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The Top 10 Good Bad Movies
Posted by Jason Castleman on Jun 26, 2003, 02:38
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The Top 10 Good Bad Movies
Review by Jason Castleman
At my house, every Saturday night is bad movie night. Every Saturday night is 1-3 of the worst movies we can find. Some of these movies are really fun. Some are just really, REALLY, horribly bad. We have strayed from the bad movie rule on the rare occasion to watch some Buster Keaton movies or something like Undercover Brother since it's a blaxploitation parody, one of our favorite Saturday night genres. A few days ago, on a whim, we decided to come up with our top 10 favorite Saturday night movies and our 10 least favorite. We didn't put them in any particular order just made a nice even list. So I thought I'd post these lists here on the site. First up is the ten best. In case you guys ever feel like putting together your own marathon of crap, here are our picks for your bad movie night....
1. Blood Shack - This is one of the earliest movies we ever watched. Blood Shack is an absolute masterpiece of bad cinema. A young woman inherits....well, a blood shack...out in the desert. Seriously. She inherits a SHACK. And for some reason she thinks a shack is worth inheriting. So she goes to check on her little shack and meets up with a spooky little caretaker guy that runs around warning everybody not to go in the shack because it's haunted.....by the CHOOPER! Who you never really see. This movie has so much going for it. Bad acting, video so bad you can hardly stand to watch it, bad script, bad shack, bad everything, but damn if it isn't one of the funniest movies you could ever watch thanks to lines like: "I told ya he'd get ya, and now look at you, you're dead" and "The....chooper.....is.....real.....*dies*." My version is the director's original cut which is only about an hour long. There is supposed to be a longer version because the "suits" claimed it wasn't long enough for a theatrical cut, so the director just took a bunch of rodeo stock footage and spliced it into the movie to make it longer. I can only imagine how much better it is with all that in it. Stock footage always helps a bad movie.
2. Bugged - When my friend came over with Bugged, I took one look at the box and told him he was stupid. A black comedy about bug exterminators? That's gonna suck. Little did I know that it would be a live action Bugs Bunny cartoon. A woman's house gets infected by bugs; bugs which get sprayed by some top secret chemical and grow to giant proportions. "Dead and Buried Exterminators" are called in to get rid of the bugs and THAT is where this movie earned it's top ten showing. After the first minutes of setup, the hijinx begin. Imagine if Elmer Fudd was real and was an exterminator. That's what this is. When the heroes attempt to lure the bugs into a trap by tossing a decoy into the woods, for example, the insects respond by throwing back a lure of their own...a whole roasted chicken on a string. Which of course the men go for. There's also a part where one guy lights up a over sized novelty dynamite stick and tosses it into the bathroom to kill one of the bugs. The bug of course throws the stick back out at him, but he doesn't see it since he's standing there with his eyes closed and fingers in his ears. KA BOOM! This movie should be a classic. Not even a cult classic, this should be on the level of Citizen Kane. Find this movie and watch it.
3. Prince of Space - When we started this list, this was one that was just a complete no-brainer. No best of list would be complete without the Japanese classic, Prince of Space. It's a total masterpiece. Most people have probably only seen it on MST3K but the movie is probably better in it's original form, quite frankly this movie is so funny, it doesn't need those MST3K guys making the jokes, you can do it yourself. The movie IS the joke. The plot follows a group of space men led by their leader, Krankor, who looks like a human chicken, who try to conquer Earth. They of course are stopped by the Prince of Space. One of those wacky Asian superhero guys in the vein of 8-Man or Ultraman. If we listed these movies in order, this one would probably be number 1. It's got everything. A giant that looks like Ross Perot, a chicken-shaped space ship, bad dubbing complete with a small Japanese kid with a Brooklyn accent, a completely awesome villain with an even more awesome evil villain laugh and a hero that says "Your weapons are useless against me!" three million times. One of my favorite movies of all time. Seriously.
4. Dolemite 2: The Human Tornado - One of our favorite genres is the blaxploitation genre of the 70's. Dolemite was one of the first we watched and it's an absolute classic, but it pales in comparison to it's sequel, The Human Tornado. Plot? The same plot as always. Queen Bee's club is under attack by crackas so Dolemite opens a can of whoop-ass but still finds time to bust out some rhymes. The first ten minutes of this movie is worth a purchase or a rental alone. It starts right off with Dolemite going to town on some small town white slut. It just so happens that this slut is the daughter of the racist redneck town sheriff and pretty soon the whole house is being overrun by rednecks. Dolemite, not worrying about clothes, just busts out some of his black-fu and then jumps down a hill and jumps into a waiting car...cue theme song. And what a theme song it is. One of the best of the entire genre. Better than Shaft, better than Superfly. It's the Human Tornadahh! Completely awesome. A fantastic experience. Not a movie, an experience! Another blaxploitation movie that just BARELY missed the list was Bucktown USA. Pam Grier AND Fred Williamson together kicking ass in a small racist redneck whitey town. Hell, I don't even know why that movie didn't make this list. It's friggin great.
5. Rumpelstiltskin - I really can't think of a solid reason why this movie made the list except for the single fact that it was just fun as hell to watch. It's just a rip-off of the Leprechaun movies and we never really liked any of those except for Leprechaun in the Hood. Nothing really stands out except for the fact that we just had a blast watching it. It's friggin fun and that is all that matters. Though we did come up with our own title for the movie which made it move up a notch. Rumpelforeskin.
6. Skinheads - The Second Coming of Hate - Another one of our earliest and best nights was watching this little hidden gem of a movie. If you're sick of watching movies like American History X and Higher Learning where skinhead members are all serious and crap, then get your paws on Skinheads - The Second Coming of Hate. Though I'm sure the people that made this movie tried to be just as serious as those other two movies....they failed. The movie is basically a "chasing women through the woods" movie. The skinheads stumble upon a group of college kids out in the middle of nowhere and start killing them. That's the plot. I guess it was supposed to be a horror movie but it's one of the funniest movies ever made. The skinheads are portrayed as the biggest goofballs ever. They're constantly falling over, running into each other, into trees, into rocks, getting their legs stuck in bear traps. Imagine a Buster Keaton skinheads movie. That's what this is. There is one scene where a character is tied to the front of a cabin and is killed by a bear ...actually by a bear sound effect. There is not even any stock footage of a beer, just someone going "growl, growl" into a mic and shaking the camera. Another scene features a character wiping his ass with poison ivy. They all fit the usual stereotypes of any unimaginative gang movie. You got the "crazy" guy, the naive newcomer who eventually sees that his friends are no good, a chick only there to fight another chick at the end of the movie and of course the big muscle guy who isn't very bright. The group drives around in big white 70's type van with GIGANTIC corny swastikas painted on the side. It's like the "A-Team" of skinheads. The "heroes" aren't much better. After all their friends get killed, the "guy" and the "girl" run into the woods. Once they get away a bit they stop and take a break. The guy turns to her and says "so...what do you do when you're not getting chased by skinheads?" They then go on laughing and joking until suddenly they realize that they ARE being chased by skinheads and all their friends are dead, so they take off running again. Eventually they run into Chuck Conners, a WWII vet living out in the middle of the woods, who helps them fight off the evil skinheads. This is one of the funniest movies ever made. Maybe the best part is that the whole time I was watching it, from the way it looked and everything, I just ASSUMED it was made in the 70's. It looks 70's. The film is so old and grainy. It fits right in with the exploitation movies of the 70's. But then I check and it's from....1989? How is that possible?!
7. Samson vs. the Vampire Women - Actually ALL Samson movies are pretty good. But this one does stand out. This was one of those classic Mexican wrestling movies from the 50's and 60's. Wrestling was extremely popular in Mexico so somebody thought it would be a good idea to take the most popular masked wrestler, El Santo, and turn him into a movie superhero. Santo, known as Samson in the U.S., had a series of movies that featured him fighting a wide arrange of various evil-doers. In Vampire Women he fought....well, vampire women. The vampire women in Mexico have awakened from their sleep, commanded by their master, "The Evil On"e, to find him a bride. They choose the beautiful daughter of a local professor. To rescue his daughter, the professor calls Samson to save her. So in between his various wrestling matches, which we see in their ENTIRETY, he tries to find the chick. Imagine how campy and over the top the "Batman" series was and imagine it made on half the budget and in Mexico. That's what this is. There are just so many memorable moments that you could never list them all. BUT....probably the best part is one particular fight where the tubby Samson is fighting another masked wrestler, of course you can't really tell who is who since they're both wearing masks. Samson is getting his ass kicked the whole match and figures out that something funny is going on because the masked wrestler keeps using karate on him. He takes the guy's mask off and discovers that it's a werewolf! When he tries to capture the karate fighting werewolf, it turns into a rubber bat and flies away. No description could ever do that scene justice it HAS to be seen. It is truly brilliant.
8. Sgt. Kabukiman, N.Y.P.D. - My personal favorite Troma movie. It's been a while since I've watched it but all I remember is laughing my ass off. What superpowers Kabukiman has! Flying sushi, killer chopsticks, umbrellas that blow gale force winds. It has low-production values, bad special FX, campy humor, topless women, a monkey, nothing but pure entertainment.
9. The Killer Eye - Full Moon finally shows up with this piece of work. Plot goes something like this....a kinda mad-scientist is trying to develop a technique for seeing into the 8th dimension. After a previous experiment goes terribly wrong, blinding his test subject, he makes some revisions. His new revisions don't really help much as his newest test subject peers into another dimension and is killed by an extra-dimensional entity which enters our world and infests the eye of the subject. After expanding to enormous size and detaching from the body of its victim, the giant killer eye goes on a rampage. What follows is a giant eye chasing porn star Jacqueline Lovell around the apartment complex while killing or raping anything that gets in his way. SEE horribly funny dialogue! SEE the 6 foot eye ball that nobody can seem to find! SEE the eyeball caress the bosoms of voluptuous models! SEE a floating beach ball painted to look like an eyeball shoot cheesy green laser beams out of his....well....out of his eye! SEE the two slightly homo-erotic stoner roommates who sit around all day watching porno and sharing a bowl of pills! SEE gratuitous shower sex scenes with the eyeball's tentacles! SEE The Killer Eye!!!! It's only 67 minutes, why not? SEE IT!
10. Revenge of the Zombies - Revenge of the Zombies is the oldest movie on this list and it's a movie that doesn't get nearly enough airplay on TCM or AMC. It's from 1943 and stars black comedian Mantan Moreland. And that is where the movie's problems begin and end. Like I said, Mantan Moreland is a black comedian and he's from the 40's. So obviously his style of comedy is rather un-pc today. Maybe not as un-pc as other guys like Stepin Fetchit, but still pretty un-pc. But the thing is, guys like Mantan are just fantastic comic actors, so when people bitch about those old black comedians, it's really a slap in the face to those guys I think. If it wasn't for these early black actors breaking the barrier, there wouldn't be the Martin Lawrences and Dave Chapelles of the world today. (Maybe that's not a good thing now that I think about it. I could do without Black Knight.) It's also a slap in the face because those guys are really great. They are hilarious. Mantan has some of the funniest comic timing, delivery and facial expressions you could ever see. I just don't get why people vilify these guys the way they do. Sure they had to play the dumb parts and they had to play porters and waiters and things like that. But I don't see that as being any different from Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball. And watching a guy like Mantan rising ABOVE the crappy roles and crappy movies he had to be a part of is just amazing. In my mind, this is a guy that should be spoken in the same breath as other comedians from his era such as the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Chaplin and Keaton. He's that funny. I just don't get why these guys get blamed. It's not like they WANTED to play the "lazy chauffer" or the "dim-witted butler." They just did what they had to do and more times than not they rose above it. BUT.....that rant aside. Revenge of the Zombies is a pretty crappy movie. It's another in a LONG line of cheapy horror movies about a mad Nazi scientist trying to create an army of the living dead to rule the world. Run of the mill says it best. And while the "star" of the movie might be John Carradine, this movie is Mantan's movie. He takes this stupid little run of the mill BS and turns it into pure comedic gold. Every line he speaks is funny, every face he makes is hysterical. He makes being trapped in a house full of zombies seem fun. It's a laugh a second and if you ever see the scene where Mantan spots "Beelzebub" in the bushes and his eyes damn near pop out of his head....you will stain your pants.
Well, that's that. Our list of the 10 best bad movies of all time. Of course, this list may change cause I just bought The Black Gestapo on DVD and that looks like it's gonna be a winner. The bottom 10 list will be put up sometime soon so keep your eyes peeled for that chunk of crap.
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