So bad it’s good
by annaguirre on Oct.07, 2009, under Ann Aguirre and Ilona Andrews
Today I’m gonna talk about b-movies, specifically SFF films that have terrible scripts, bad acting, rotten effects, and somehow manage to be totally awesome. I have to confess I have a weakness for these things. I loved MST3K.
Recently, we watched a movie that introduced my 10 year old son to the idea of MST3King a movie. This wasn’t SFF, but it was hilarious nonetheless. It was a Mexican movie, filmed in the 70s, about two kids who run away from their parents because of a dog and they travel all over Mexico having these wacky adventures. This is hilarious because of the stuff that happens to the kids. They’re slapped, beaten, threatened with death, jump off a train, locked up by an insane policeman. They smoke, hit on ladies, and it’s just all around amazingly inappropriate. I watched the movie, just gobsmacked by how much our perceptions of what’s acceptable have changed. But then again, our parents let us run wild all summer long, as long as we were in the neighborhood. We ran in packs and played lawn darts. Things have unquestionably changed.
So my husband and I watched this movie with our son and we laughed until we cried, making up our own dialogue. The kid had so much fun he didn’t ask to get his Gameboy or go play Wii. We watched until the end, and it was such great interactive entertainment. Now I’m looking for our next movie to MST3K.
Anything with a lesser Baldwin is generally a good candidate. Plan 9 from Outer Space is a genius work for this purpose. We also watched Raptor Island with …wait for it… Lorenzo Lamas. That’s a mark of quality entertainment, I tell you. Andres and I MST3K’d that one, too.
What are your favorite SFF B-movies?
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October 7th, 2009 on 4:49 pm
Lots of references to Highlander here. Did anyone here that a remake is on the way?
http://www.cinemaspy.com/article.php?id=3240
Good idea or bad idea? I vote good. Let’s put the head back on this franchise and start fresh.
October 7th, 2009 on 5:55 pm
No way, I had NO idea. *goes to read*
October 8th, 2009 on 12:32 pm
My friends and I do this all the time. Battlefield Earth is a good choice for this; the movie is such a relentless barrage of stupidity that there’s an endless supply of stuff to make fun of.
If you can find them- I don’t think they’re on DVD, but you can find used VHS tapes online very cheaply- I’d reccomend any of director Joseph Lai’s ninja movies. (They all have “Ninja” in the title.) Lai would buy the rights to Asian action films, redub all their dialogue, and then film 10-15 minutes of horrible “ninja” footage with some white guys in garishly colored and sometimes sequined ninja garb jumping around, and try to shoehorn the new footage into the events of the original movie.
Also, nice to see I’m not the only person who uses the term “lesser Baldwin.”