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
