Why, I ask? Why?

[voltron]

I'm just the type of guy who'd rather watch Garden Of The Dead than, say, Star Wars for example (not to knock it, though). I think it's a cerntain sensisibiblty that we all have here. A je ne se quois, so to speak.

[akiratubo]

I watch bad movies because I will never, ever see a "good" movie that entertains me as much as something like Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

[Archivist]

I watch bad movies because I will never, ever see a "good" movie that entertains me as much as something like Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

I'd never heard of this movie so I did a bit of Googling.  Oh. My. God.  How can something this cool exist and I not know about it???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOjSSTbhCIk

[The Burgomaster]

I watch bad movies because I will never, ever see a "good" movie that entertains me as much as something like Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

I'd never heard of this movie so I did a bit of Googling.  Oh. My. God.  How can something this cool exist and I not know about it???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOjSSTbhCIk

Keep Googling.  There are cheap Turkish and Indian rip-offs of many movies, including Superman, ET, and The Exorcist.

[bob]

I watch bad movies because I will never, ever see a "good" movie that entertains me as much as something like Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

I have been trying to find that for a while now

[Criswell]

I watch bad movies because I will never, ever see a "good" movie that entertains me as much as something like Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

I have been trying to find that for a while now

Its on Ebay all the time.

[The Burgomaster]

I watch bad movies because I will never, ever see a "good" movie that entertains me as much as something like Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam.

I have been trying to find that for a while now

There are various websites that sell this on DVD-R.

[Flangepart]

Absurd does make for film viewing and Shatner as Captain Kirk is the best. With his ever present battle music.

You...made me post this ...its all...your fault...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nziS8brN00

[Flangepart]

AND...when a flick lives up to this kinda promo...ya gotta love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79_ljVC5Wk

[Flick James]

I had a conversation with my boss that made me think of this thread.

My boss knows I love bad movies. He has passed by and seen me on this green site during breaks many times and has asked about. He has asked "why do you watch bad movies?" He'll ask things like "do you just watch them to make fun of them?"

I answer, "well, yeah, but there's more to it than that." That's an understatement and a half. I can't fully explain this strange fixation with b-movies. I'm just glad that I've gotten my wife to at least partially embrace this pursuit. This pursuit is a complex mix of nostalgia, cheap amusement, and genuine fascination for these films that actually got made.

However, in this conversation yesterday with my boss, I think I turned a corner in him understanding my bad movie habit. Out of the blue, he asked me if Beastmaster was a b-movie.

Holy s**t! I said "hell yeah that's a b-movie, and a damn good one. Now you're talkin' my language." And we laughed. He confessed that it is one of his favorite movies of all time and that he is sometimes reluctant to tell people. When he said that, a little light flicked on in my skull. I think the difference between us and others is that we fully acknowledge and celebrate those movies that others would be ashamed to say that they like. That is, we carry no guilt about it.

I told him that he should be proud to love Beastmaster. I also told him that the same director is responsible for Phantasm, one of my all-time favorite bad movie franchises.

I've always like my boss, but I've always felt that we don't really have much in common or relate to each other on a personal level very much. I think I've found a connection.

[Leah]

For most of them, it's just good ol' fun. Plan 9 is just horrible in a good way. You know it's low budget and made fast and it shows, sometimes they can be over-the-top flicks that makes the word absurd seem like a compliment. These are the films that has no redeeming value except for fun. But then there's others which fails in the public eyes, as Xanadu and Halloween III, because of ignorance from the film makers and or audience. There can't be a good film because there isn't any top 'oh my god, this is the best ever period!' film out there that we, as the viewers, can agree on. Bad movies makes us feel good inside, as to bring out our inner child from time and time again. These are our guilty pleasures and proud about it!

[AndyC]

Holy s**t! I said "hell yeah that's a b-movie, and a damn good one. Now you're talkin' my language." And we laughed. He confessed that it is one of his favorite movies of all time and that he is sometimes reluctant to tell people. When he said that, a little light flicked on in my skull. I think the difference between us and others is that we fully acknowledge and celebrate those movies that others would be ashamed to say that they like. That is, we carry no guilt about it.

Sort of goes along with what I said about some of these movies being considered good at one time. Beastmaster got a theatrical release, and I remember it being aired frequently on the pay channels. Somebody obviously liked it. All my friends saw it at least once, and not all of them continue to be active b-movie fans. I think the difference is that what entertained me then still entertains me now.

And I have noticed something similar to your experience with your boss. I'm sure some people might be a little bit reluctant to admit liking the films they watched back in the day, but I think a big part of it is that they just moved on to newer titles and never looked back. But get them talking about it, and they'll name some surprising titles. Or you name a movie they loved but haven't seen or even thought about in years, and watch their faces light up.

I saw it with MAME and arcade games. People who could not be considered retro gamers by any stretch of the imagination would see the machine with all the old games on it, and they'd ask for that one special title. You can see the pleasure in their faces as the familiar graphics come up and they start to work the controls as if no time had passed since the last time they played.

Putting aside the weird, obscure and genuinely bad movies, a lot of what we like was mainstream entertainment when it was made. I have a hard time believing anybody who grew up around that time would not have gone nuts for at least one "bad" movie. For some reason, most just forget.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

For me its all fun... Fun you watch, fun to make fun of, fun to see what some guy in a dress can do with strings and pie plates and a rubber octopus (I'm talking Ed Wood, not your last weekend and you know who you are).

I love seeing how someone tries to fit a huge imagination into a tiny budget, or what they will throw up ona  screen to see what people will pay for.  Its all escape, I much prefer it to "serious" movies or blockbusters.
-Ed

[The Gravekeeper]

On a purely base level, they're fun in ways "good" movies aren't.

Getting more in depth, well, there's lots of reasons. First and foremost, I like that they don't try to trick you as much with special effects. Both the audience and the filmmakers acknowledge that it's just a guy in a rubber suit and keep going. I love it when the effects are particularly bad; it lets me enjoy the absurdity of someone being menaced by a sock puppet. Mainstream films that use special effects, though, try to make you think it's real all the time, so the film suffers when something goes wrong with the effects.

Getting outside of the look, there are entirely different ideas you can present in a "lower" movie that you couldn't get away with in a mainstream film. We have movies that celebrate the freak as a hero, that explore issues that mainstream audiences don't even realize exist (and may not want to acknowledge). Transgender movies, for example, are absent in the mainstream, and movies about homosexual issues may be celebrated as something new and bold...but we know better. Those ideas, those movies have been in the cult film world for decades because somebody wanted to make those movies whether or not the world at large was ready for them. Anyone with a camera, a little money, time, and dedication can make a movie, and we're willing to watch these endeavors.

Lastly, it's okay to laugh in most b-movies even if they're not comedies. Lots of cult movies I've seen acknowledge that there can be a lot of humour in things most people wouldn't find funny...and it's okay to laugh if you do. Everything is absurd if you look at it just right.

[AndyC]

And low-budget movies often have a purity of vision you don`t see in big studio pictures. Not so many cooks in the kitchen, trying to fix the movie or make it appeal to everyone. The people who made these films knew what they wanted to make and who they were making it for, and that was good enough. Hollywood movies today are so over-engineered to squeeze out every last drop of potential income, they just have all the life sucked out of them. Give me the days when Roger Corman would give some promising young director a budget and a deadline and then turn him loose.