when did the cult of the "bad movie" begin?

zombie no.one · August 21, 2014, 05:16:16 PM

in other words, when did people first start watching films because in a 'so bad it's good' type way?

because surely there was a time when this would've been inconceivable. at the dawn of cinema, when the very notion of a moving picture on a screen would've wowed every audience in the world, regardless of the actual content.

Rev. Powell · August 21, 2014, 05:24:43 PM

First landmark I can think of were the Medveds book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time" in 1978 (which kindled interest in Ed Wood when they named him the worst director ever). I'm sure there were people who appreciated bad films before that, but I can't think of anyone doing it in any organized way.

lester1/2jr · August 21, 2014, 06:03:45 PM

Reefer Madness was a popular midnight movie in the late 70's. That might have been the first time people went to a movie theater to see a movie they knew was stupid and laugh at it (because they were all stoned).

Josso · August 21, 2014, 06:10:56 PM

For me if it's meant to be bad it's never really going to be true BM gold, I dunno maybe I have double standards on this subject though because I love gervais mockumentaries for example

JaseSF · August 21, 2014, 06:17:35 PM

Drive-In Movies and double-triple features might have been a factor...late night TV too and Monster movie hosts. Rocky Horror Picture Show perhaps deserves a mention.

zombie no.one · August 21, 2014, 06:30:04 PM

Quote from: Rev. Powell on August 21, 2014, 05:24:43 PM
First landmark I can think of were the Medveds book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time" in 1978 (which kindled interest in Ed Wood when they named him the worst director ever). I'm sure there were people who appreciated bad films before that, but I can't think of anyone doing it in any organized way.

interesting, not heard of that book before. I was thinking about Plan 9 possibly being the first recognized 'good' bad movie but I wasn't sure about a timeline.

Quote from: lester1/2jr on August 21, 2014, 06:03:45 PM
Reefer Madness was a popular midnight movie in the late 70's. That might have been the first time people went to a movie theater to see a movie they knew was stupid and laugh at it (because they were all stoned).

yeah, not really a 'movie', but I guess it counts in a way. same period as the book rev mentioned too, late 70s. maybe that's the year zero of bad movies then

Ozzymandias · August 21, 2014, 07:40:07 PM

Ozzymandias speaks: Before the Medved brothers book, this was probably fueled or, at least, inspired by the advent of older movies being shown on TV. That was part of what created the "monster kid" phenomenon. I remember reading an old newspaper article, from the late 50s, about some problems Johnny Carson was having with the censors on his CBS TV show. He mentioned that the network didn't want him to do a skit called "Old Movie Watchers Anonymous" about a treatment program for people addicted to watching old movies on TV (making fun of Alcoholic Anonymous). The "Shock Theater" package was released to TV at this time. This leads me to believe that the cult started springing up around films at this time. This was also about the same time Famous Monsters appeared on newsstands.

It probably grew after the Golden Turkey book. I know college campuses and, in some markets, radio stations sponsored "Midnight Movies" which was a major factor. It think it really exploded with the advent of home video. You could watch these movies over and over at anytime.

Ozzymandias has spoken!!!

Javakoala · August 21, 2014, 09:26:18 PM

And you have Vampira from the late 50s who poked fun at the movies shown, simply because the TV station could only afford packages of the crappy second-run titles.

My brother, who got me hooked, used to sit up on Saturday nights in the late 60s to watch bad horror movies and then he would talk about and make fun of them during Sunday breakfast.

You can even find comments going back to the age of true exploitation flicks (30s and 40s) of people frequenting grindhouses, which were theaters that stayed open pretty much 24 hours a day showing whatever movies they could get cheaply. I'm fairly confident that among the people who went there that there were a few who watched the stuff because it is so loopy as to be entertaining.

Trevor · August 22, 2014, 12:52:45 AM

Stephen King wrote about 'the siren song of crap'

in his book Danse Macabre where he said that people will go see a bad movie many times just to justify how bad the thing is.

For me, it started in 1973 when a friend of the family took me (aged six) to see this POS:

I loathed it: it almost put me off watching movies forever.

Jack · August 22, 2014, 06:41:10 AM

Didn't they used to show double features way back in the day at the theater where the first one was really low budget and terrible? I imagine that was from the time when it was five cents for both movies lol. And then you had all those awful low budget things made in the Philippines at the drive ins. I imagine some people developed a certain fondness for those. Or just a fondness for the drive in experience.

Rev. Powell · August 22, 2014, 08:52:41 AM

Quote from: Javakoala on August 21, 2014, 09:26:18 PM
And you have Vampira from the late 50s who poked fun at the movies shown, simply because the TV station could only afford packages of the crappy second-run titles.

Vampira started in 1954. That's now the earliest "official" cult-like recognition of bad movies as entertainment cited (though it was limited to bad horror movies). Of course, there were probably people riffing the early Edison and Biograph nickelodeon shorts before the turn of the century.

BoyScoutKevin · August 22, 2014, 04:25:28 PM

Quote from: Jack on August 22, 2014, 06:41:10 AM
Didn't they used to show double features way back in the day at the theater where the first one was really low budget and terrible? I imagine that was from the time when it was five cents for both movies lol. And then you had all those awful low budget things made in the Philippines at the drive ins. I imagine some people developed a certain fondness for those. Or just a fondness for the drive in experience.

I agree with the low budget, but I don't know whether I always agree with the terrible. Terrible sounds more like the C movie and especially the Z movie. As an example of how good a B movie could be is 1952's "The Narrow Margin" w/ Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, and Jacqueline White, directed by Richard Fleischer, and with a screenplay by Earl Felton, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work. An RKO picutre, it is actually thought to be a better film than many of RKO's A movies.

Actually, the B movie apparently dates back to the early days of films, back to the 1920s, with the decline beginning in the 1980's. Though, for me, the decline began a decade earlier in the 1970's, when theaters, or the ones I attended, stopped showing 2 movies for the price of 1.

Another qualification of the B movie was its shorter length or from 1 hour to 90 minutes or often shorter than the main feature or the A movie shown with the B movie.

Interesting topic.

lester1/2jr · August 22, 2014, 05:09:12 PM

I read about Lost Horizon in that Hollywoods horrible turkeys book or whatever it was. I've always wanted to see it.

Javakoala · August 22, 2014, 06:50:42 PM

I refuse to believe that version of Lost Horizon was a POS. I mean, it had Bobby Van. He gave an Oscar-level performance in The Doomsday Machine. You must be confused, Trev.

zombie no.one · August 22, 2014, 09:06:21 PM

talking of the late 70s time period, I also feel like AIRPLANE is one of the first movies to actively make fun of the format of bad movies and their various clichés. In fact isn't some of the script taken almost verbatim from some older movie?

anyone know any movies before Airplane which were kind of 'aware' of their own badness?