As you know, each year on Christmas Eve we post a Better Living Through Bad Movies-style review of some cloying holiday dreck, a tradition which stretches back to 2006, when the Crapper commentariat rose up and spoke with one voice, demanding we poke fun at It's A Wonderful Life. Fortunately, bad Christmas movies are America's most abundant renewable resource, right behind crappy horror films; and with that in mind, this year I'd like to branch out -- with black, bare, finger-like branches etched in sharp relief against a slate-gray sky -- and extend the custom to Samhain.
So if there's one particular horror film/monster movie/creature feature that bored, irritated, or inappropriately titillated you, leave the title in comments. I'll pick one, post the results on Halloween, and we can all enjoy it together (well, hopefully you'll enjoy it. I'll probably be bitter, semi-recumbent, and boozing it up).
So put on your stingy-brim fedora and your herringbone sport coat -- the one with the Paul Drake Effect -- and vote until ambiguous horizontal lines radiate from your skull.
25 comments:
TWILIGHT. Crappiest, most boring vampires ever.
Stalled. Guy hides from a Christmas Party Zombie Horde in the women's restroom. I believe the guy filmed it in his day-job office building after hours.
And you can re-post it at Christmas, so it's a two-fee.
TWILIGHT
Ouch. Right out of the gate. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea...
Amazingly, Stalled is available free on Amazon, so it goes -- gulp! -- into the Pile O' Possibilities.
But I just have to ask, ZRM: do you seek and see every single zombie movie, no matter how obscure, out of what I can only assume is a high-minded sense of professional courtesy?
But I just have to ask, ZRM: do you seek and see every single zombie movie, no matter how obscure, out of what I can only assume is a high-minded sense of professional courtesy?
Yeah. Courtesy. Let's go with that.
Netflix has an amazingly deep roster of bad horror movies...
OK, you two, break it up. Let some of us nonzombs get a word in edgewise.
There's a little effort called "Curse of the Bigfoot" that used to show up occasionally on the telly back in the 70s and 80s. I very much doubt it ever had a theatrical release. Videotape might actually have been invented so CotB could go straight to it. But I almost hate to suggest you pillory or even make gentle fun of it, it's so bad in every way.
However, it is zombieless.
Also, is it done to suggest something one hasn't seen? Coz I thought "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Killer" looked to be a really terrible idea, and I hear it was scorned by the cognoscenti. And if you pick it apart, I can dig your review and never, ever have to even imagine watching the thing. Selfish of me, I know.
Not selfish at all, Li'l, that's why I'm here. Think of me as a pop culture painter's mask.
HuluPlus has a little made-in-the-Philippines gem which I saw for the first time a couple of days ago, called Brides of Blood (1968).
Tagline: "A Brutal Orgy of Ghastly Terror! Sacrificed to the Nonhuman Creature"
It has all the right ingredients: radiation-induced mutations, people pieces, primitive islanders and naked* virgin sacrifices. Starring a lustful, proto-Humanoids-from-the-Deep (as imagined by Sid and Marty Krofft) rubbery monster. With Kent Taylor as The American Scientist, and Beverly Hills as his unsatisfied wife. (I really don't have to tell anyone what's going to happen to her, right?)
Plus, a very special guest appearance by Bruno Punzalan as manservant "Goro". Ok, I admit it: I never heard of the guy before, either.
And it's the first in the "Blood Island" trilogy!
* The nudity is all done with long-distance shots and strategic camera angles to conceal the naughty bits. You pervs.
Hey zombie, what about World War Z?
Worth the BLTBM treatment?
The Lost Continent -
From the Wikipedia page -
The film sees the crew and passengers of the dilapidated tramp steamer Corita heading from Freetown to Caracas. While the passengers all have their own reasons for getting out of Africa, the captain of the ship is also eager to leave, as he is smuggling a dangerous explosive cargo. Whilst en route to South America the ship is holed and eventually what's left of the crew and passengers find themselves marooned in a mist-enshrouded Sargasso Sea surrounded by killer seaweed, murderous crustaceans and previously marooned descendants of Spanish Conquistadores and pirates.
Oh, Weird, WWZ is COMPLETELY worth the treatment. It is SO stupid and annoying and stupid. I completely forgot how much that turd pissed me off. I even watched it a second time to see if maybe I missed something worthwhile. Nope. Complete Brad Pitt vanity project. I hope Max Brooks cashed a BIG check for allowing them to slap his title on a completely untreated film.
But for heaven's sake, the ONE movie you don't want to do is a lovely piece of Japanese Cheese called "Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead". Whatever you think it's going to be because of the title, you will be wrong.
It's like Evil Dead all mixed up with Alien, Plan 9, Sailor Moon, Scooby-Doo, and 2 Girls 1 Cup.
Seriously. Don't go to Netflix and watch it. Just don't.
Some zombie movies that are OK, though are Cockneys vs. Zombies (excellent end credits song) and AAAAAHH! Zombies!, or Dead-Alive.
Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows.
Godawful load of crap.
If it's zombies you don't want, Return of The Living Dead 4: Necropolis is a steaming heap of hot-buttered goat custards.
Blair Witch ONE wasn't all that hot, popular as it was. There's absolutely nothing to be gained by a second watching.
Also, the makers deserve some time watching Zombie Ass in hell for kicking off the hand-held POV film craze.
Grouchomarxist has already covered "Frogs", the movie that turned a hopeful innocent child into the bitter, cynical jaded empty husk of a man I am today. So we'll mention another film, one which left even me aghast with its absolute inertness and pointlessness. As you might have guessed already, it's a Uwe Boll film, namely "House Of The Dead".
"World War Z" is like the 1998 "Godzilla", in that if you don't consider the book or films that "inspired" it, it's merely a dull movie, rather than a betrayal of great promise.
I could do this all night. "The Rage:Carrie 2", any of the sequels to "The Howling", and the "Saw" series.
Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows.
Godawful load of crap.
I heartily agree, Gary. So much so that we actually did this one for the book. You'll find it in the chapter entitled "Coping With Grief: The Five Stages of Bad Sequels."
Yeah, WWZ, which I had the misfortune of seeing a few weeks ago . I think I checked it out because the Paramount lot has a billboard up for the flick (still!), and figured hey Brad Pitt how bad could it be.
Oh, it's a fucking zombie movie, I realized about twenty seconds in. I hate fucking zombie movies. All of them, Katie.
I hate fucking zombie movies.
Oh, me too. Every one of 'em I've seen. I try to watch them all just to be ABSOLUTELY SURE...
Wait, there were zombies in the film of "World War Z"? Were they hiding behind the bad CGI ripoffs of the infected from "28 Days Later"?
One word: Succubus. A real stinker, mixing euro soft-porn with incredibly bad acting and writing. It's been over 40 years, but it still lingers in my memory as a true horror.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus_%28film%29
If that one isn't bad enough, try the 1970 treasure Equinox. It's a keeper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox_%28film%29 Remember, a monster's work is never done...
Nazis at the Center of the Earth
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2130142/
That title, and it stars Jake Busey. What else can I say?
Back in my old bad movie reviewing days, a friend sent me a copy of "The Killer Eye, saying it was "the worst movie I've seen in years!" I put off watching it until my VCR broke. I have a feeling this was probably for the best.
Well Bill, since self-defense is now a sacrament in many of our sovereign states there's been a lot of it lately, but this may be the first case in which a homeowner used procrastination to stand his ground.
Two words:
Cloverfield.
come on - "killer seaweed, murderous crustaceans and previously marooned descendants of Spanish Conquistadores and pirates." - The lost continent
acrannymint:
I can testify from personal experience that TLC is indeed a spunky load of noodles. It really freaked me out to see Eric Porter -- who did such an amazing job as Soames Forsyte in the original BBC series -- playing the lead in that turkey.
It's rather dismaying to realize just how many of these movies I've seen.
ANNTI sez...
Oh, if only I could remember all of the horrible movies that TCM has brought into my life @ 4A-ish, and then I shipped 'em all off in the proverbial e-mail bottle to Scott... SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM, if only I could fucking REMEMBER THEM!!!
DEFINITELY the stock-footage-of-bare-tittied African "natives" and the inimitable PAUL ROBESON shooting from the comparative Jim Crow safety of Burbank... THAT beast-of-hideousness & Great White Colonists has DEFINITELY got its own scent-proof, superglued-shut lucite SHIT-SPLOSION-containment unit @ the Scorcese-curated archives of the some American Film Institute or what-the-hell ever.
Absofuckinglutely UNBELIEVABLE, if I hadn't seen it with my own lazy eyeball... and no, sadly, none of the perzenus shit that I'm on helps me to HALLUCINATE what-the-fuck-so-ever, so no, I know for a fact that *I'm* not the mostly-caucasian idiot who inflicted this demeaning garbage upon one of he most-amazing voices/actors of the 20th century!
Go on, Scott --- I dare ya! What the hell was the TITLE of that clusterfuck, though... ??
Ah, well, more homework for you, but hey, it's not like I don't send you tips every time that I am appropriately-horrified enough for whichever piece-of-shit-that-somehow-got-funded leaves a semi-permanent scar upon the small remaining blob of congealed Jell-O floating in the dented bucket that I call my skull... It's all sent with love, honey, it's aaallll love. Heh heh.
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