10 Bad Films That You Absolutely Must See
SEE: Death Bed - the bed that eats people.
It’s one of the most famous opening scenes in film history: as music swells, the lights go up and a TV psychic reads his opening monologue aloud from cue cards. “Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives….”
Plan 9 From Outer Space is more entertaining and enlightening than Great Art, answering such questions as “Are there atmospheric conditions in outer space?” and “If you hold a cape in front of your face, will everyone think you’re Bela Lugosi?” Viewed late at night with an intoxicated crowd, it might be the greatest movie ever made.
To paraphrase Pauline Kael, true movie fans talk less about good movies than what they love in bad movies. Plan 9 is a smorgasbord of inept line readings, half-baked ideas and dime-store effects that has amused fans for decades, resulting in countless books and articles as well as numerous spoofs and homages, but how many other pictures can hold a candle to its awesomeness?
The short answer is very few, as anyone who has ever sat through a triple bill of Oasis Of The Zombies, Octaman and Track Of The Moon Beast will confirm. Good bad movies have charm and personality; enduring a movie that is simply bad is too much like watching ice melt.
For the long answer, step right this way....
10. Maximum Overdrive
When the Earth passes through the “Extraordinarily diffuse” tail of Rhea-M, a rogue comet, machinery comes to life with demonic intent, causing steamrollers to squash kids and pinball machines to electrocute their players.
For reasons unexplained, a bunch of 18-wheelers, whose leader has a Green Goblin face (with glowing red eyes) on its front grille, have started circling the Dixie Boy Truck Stop until they’re gassed out, after which they demand to be refuelled so they can, er, keep on truckin’. Circle of life, you know.
Like that year’s Howling II and King Kong Lives, Overdrive isn’t completely humourless, but it’s never funnier than when it isn’t supposed to be. Trucks sneak up on people unawares, victims brace themselves against being run over by holding their hands in front of their faces and sub-Bernard Herrmann strings are heard whenever someone is attacked.
Then there’s the dialogue. The biggest howler comes when girlfriend Laura Harrington tries to dissuade Emilio Estevez from refuelling the trucks. “You can’t do this,” she tells him. “It’s like Neville Chamberlain giving in to the Nazis!”