For long time readers of this blog you will be aware of a guilty secret I have. That of a lover of dreadful films.
I have always loved this sort of film. The ones that have sets built of cardboard and star-filled backgrounds made from a bit of black cloth with Christmas lights poking out.
Then, about 18 months ago, it all changed. I had an idea of holding a “Bad Movie Night” at an old friend‘s house. Then it became a joint odyssey in the under-belly of films. The ones that nobody sees, or admits to watching. Sometimes you do wonder how they were made. Probably too much coke in the executives office! Not only that, it may have involved the same drug in the director. If you have seen the trailer for Stephen King’s directorial début, Maximum Overdrive you will understand! OK, just hit play on the trailer below…
This event was going to be a “once in a while” event. That didn’t last more than that first evening as we were planning what to see the next Friday. From then on, it’s been a weekly event. There are some times that we don’t have one. That’s more down to what the group is doing. Having to work for a deadline or someone is off on holiday. Apart from that it is a weekly event and we still haven’t run out of the horrid.
As with everything, there has to be rules. Well, more guidelines that we follow most of the time. It’s a simple, short, list:
- 1) The film can’t be a Razzie winner.
- 2) The film can’t be a box office bomb [ a film by a major distributor that coat millions to make but only made a small fraction of that back at the cinema ].
- 3) The film has to suck you in.
- 4) You have to hope that the film will get better but deep in your heart you know it won’t.
- 5) If the film is just un-watchably bad then it is fine to stop the film and find something “better“.
We have broken, or at least heavily bent, the above rules on more than one occasion [ only rules 1 & 2 ‘tho]. These are mainly for nostalgic reasons or to see if the film is as bad as the critics have made it out to be [ Battleship, and yes ].
Some things happen in this sort of film whilst watching them. We have lost track of character names in many a film. When this happens, it is quite allowable to give the characters nicknames to keep track of who they are. One we had was Coke Bimbo. A character who then disappeared ¾ of the way through the film and was never heard of, or talked about again. We still wonder what happened to her. It probably involved the monster that liked topless bimbos to eat.
This is where I go away from the usual style of this blog and do something that I’m not a big fan off. That’s a list. It’s not of the top ten variety but just a list of films that we would recommend you to watch. Possibly as well a couple that you have to avoid as well as they are just too bad to watch. It isn’t in any order apart from who got hold of the piece of paper that we made this list on in the first place.
The list is on the next couple of pages so just click through and be amazed.
