What's Wrong with the Movies Part 1
Trailers. Sure you go to the movies and you get to see trailers for upcoming movies. I find that on DVD we are seeing less and less trailers. I know that there is a question of providing the ultimate movie quality to space taken up on the disk but we should be able to at least have some trailers on DVD’s. The prime example comes from the early full moon releases. On one side you get the movie on the other you get a pile of trailers. We need more disks like that.
Monday, July 03, 2006
The Stuff
Tagline: Are you eating it ...or is it eating you?
Made by: The Man who brought you Q: The Winged Serpent and Maniac Cop(review forthcoming)
Plot: To men are digging and instead of striking oil then end up striking some white substance. Now when we see something white coming out of the ground I think we all have the same reaction: Let's eat. Not so good for the guy who does the eating but great for The Stuff. After that he finds a way to send the stuff on the road to mass consumption. Our hero, ex-FBI agent David Rutherford, decided to get to the bottom of what's really going on.
What makes it bad: Killer frozen yogurt. 'Nuff Said.
Background: I got my first glimpse of the stuff as a trailer on Defcon 4(review forthcoming). What amazed me was the scope . Here was a movie that was not about a bad batch of something, no, it was the whole product line. That more or less sealed the deal.
The Best Moment: What we eventually learn in The Stuff is that after having been ingested, The Stuff seems to destroy your inards and replace them with The Stuff. Logical, no, but hey that's how it goes. At one point in the movie, one of our heroes trying to escape from the stuffies proceeds to punch a good portion of one of the infected person's faces off. At that point in the movie however this just seems as if the puncher has gained superhuman strength. A quick trip to the commentary(yep, you won't hear anything on Unbreakable but The Stuff has commentary) and instead of an explanation we get a tale of how the director once worked with the star of stars: Eric Roberts. Awesome.
What to watch out for:
- Evil frozen yogurt
- Evil just about everything
- Foreign Bootleggers
- A guy who gets most of his face punched off
- Pillows filled with the stuff
- Respectable actors in this crap
Monday, June 26, 2006
Tips from the King Part 1
Bad Movies: from the store to you
So you're at the video store looking for something to rent. Something Bad to be precise. Do you have the skills necessary do separate the crap from the crap? If so my help is not needed but if not read on.
Step 1: VHS your time is now (now meaning about 8 years ago). Make sure that your video store still has a large VHS section. Sure, you will find many of these films released on DVD (Hollywood, always trying to make a buck) but I find that VHS is better for many reasons: tapes need to be rewound, tape quality degrades, renting will probably be less than 2$, tape glitches galore and no matter what terrible state the tape is in, your VCR will probably still be able to read it.
Step 2: Know your categories of crap. Truly bad movies come in all shapes and sizes but certain categories of films are better than others. You're gonna wanna look through the Sci-Fi and Horror sections first. Why? Well good sci-fi and horror is usually costly to produce and revenues from these genres are usually (up until a few years ago) small. Since studios Don't really invest in things that won't make them money, expect to see some ideas with potential turned into piles of dung. Next up are the action and martial arts films. Whether it's poor dubbing or poor acting these films are a good source of entertainment. The next place to look is films that involve dancing. As history has shown us styles change at the drop of a hat and not always into something good. If you lived through it or even if you didn't "what were they thinking?" will come to mind. Dramas and Comedies are usually not great in terms of crap quota but there are exceptions.
Step 3: Telltale Studios. Much like the Anchor Bay's or BCI's of today the past(namely the 80's and early 90's) has had a few studios/releasing groups that were all about quantity and not quality. Get your hands on all the Media Entertainment Group, Cannon Video, Full Moon, and Empire Pictures releases you can. Where crap is involved, these are the places to be.
Step 4: The stars of crap. The number one star to look for is someone you have never heard of. If you are not sure then ask the video guy. If even he (or she) has never heard of them then there's a good chance you've got a bad movie on your hands. Another bet are movies starring stars before they were stars. Early acting experience on soap operas and in foreign countries probably helped them in the long run but it won't be any help so early on in their careers. Some stars whose presence usually signifies badness: William Shatner, Adam West, David Caradine(and most of the other Caradines), Billy Dee Williams, Vanity, Any Baldwin save Alec(well, even Alec sometimes), Tim Thomerson, Bruce Cambell, Lou Ferigno, Claudia Christian, One or both of the Cory's and too many others to mention.
Step 5: Box covers of doom. Box covers can be very telling about a movie. The number one selling point is the title. Titles can be very misleading and I guess that's the reason that movies come in boxes to give us a better idea of what we are gonna see. A good follow-up point (although they can often be misleading) are the movies with art boxes. When you movie is so great that you don't even have a good still for the cover you know that you are in trouble. Commissioning an artist to draw something so great that it would be almost impossible to film may be your golden ticket but looks can be deceiving. It's a good idea to check the back to confirm your suspicions. If even the back doesn't have any stills then there's your rental.
Step 6: Time frame. A good starting point in terms of time frame are movies from the 70's and the 80's. At that point interest in movies was growing and we say the emergence of the direct to video feature. Well they might not have been direct to video yet but they had the direct to video level of quality. The early 90's can be iffy due to people embracing technology at the second point in its evolution. CGI (and new video editing techniques) from the 80's is great because it’s terrible but it's still amazing for the time. When we move on to the early 90's it's still terrible but it's slightly better but the evolution that we feel should have happened has not happened yet (and in my mind still hasn't) so it becomes a bad kind of terrible. Also at this point Movie mass production reached a new high but unfortunately this was not a good thing even for crap.
That's about it so get up get out and bring home thegood bad stuff.
Bad Movies: from the store to you
So you're at the video store looking for something to rent. Something Bad to be precise. Do you have the skills necessary do separate the crap from the crap? If so my help is not needed but if not read on.
Step 1: VHS your time is now (now meaning about 8 years ago). Make sure that your video store still has a large VHS section. Sure, you will find many of these films released on DVD (Hollywood, always trying to make a buck) but I find that VHS is better for many reasons: tapes need to be rewound, tape quality degrades, renting will probably be less than 2$, tape glitches galore and no matter what terrible state the tape is in, your VCR will probably still be able to read it.
Step 2: Know your categories of crap. Truly bad movies come in all shapes and sizes but certain categories of films are better than others. You're gonna wanna look through the Sci-Fi and Horror sections first. Why? Well good sci-fi and horror is usually costly to produce and revenues from these genres are usually (up until a few years ago) small. Since studios Don't really invest in things that won't make them money, expect to see some ideas with potential turned into piles of dung. Next up are the action and martial arts films. Whether it's poor dubbing or poor acting these films are a good source of entertainment. The next place to look is films that involve dancing. As history has shown us styles change at the drop of a hat and not always into something good. If you lived through it or even if you didn't "what were they thinking?" will come to mind. Dramas and Comedies are usually not great in terms of crap quota but there are exceptions.
Step 3: Telltale Studios. Much like the Anchor Bay's or BCI's of today the past(namely the 80's and early 90's) has had a few studios/releasing groups that were all about quantity and not quality. Get your hands on all the Media Entertainment Group, Cannon Video, Full Moon, and Empire Pictures releases you can. Where crap is involved, these are the places to be.
Step 4: The stars of crap. The number one star to look for is someone you have never heard of. If you are not sure then ask the video guy. If even he (or she) has never heard of them then there's a good chance you've got a bad movie on your hands. Another bet are movies starring stars before they were stars. Early acting experience on soap operas and in foreign countries probably helped them in the long run but it won't be any help so early on in their careers. Some stars whose presence usually signifies badness: William Shatner, Adam West, David Caradine(and most of the other Caradines), Billy Dee Williams, Vanity, Any Baldwin save Alec(well, even Alec sometimes), Tim Thomerson, Bruce Cambell, Lou Ferigno, Claudia Christian, One or both of the Cory's and too many others to mention.
Step 5: Box covers of doom. Box covers can be very telling about a movie. The number one selling point is the title. Titles can be very misleading and I guess that's the reason that movies come in boxes to give us a better idea of what we are gonna see. A good follow-up point (although they can often be misleading) are the movies with art boxes. When you movie is so great that you don't even have a good still for the cover you know that you are in trouble. Commissioning an artist to draw something so great that it would be almost impossible to film may be your golden ticket but looks can be deceiving. It's a good idea to check the back to confirm your suspicions. If even the back doesn't have any stills then there's your rental.
Step 6: Time frame. A good starting point in terms of time frame are movies from the 70's and the 80's. At that point interest in movies was growing and we say the emergence of the direct to video feature. Well they might not have been direct to video yet but they had the direct to video level of quality. The early 90's can be iffy due to people embracing technology at the second point in its evolution. CGI (and new video editing techniques) from the 80's is great because it’s terrible but it's still amazing for the time. When we move on to the early 90's it's still terrible but it's slightly better but the evolution that we feel should have happened has not happened yet (and in my mind still hasn't) so it becomes a bad kind of terrible. Also at this point Movie mass production reached a new high but unfortunately this was not a good thing even for crap.
That's about it so get up get out and bring home the
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Welcome one and all to the Bad Movie Night blog.
What is Bad Movie Night you ask?
It is a night where some friends and I get together once a week and watch bad movies. Pretty self explanatory if you ask me. This is not the first incarnation of bad movie night but we will get to its history in future posts.
What will you see here?
In the past few years Bad Movie Night has provided us with countless hours of entertainment. I feel it's our duty to give back. Here you will get mini reviews of the movies that have been featured, Bad Movie Ratings, Bad movie night history, more or less random links and hopefully we'll finally solve the Good Bad Movie vs. Bad Bad Movie Debate.
So to sum up more or less all things Bad Movie Related.
When will this Blog be updated?
The question posed about many blogs. I wish I had a definite answer so I'll have to go with more than a lot but less than some. Since that didn't clear anything up: once every few days.
What is Bad Movie Night you ask?
It is a night where some friends and I get together once a week and watch bad movies. Pretty self explanatory if you ask me. This is not the first incarnation of bad movie night but we will get to its history in future posts.
What will you see here?
In the past few years Bad Movie Night has provided us with countless hours of entertainment. I feel it's our duty to give back. Here you will get mini reviews of the movies that have been featured, Bad Movie Ratings, Bad movie night history, more or less random links and hopefully we'll finally solve the Good Bad Movie vs. Bad Bad Movie Debate.
So to sum up more or less all things Bad Movie Related.
When will this Blog be updated?
The question posed about many blogs. I wish I had a definite answer so I'll have to go with more than a lot but less than some. Since that didn't clear anything up: once every few days.
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