rate, it's way above a normal old VHS rip.

The hook here is a massive one: Gary Coleman as a pyromaniac teenager! Through the first half it mostly delivers, with Coleman gradually reaching his breaking point and proceeding to start throwing matches at stuff. After a while, he just can't stop and frankly why should he? Everyone's mean to him at school (though he does have a love interest for a minute) and his parents are splitting up and he always has to babysit his annoying siblings. He's not very clever though ( and also doesn't seem to understand how fire works?) so he's constantly getting caught by fire chief Yaphet Kotto.

Unfortunately, the second half is boring with him and his parents always going to fire kid/ divorce therapy. There's a punchy quality to his dialogue though and he is really great at playing a p**sed off/ angry person, which he undoubtedly was.

Glad I saw it, there were some great scenes but the fire does not burn into the lackluster second half.

3/5

The copy retains the ads, many of which I remembered.