Not Making Decisions

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After anesthesia they tell you, “Don’t make any important decisions.”  That’s the excuse I’m using for having watched Llamageddon recently.  That, and it’s free on one of the streaming services to which I have access.  I only found out about it because of such services and I wasn’t in any shape to decide important things like how to spend the rest of the groggy day.  I’m of mixed minds regarding comedy horror.  Or is it horror comedy?  Decisions.  The fact is, quite a few horror movies do involve some amount of fun.  My favorite ones tend to be more serious, but once in a while you find yourself watching movies you know are (or you know are going to be) bad.  I knew this one was.  It’s so bad that it’s got a cult following.  It was, I’m pretty sure, made to be bad.

So a killer llama from another planet is forced to land on earth.  It kills an older couple in Ohio and after the funeral two of their teenage grandchildren, Mel and Floyd, are left to stay in the house.  Mel, who is older and more experienced, contacts all her friends so they can party that night.  Of course, the llama’s still on the loose.  It has laser-beam eyes and it bites and punches people to death and the partiers are picked off, not exactly one-by-one since many of them are electrocuted in the hot tub.  Generally they’re so drunk and/or high that they don’t believe any of this is happening.  Eventually Mel and Floyd’s father arrives and tries to save his kids.  Before dying of llama bite, he kills the quadruped by running it through a combine.

It’s worse than it sounds, but it’s played strictly for laughs.  And, I suspect, it’s one of those movies that’s meant to be watched under the influence.  Since anesthesia is about as close as I’ll ever get to that, I suppose this counts.  Some of the early horror movies have become funny with the passage of time as early special effects age and we become used to better, more convincing fare.     As it is, it’s difficult to find much about Llamageddon apart from IMDb, and the director’s name, Howie Dewin, is a red herring.  I’m fascinated by such films being able to gather a following.  Of course, I confess to enjoying Attack of the Killer Tomatoes when the mood is right.  And a day when decisions are contraindicated, anything can happen.

Ghoulish Night

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Night of the Ghouls, I like to think that even as a child I would have opined, is a bit silly.  It does show improvement over some of Ed Wood’s other films and the plot is really no more harebrained than some movies I did watch as a kid.  I’ve been trying to figure Wood out.  He was apparently incompetent, but he had no formal training and that could explain things a bit.  He was also creative.  This film is broadly a sequel to the worse Bride of the Monster.  Although only a couple of characters appear in both films, there is quite a bit of reference to the earlier story.  There was a mad scientist who made monsters.  The house burned down (actually an atomic explosion in the former), but someone—no-one knows who—rebuilt on the same location.

In a typically convoluted Wood plot (he wrote as well as directed the film), a bogus necromancer (who is actually, without knowing it, a really powerful necromancer) bilks clients out of their money by raising their dead loved ones for a few minutes.  He keeps the police and others away by having his young female assistant pretend to be a ghost outside the house.  But then she runs into an actual vampiric ghost who’s killing people who wander onto the property.  The police eventually decide to investigate and prove themselves as incompetent as the writing for the film.  They do manage to put an end to the fraudulent seances but it’s up to the real raised dead to put an end to Dr. Acula and his assistant.  At least there’s no atomic explosion at the finish.

The film, in Wood style, is black-and-white and the props are cheap and not really convincing.  A bit of the movie seems to have been intentional comic relief.  It doesn’t really work as a horror film because there’s nothing really scary about it.  Wood was a lifelong fan of horror movies, but fandom doesn’t always equal the ability to replicate the object of desire.  There are several possible horror atmospheres—Poe horror is quite different from Lovecraft horror, for example.  Wood seems to have been unable to strike a vein, however, that was close to an authentic horror feel.  The Scooby-Dooesque role of the necromancer doesn’t really help, I’m afraid.  Still, for fans this is vintage Ed Wood work.  I can’t claim to have figured him out, but if you’ve a hankering for a bad movie, this isn’t a horrible choice.

Earth Colors

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Bad movies can be therapeutic.  While trying to find hope it sometimes helps to see that others are even worse off.  This isn’t exactly Schadenfreude, but rather an awareness that your own efforts  at self-righting aren’t so bad.  Then there’s the hopeful monster theory, but that’s something different.  Already the title of Die, Monster, Die! warns the viewer that this won’t be Oscar-worthy material.  And despite his fame by 1965 Boris Karloff was still landing sub-par roles in such movies as this.  Both the directing and editing are noticeably lacking, evident even to an amateur.  A step backward may help; this movie is based one of my favorite H. P. Lovecraft stories, “The Colour out of Space.”  This is, to me, his most Poe-like tale and could well serve as the basis for a film.  Too much is changed here, however, to make it work.

Arkham is transplanted from its native New England to the old one.  The love theme manages to interrupt the mood of dread Lovecraft used in his story.  Nahum Witley’s use of the meteorite runs counter to the family’s reaction in the original.  The screenwriting doesn’t build much confidence either.  On the positive side, it feels like a fine little haunted house film from time to time, when the plodding plot doesn’t get in the way.  For a scientifically aware visitor, Stephen Reinhart has no concerns about lingering, unprotected, around a major source of radiation.  Although a few of the jump-startles work, the whole ends up feeling just a bit silly.  Of course, I was watching to escape, for a moment, what life throws at you.

Like reading poorly written books, watching bad movies can teach you mistakes not to make.  Movies can be an education rather than simply entertainment.  Cinema is one of the great myth-making vehicles for modern culture and, unfortunately, big budgets are often (but not always) necessary to make them believable.  Here is the hidden element of optimism, perhaps.  H. P. Lovecraft stories can sell films.  They also attach those who may be excluded from studio A-lists because, let’s face it, Lovecraft appeals only to a specific demographic.  The title of this particular film buries the lede, however.  No Lovecraft keywords (Dagon, Dunwich, Arkham, Cthulhu, or any of a host of others) clue readers in to what they might expect.  Learning the film business from Roger Corman might’ve steered director Daniel Haller is this direction, I suppose.  Whether he intended to or not, he produced a therapeutic result.

Movies about Movies

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The category of movies so bad that they’re good sometimes spawns the phenomenon of a movie about the bad movie.  The Room, generally on the list of worst movies of all time, was followed by The Disaster Artist.  Not exactly a documentary, it was a movie about the making of the movie.  There’s a macabre fascination with films that dare to be so very bad.  They’re released nevertheless, and if they’re the right kind of bad they grow a following.  Ed Wood’s movies inspired Tim Burton’s movie Ed Wood—dramatized, but apparently not far from the truth.  Troll 2 was followed up by Best Worst Movie, directed by the child star of the original, Michael Stephenson.  Such movies are irresistible in their own right.  So when I finally saw Troll 2 I turned around and immediately watched Best Worst Movie.

A few things stood out in this documentary.  One is that being part of something larger, it’s not always clear what this larger thing will be.  Most of the people in the movie (which was released directly to video) found out about the release by accident.  Many of them never acted again but one thing they all knew: when they did see it, it was clear that it was a bad movie.  The one person in the documentary who doesn’t accept this is Claudio Fragasso, the director.  Fragasso is Italian and he still maintains that this is a great movie and everybody else is wrong about it.  He skulks around the tributes made to the movie and insists to both actors and viewers, that the movie isn’t bad.  They are wrong, he is right.

There’s nothing wrong with pride in achievement, of course.  Sometimes, however, it’s more graceful to admit that you simply got it wrong.  Best Worst Movie follows some of the actors to conferences where they expected huge lines and great attention, only to find a handful of disinterested spectators wondering what all the fuss was about.  At the same time, there are screenings of Troll 2 in major US cities that draw sell-out crowds.  Bad movies don’t appeal to everyone, of course.  They can, however, serve some good and might even add some enjoyment to life.  Best Worst Movie underscores that not all film fans have the same taste.  It also shows that those who enjoy traditionally bad movies aren’t alone.  There’s an aesthetic to being bad enough to be good, and even that can spin off sequels of its own.  And please, Mr. Fragasso, don’t make the sequel you’re touting—this kind of magic only comes once, unless you’re a genius like Ed Wood.

Bad Movie Therapy

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I haven’t see Troll, but it doesn’t matter.  Troll 2 has nothing to do with it.  As a frequent contender for worst movie of all time, Troll 2 is an anti-vegetarian screed and campy horror film that’s impossible to take seriously.  It’s part of my bad movie therapy.  And it’s also an example of religion and horror.  But first, let’s set the scene.  The Waits family (Michael and Diana, and their kids Holly and Joshua) is doing a house exchange for a vacation.  Before they leave, however, Joshua’s dead grandfather appears to him to warn him about the goblins.  The goblins, who are vegetarians, make people eat/drink a special substance that turns them into plants so that they can eat them.  (Yes, it’s that bad.)  Ignoring Joshua’s concerns, the Waitses head for Nilbog (goblin backwards) and go ahead with the house exchange.

The locals (there are only 26 of them) can make themselves appear human and they try in vain to get the visitors to eat.  Joshua prevents his family from eating the plant food by peeing on it.  They go to bed hungry as the queen of the goblins plans her next move to get them floradated.  About midway through the film, we’re shown a church scene in which the minister preaches of the evil of the flesh.  Ironically, this is not far off from the teaching of some Christian denominations.   He tells the trolls what they already know—they have to get the visitors to eat so that they can eat them.  If nothing else, it will make you forget your troubles for ninety minutes, unless your trouble is that you’re being turned into a plant.

Any number of reasons have been offered for why the film is so bad.  While filmed in Utah, the crew was Italian, and most of them spoke no English.  The movie was low budget.  The acting is just plain bad.  All together, however, these features work symbiotically to grow a wonderfully therapeutic end result.  Some of the crew claimed that it was the intention all along to make this a funny film.  Comedy horror or horror comedy is a recognized genre, after all.  The only problem I have now, however, is where to go from here.  So how does the Waits family escape their peril?  I’ll need to offer a bit of a spoiler here.  The goblins are frightened away long enough by a double-decker bologna sandwich that the family can touch the magic stone and destroy the conspiracy.  What are you still doing here? Why aren’t you watching this already?

Hoppy Fourth

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Today is the one of the relatively rare summer holidays.  Modern industrialized nations tend to take a more relaxed view toward summers without having to give out too many prescribed company holidays.  This seems to follow on from school schedules because the kids are out in summer and adults need some flexibility when work demands collide with family needs.  The internet has made work-life balance a little tricker to achieve since work is always just a click away.  Some more generous employers gave yesterday as part of an extended four-day weekend, which is rejuvenating in a way that’s easily forgotten until you start to feel it.  The sense of obligation takes a couple of days to wind down, and then on Monday you realize “I’ve still got another day off!”  It’s a sublime feeling.  Why not watch holiday horror on it?

The Wicker Man is a holiday horror movie.  One of my arguments in the book is that holiday horror has to derive its energy from the holiday, and not just be set on it.  For example, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Return of the Living Dead are both set on or near Independence Day but the movies don’t really draw their horror from the holiday itself.  It falls into the same category.  Frogs?  Well, maybe.  Perhaps holiday horror, it’s definitely in bad movie territory.  A rich southern family is dominated by a Trump-like grandfather who controls the money and measures everyone by loyalty to him personally.  On his birthday, the fourth of July, nature revolts and his adult children and grandchildren (apart from one granddaughter), are killed by animals in this eco-revenge groaner.  But is it holiday horror?

One scene may suggest that perhaps it fits the category, but the real significance of that day is that grandpa won’t let it be celebrated any way other than by his prescribed plan.  Even as the estate is overrun by frogs (mostly), snakes, lizards, alligators,  tarantulas, and even some birds (thank you, Mr. Hitchcock), he insists that everyone do what they always do on the fourth of July/his birthday.  The only scene that suggests holiday horror is where the eponymous frogs hop onto a cake decorated like an American flag.  I normally like nature-revenge films, and this one starts out well but quickly goes downhill.  The environmental message is there, but underplayed.  There are some firecrackers and a number of dead rich folks, but otherwise the film seems to have no message at all.  It’s a bad movie.  Holiday horror?  Not really.  Something to watch for a day off work?  Definitely.

Good-Bad

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If anybody bothers to follow my movie viewing history, they’ll know that it includes a perhaps disproportionate number of “bad movies.”  In fact, I recently added that as a category for my blog posts.  In need of some reassurance, I read Matthew Strohl’s Why It’s OK To Love Bad Movies.  (As far as I can tell the Why It’s OK series was started by my old boss at Routledge—an inspired idea!)  Strohl is a philosopher, but one who admits to, and even advocates for, loving bad movies.  This book is fun but it does have a serious philosophical underpinning.  I can’t summarize it all here (you need to read the book anyway) but my main takeaways are that ridicule isn’t making the world a better place.  Movies that are so bad that they’re good are definitely a reality.  There’s a community built around it, but I haven’t had many visits from it in my lonely little corner of the internet here.

Strohl points out that not all bad movies are what he terms “good-bad.”  There are certain qualities—aesthetic qualities—that make a bad movie good.  And it doesn’t involve watching the movies to make fun of them.  One of the films that often tops the list is The Room.  When I first saw it I really couldn’t think of anything to write about it on this blog.  It was just another bad movie.  Now I want to see it again.  I do have to say that on my first viewing I didn’t feel like ridiculing.  I was more stunned than that.  And when I watched Plan 9 from Outer Space—another on the list—I felt inspired to learn more about Ed Wood, its famous director.  I’ve since watched a couple more of his movies and I appreciated them.  Now I have a better idea of why.

In addition to discussing the biggies, Strohl also takes forays into some collectives: the Twilight series, for example, and the movies of Nicholas Cage.  These are both often singled out for ridicule, but this book demonstrates that there’s an artistry to such things.  And Bad Movies underscores that not everyone likes the same bad movies.  Strohl also makes the salient point that if we only ever watch great movies we’d have no basis for comparison.  There’s a lot to like in this little book.  One thing it convinced me of (in addition to making me feel a bit better about myself) is that there’s a community out there that I’m missing out on.  Good books bring people together instead of dividing into factions.  This is a good book.

Bad Movies

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It’s embarrassing.  No, really it is.  The other day I was posting on yet another bad movie I’d watched and I realized that I should add a new Category (although I’m likely the only one who uses them) on this blog.  Now, it’s a pain to add a new Category to a blog with over 5,000 posts.  I reasoned that my bad movie watching, although a lifetime pursuit, really only appeared on this blog recently.  I had to scroll through the existing Category, “Movies,” to remind myself of what I’d posted on.  I found a few to add to my new Category, then a few more.  Finally the number grew to embarrassing portions.  I kept scrolling until it made me dizzy.  I couldn’t remember whether I’d posted on The Room or not.  It’s not a horror film, but it is very bad.  So bad I watched a parody of it.  Using the search function “The Room” brought up just too many hits and I was already woozy.  Maybe I didn’t want to admit to that one.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

There’s an aesthetic to watching bad movies.  In fact, there are books written justifying the practice.  I thought maybe I had started my bad movie watching posts with Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, but no.  No, it went back further than that.  As someone who writes books about movies (maybe bad books about movies?) I need to do my homework.  Not only do I write books on movies, I also write on them for Horror Homeroom on occasion.  I’m scheduled to teach a class on a movie this fall.  I’ve even presented on movies to church groups (they never invite me back to talk on that topic again, however).  I know the reason lies much deeper, though.

Part of it derives from a childhood of watching bad movies.  There’s nostalgia involved.  More than that, however, I grew up poor.  Unless you’re a rags-to-riches story (I’m not) that mentality stays with you your entire life.  I’m always trying to cut costs, but I love movies.  On weekends I look for what’s free, with or without ads, on Amazon Prime.  They cater to bad movies, it turns out.  And before long it becomes like an addiction.  There’s a fascination to watching something so obviously poor that nevertheless ended up in theaters.  In other words, hope glimmers through.  My books are far too expensive to sell well.  My name isn’t widely known.  There is, in other words, a validation in watching bad movies.  I’ve got a well-populated Category for them right here.

Mutant Madness

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I’ve never seen Freaks, nor have I ever wanted to.  It’s an exploitation film of carnival actors that  Tod Browning, for some reason, thought might make a good follow-up to Dracula.  Most of us are aware that it’s bad enough exploiting  those with unfortunate deformities for money, and making a movie out of it doesn’t help.  I have to confess that I stumbled onto Jack Cardiff’s The Mutations thinking it was a creature feature, without realizing it was a seventies version of Freaks.  With a mad scientist thrown in for good measure.  Honestly, though, the carnies are the characters with the highest moral standards of anyone in the movie, so at least it has that going for it.  You’d have thought that by 1974, however, that people would’ve known better than to reprise a movie that wasn’t well accepted forty years before.

Professor Nolter, the mad scientist, is a university professor trying to force evolution’s hand by blending animals and plants.  So far, so good.  He uses his students as victims, which makes you wonder why their wealthy families don’t start any investigations when they go missing.  The professor is assisted in his experiments by one of the co-owners of the carnival, which allows for a presentation of the carnies in a most awkward piece of cinematography.  Two of his students are successfully made into plant hybrids, but one dies shortly afterward.  The other escapes, so he decides to replace him with yet another student.  Meanwhile, the carnies tire of their exploitation—rightfully so—and turn on the henchman/co-owner of the show.

The only real payoff here is the successful hybrid that turns into a student into a human Venus flytrap.  If he hugs you in his rubber-suited arms, you’re a goner.  And the film starts off with several minutes of time-lapse photography of plants growing, which is pretty cool, even amid the strangeness that’s to follow.  When I saw that the movie starred Donald Pleasence, and having Halloween on my mind,  I figured, “How bad can it be?”  It was, after all, free on Amazon Prime.  As with many exploitation movies, it’s poorly written and the props aren’t believable.  Some of the giant plant-animal hybrids are worth looking at, even though they’re never explained.  In the end the mad scientist’s creations kill him, as expected.  I would normally consider such information as a spoiler, however, considering that the movie spoils itself, I won’t worry too much about it.