Mixed tape movies: How bad can a movie be? (Very –VERY- bad)

In the eighties it was the-thing-to-do to make a mixed tape (like an mp3 but touchable, always in need of a pencil and definitely cooler). On it you would make a little playlist of all the cool songs. Now the trick was to make each song correspond with the rest of the tape. In this post I will try to do the same with movies.

Every once in a while I will select a general topic and select movies to accompany it. As you can see the more child-friendly movies are at the start of the day, but  when night falls: ‘here be monsters’. Please feel free to give suggestions of other unknown movies.

One rule though: Auteur themes like ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘James Bond’ are not allowed. ‘Spy-movies’, naturally, are.

Theme: Bad movies.

Bad movies. There are various ways in which a movie can be bad. I’ll name four:

1. A movie can be SO bad, it’s becomes good for a different set of reasons. Like The room is such a strange monstrosity that it automatically becomes hilarious if you have a drink or two.
2.  A movie can be bad because it wants to be like Sharknado –no this movie has no intention of being Shakespeare. It is what it is; it wants to be bad. 
3. A movie can be bad because the dreams behind it were bigger than the pockets financing it. So the various blaxplotation movies or the 80’s slock horror (often) had terrible effects because those movies couldn’t afford any better. 
4. A movie can be bad because it totally missed the point of the story it was trying to tell. 

 

Now the whole point of this little summary is that none of these reasons deal with subjectivity. Yes a movie can be badly acted and contain some of the worst special effects but silly me; I might still like the movie. Objectively bad, subjectively good –as it were. This is important to remember throughout this article. I’m talking about ‘bad’ movies, not unwatchable movies (e.g. Pink Flamingos). 

Though I consider myself one of the original haters of the Cameron Titanic movie – an opinion that’s very popular nowadays.

08:00-10:00

Fuzzbucket: Disney trying his best to ‘invade’ on the 80s craze of weird puppet creatures (after E.T.). I think this movie came just before Harry and the Hendersons – In short this movie showcased that Disney can’t make a movie by executive order. There has to be heart as well.

10:00-12:00 

Mac and me: the big one! In the early 80s companies realized that children can be consumers. So McDonalds put out a movie: a kid in a wheelchair and a creepy alien.

This is truly one of the strangest movies ever. Whoever wrote this should earn a Nobel prize for: ‘doing his job’. The whole wheelchair-down-a-cliff-scene or the promise that ‘Mac will be back’; it’s pure horror repackaged as a children’s movie. And that is without mentioning the clown.

12:00-14:00

Garbage Pail Kids: A sad movie. I’m actually quite a fan of the late Anthony Newley. I think he was born too late. He had a great voice for the fifties. But he started his singing career in the sixties –when everything was jazz and blues.

He tried his luck in movies –accompanied with his good looks- but failed. He big breakthrough role (with some great songs to boot) in Dr. Doolittle died when the movie flopped.

So when I saw him pop up in this movie (me being an avid collector of the Garbage pall kids collector stickers) it actually made the (bad) movie extra sad for me. The poor bloke deserved better.

14:00-16:00

A gnome named Gnorm: I always liked this movie. I don’t care what other people say. A cop and a gnome working a case. Why not?

Whoopi Goldberg famously did that dino-buddy-cop-movie (contracts! she didn’t want to.) that failed tremendously . But in A gnome named Gnorm the buddy element works.

The trick the movie pulls is that it doesn’t put too much effort in the paranormal element in the movie and treats is like any other 80s buddy-cop thriller/action flick. Who cares if one of the main protagonists is a gnome, let’s get to it!

With that attitude this movie levels the playing field and allows characters to chew all kinds of scenery.

16:00-17:00

Teen Witch: People don’t write about this movie enough! I don’t understand why? Maybe it is because of the fact that the protagonists uses witchcraft to rape a boy!

That’s one of the ‘little things’ that stayed with me when I watched this movie aged ten. I knew all about consensual sex (though I didn’t really knew about what went where). But I certainly knew that this movie had some warped ideas about love and how it should, actually, be.

This movie is, currently, remembered for the bad rap-segment. But trust me that there’s more. There’s a whole sing-along in the shower-room that is practically unbearable.

17:00-19:00

Mannequin 2: on the move: I love this movie to bits.

Mannequin 2 pops up on all those ‘bad movies’-list all the time but I never understand why. Of course it isn’t Shakespeare but, heck, it’s just a fun ride. It’s a fairytale about a princess, an evil sorcerer and a handsome prince saving the day.

Mannequin 2 has no pretentions of being a great movie – it simply wants to tell a fun little fairytale and everything ends happily in the end.

19:00-21:00

Super Mario Bros: Dear God where to begin? Let’s get down to the basics: The happy world of Mario suddenly gets turned noir. Kupa is suddenly human. There is a ludicrous plot going on that is forgotten fifteen minutes in. Oh, and there are some walking bombs.

The couple Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton decided to do this movie after they did the (great, I must admit) D.O.A. They fought on set. Producers got involved and everything became a great mess.

Meanwhile Bob Hoskins and John Leguizame were happily drinking their worries away in a bar downtown.

21:00-23:00 

The room: What happened here? Nobody truly knows. This movie is the stuff of legend.

23:00-01:00

Bleeders: I’m a script junkie. I stated this before and I’m proud of it.

So imagine my surprise when I put on a movie of (my great hero) Rutger Hauer and realized quickly that the poor bloke got handed a piece of ‘unmentionables’.

Because that’s what creepers is.

In short it’s about a group of inbred creatures (without legs!) that corner a little town. Naturally the entire town decides to hide in that one place that will, most definitely, slaughter them. And fun occurs after that.

You can sometimes pinpoint a bad movie by the length and explicitness of the ‘sex-scene’. Creepers is the prime example. Like the director deciding to throw in a bone for the viewer.

 
01:00-03:00 

Troll 2 + the best worst movie: I coupled this one to the documentary. Obviously the documentary is the better watch.

Yes Troll 2 is one of the worst movies ever. Especially the bad acting and script will get you drunk before midnight. It has all kinds of stuff thrown at you that you can’t stop yourself halfway through thinking the age old phrase: ‘What else is on?’.

I lasted twelve minutes before I went for beer. See how long you last before you give up.