In college, I once forced some friends of mine to watch Barbarella with me. I made them because they had a poster of the film in their common room though neither had actually watched the film. They both agreed it was absolutely horrible. Really guys? Jane Fonda rolling around a spaceship that's completely covered in shag carpeting?
My roommate Jackie and I used to watch Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Pure schlock but oh so good in it's campy extreme low budget-ness. I mean who can say no to alien klowns (yes spelled with a "K") that come down to Earth on a circus spaceship and capture humans in cotton candy cocoons! Actually I'm pretty sure everyone can say no to this film. But it was just so bad it became good.
I don't know what the fascination is with these "I thought they were a good idea" films. I'm sure some directors and writers vehemently refuse to believe that they ever had a hand in making them. But, like a horrific accident on the highway, you can't not look.
Take for example The Apple. A number of people know that this is one of my favorite films. I think I stated this fact when I was majoring in film in college. The incredulous look on my TA's face, and the sad shake of the head from my professor, was all I needed to realize that this movie clearly did not qualify in their "greatest movies ever made" category. Luckily I never mentioned my love for other films of the same ilk.
If you've never seen The Apple, you should watch it, just to uncomfortably sit through the sexual innuendo laden songs. Oh, yes, forgot to mention it's a musical. It came out in 1980 and was one of the many films to try to capitalize on the movie musical revival that films like Grease had started when it came out in 1978 (note that The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Who's Tommy both came out in 1975, but the public draw wasn't as great as Grease). Needless to say The Apple and many other films such as The Phantom of the Paradise and Shock Treatment (the sequel to Rocky Horror), and Grease 2 really bit the big one due to misshapen plots that attempted to link possible "hit" songs together. But I digress... I was talking about my love of really bad movies.
Pretty much all of the above mentioned films are owned by me and are watched on a pretty regular basis. But back to The Apple. The gist of the film is that it's set in the "future" (aka 1994) where Mr. Boogalow essentially runs the world via his music empire. He signs 2 Canadian folk singers by the name of Alphie and Bibi, and for the rest of the film it's the Book of Genesis (that's essentially where the apple in the title of the film comes from... and yes there's a very snazzy music/dance number in hell with a giant disco apple). Boogalow is the devil, and he uses his Cabbage Patch perm son and Predator hair daughter to seduce the 2 singers into his seedy music conglomerate. Lots of potential, very Dreamgirls meets... oh what the hell, it's absolutely horrible and they ended the film with the 2 singers becoming hippies and being led away to heaven by God (who they find out was the leader of the hippies the entire time, and was played poorly by Joss Ackland who you might know better as Hans from The Mighty Ducks).
I mean it's no Commando or Kindergarten Cop (don't know why I just referenced Schwarzenegger films) where it's lame but fun. Sometimes the worst movies ever made are the best. You just have to watch them like 2 or 3 times and be just a little over tipsy. And remember that when these films were being made, they always thought their special effects were the bomb. (I mean clearly better than Clash of the Titans or Jason and Argonauts, for sure.)
People probably won't get my obsession with these less than stellar films but hey, I don't judge when I notice you still have The Backstreet Boys and O-Town playing on your iPod. I mean, hey, don't judge a book by its cover. Or, in the case of a movie, by the fact that you've never heard of it and the title really sucks.
What's one of your guiltiest pleasure of a movie?
If you say The Notebook or A Walk to Remember, I won't be surprised, maybe a little disappointed but to each his own.
I leave you with some of my top "Meh" Movies That I Love Ever (had to whittle it down to 10):
1) The Apple - get into the apple dance
2) Shock Treatment - it's the acceptable face of the human race
3) Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension - A surgeon/scientist/rockstar played by Peter Weller (pre Robocop) c'mon!
4) Blow Dry - Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman as competitive hair stylists... original Hair Battle Spectacular anyone?
5) Barbarella - A death machine that's an organ/piano that orgasms you to death
6) Out Cold - like Caddyshack but at a ski resort and with Zach Galifanakis
7) Deep Rising - Treat Williams vs. a kraken beast and an explosion sequence that really doesn't make sense
8) Virtuosity - Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe... star power was not enough to get this film going
9) Hudson Hawk - the original Da Vinci Code with Bruce Willis... Yippee Kai Yay Mona Lisa
10) The Fast and the Furious - hotty mchot hot aka Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, oh and cars...
No comments:
Post a Comment