Hell Bad Movies – Act One

There is a special pleasure bordering on masochism when you watch straight up bad movies. It’s a feeling like when you witness a house fire or a car accident: you know what’s happening is horrible, but you still can’t look away. This kind of experience tickles a part of your brain that you didn’t even know could itch at all. The most exciting pieces are, of course, the ones where the creators put the maximum of their creativity and ability into the product, they honestly believe that what they are doing is permanent… so that the end result has the content value of a pile of cow dung.

My admiration for such cinematic monsters can actually be related to the devotion I feel for the medium from the start, because just as in the case of worthy works in the classical sense, here too we are looking for a lucky constellation, only with the opposite sign. In fact, more than that! After all, badness alone will not be fun, mistakes will not gain an aesthetic surplus, and screaming anti-talent will not magically turn into talent. You need some intangible additive. Something that causes catharsis on the other side of the scale, and mostly laughter spasms here. In the former case, it results from intentionality and will; in the case of bad films, it happens despite the creator’s intention. In this regard, making an excellent trash movie is more difficult than trying to besiege perfection, because here the final product has to be in such a superposition that it can simultaneously receive an IMDb rating of 1 and 10.

But as Nietzsche pointed out, “if you look long into a vortex, the vortex will look back at you” – so one must be careful when wandering through the hell of cinematography, because weak character and taste can easily be distorted by excessive exposure to sleaze. So if we don’t pay attention, we end up getting excited for Transformers movies and parts of the new Disney Star Wars trilogy, and I want to spare everyone from this horror. Taking upon myself the Virgilian task of accompanying the reader into the depths, I will show you all the sights of the underworld that the celestials have banished to the dark corners of the internet! (So, just to be clear, a thematic, relatively spoiler-free and rather subjective movie recommendation follows.)

Let’s quickly cut through the first circle, i.e. the porch of Hell, and pay tribute with a minute of silence to those tragedies grafted onto celluloid, which could never be completed, or which were just completed, but were lost over the years and became impossible to find! Let’s move on, there’s nothing to see here! Literally.

Second round: sinners of love

The Room (2003)

As the father of trash, he is practically the zeroth kilometer stone of all wreck film catastrophes. Our morning star, to which we can adjust the direction of our journey. For many of us, Tommy Wiseau’s film is the primal experience that we want to experience again and again. Johnny and Lisa’s timeless love story is just the framework for this moving experience, because Room is perfect in every aspect. The lines of dialogue became catchphrases, hundreds of video essays were sharpened at the moments of the characters, so that millions laughed at the film’s absurdity.

It was a widely known work even before 2017’s Disaster Artist directed the public’s attention to it, but the emblematic character of Tommy Wiseau, played by James Franco, burst into the public consciousness again, even more powerfully. Because Tommy, the mysterious person of the director/producer/writer/protagonist, and the Johnny he brought to life are almost inseparable: together they publish the bizarre, self-contradictory legend that was built around the film.

The story of Room is the most clichéd romantic drama possible, which, based on ridiculously incorrect clichés and roaring one-sidedness, creates something quite uniquely surreal in which anything can happen. Where else does it happen, for example, that for three quarters of the playing time, the actor playing one of the supporting characters has other things to do, so his place is taken by a completely new actor without any explanation?

The Beast (1975)

“Bestia” occupies a special place on this list, because this French film is a bland and extremely boring drama for 80 percent of the playing time. Well, that’s the remaining 20 percent! If we can get through the way a young English girl, Lucy, visits her French lover, Mathurin, with her maid of honor, with whom they have only been in contact by letter, then we will surely find a diamond in the rough! Of course, it may be strange for the viewer what Lucy eats on this balding, slightly schizophrenic bachelor, who apparently doesn’t care much about anything other than smoking and covering horses.

We can rightfully find this relationship initiative strange, because there is no chemistry between the two parties, so it can be guessed from the first moment of their meeting that nothing will come of the hoped-for romance. But we sit and watch as the characters in this isolated country château slowly immerse themselves in some bizarre erotic fantasy world bordering on zoophilia. Already here we can see many scenes that are indelibly burned into the brain (self-pleasuring with roses, to say the least), but the last segment is where things finally fall into place, and the Polish director, Walerian Borowczyk, kind of admits that yes, I actually wanted to shoot a porn film in which the bear-rat man with a huge rubber penis beats a Victorian noblewoman half to death.

Cool as Ice (1991)

Perhaps it is not surprising that the first feature film starring American rapper Vanilla Ice was not an undisputed success, but no one expected that the end result would be so disappointing. From the hands of director David Kellogg came such timeless products as the live-action film version of Bigyó Féfüzüeló, a bunch of marginal video clips and commercials, and… well, this product. Its story follows the classic Romeo and Juliet scenario, with the small difference that “Bromeo” is a ridiculous caricature character filled with all the fake coolness of the ’90s, who drives into the sleepy Christian garden town to screw the good girl’s head. Our hero this time is Johnny, and the head to be twisted belongs to Kathy.

Their pairing is such a strong cultural meme in itself that it can drive any moviegoer out of the world with good taste, but still Vanilla Ice takes the lead, pushing the fakeness to 110% with every move, and even in his most sincere moments, he’s comically contrived. You know, you should experience the elemental experience of all-consuming love while an unrecognizable clown in a bomber jacket is frolicking on the screen.

The ridiculous combination of the naïve, stuck in the pre-puberty emotional level and the childish idea of ​​coolness in human form, floating in the pink fog, from which every sane person would run away screaming, yet here they try to present this relationship as if it were the non plus ultra of romance.
Unsuccessfully of course.

Third circle: gluttons, gluttons

Cemetery Gates (2006)
On the surface, “Cemetery Gate” is just one of a dozen low-budget horror movies, in which a grown-up, mutant Tasmanian devil paws and devours a hiker every other scene. But if we take the tiredness and look under the surface, we realize that… it is also under the surface. However, few people have been able to present the badness in such a lovable way, so I dare to risk that this is the best mutant Tasmanian devil movie ever made!

Here, too, the interjections that can be used as a hotel fly low: I will never forget, for example, the moment when the main character, Hunter Belmont, meets his father, who was believed to be dead, again and exclaims in joy:Dad, you’re alive! – while the other man speaks in his perfectly hit, mournful dubbing voice: –You are smart my son…

So, if you want red paint, plastic bags and pieces of rubber, then this film can provide very pleasant entertainment in its solid way. All the more so, because its deaths, which can be avoided with common sense, can be a great reason for a drinking game, so when watched in company and mixed with alcohol, its enjoyment value increases even more.

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001)

According to its classification, it’s a horror parody, but let’s not be fooled: this Canadian film tries to make us believe that this is a loose comedy that puts a crooked mirror to the genre with its poor production and choice of trashy themes. Let’s not fall for this for a second! I’m telling you, if the second coming of Jesus involves the Savior handcuffing lesbian goth girls on the beach, then I want to witness it!

Canadian Jesus, listening to the word of the new age, shaves and cuts his hair at the beginning of the film, which makes him look like a car dealer from the Lower East Side, and then begins to sing and dance with the people of the street. The forces of evil are already gathering, and only He can save us from the rubber-toothed vampires, who are ready to bend close to our necks accompanied by stock-biting sounds at any time! So there is no question as to which side we should take in the millennial battle between bloodsuckers running around in clothes reminiscent of the fashion of the Matrix movies, atheists armed with baseball bats and cock-faced punk priests.

This garage project, made with a sum equivalent to approximately HUF 26.5 million, is like a drunken party grabbing a camera on a bet and starting to shoot scenes on the street according to a somewhat coherent plot, and spending the remaining 26.4 million from the budget on fairy dust. The quality is terrible, the voices were cut after the scenes, the acting couldn’t even rise to pornographic standards, and the story is complete nonsense, but for some reason, all of this creates a magical mixture that you simply have to see!

Nihon bundan: Heru doraibâ (2010)

Or Helldriver in English-speaking countries. I could praise the film’s intriguing story, its dystopian world populated with unique zombies, or the countless acting feats that add color to this already overwhelming work of cinematography, but I don’t want to lie. Besides, all that will be left for everyone is to slaughter the undead with a crowd of girls wielding a chainsaw samurai sword. To be honest, the movie is much more than that!

It perfectly conveys the kind of proudly nonsensical cinematic language with which our brothers and sisters in the Far East are so fond of communicating. You can condition yourself for this peculiar, ad hoc storytelling, but you will never get used to it, but you don’t have to, because this is the only way this genre is able to entertain the viewer from surprise to surprise. You never know when someone will turn into a robot the size of a multi-story house, explode into pieces without any warning, or revive you after the most brutal butchering. There are no rules, or if there are, they are broken with playful ease! Helldriver pushes the gas pedal of absurdity to the floor and races against the tape barrier laughing. It’s a shame, but it’s not a shame, because you’ll have a lot of fun at every moment!

Well, we’ve come to the end of our unsolicited little trip. The writing hand now rests and until the next time (if the above also wants it, and there will be one!) he will entertain himself with dwarf videos and Dakota proverbs. I hope the little one will find a more worthy occupation, if possible from the above list, after all, going hunting without a weapon is like expecting a headache on your wedding night! Or something similar.

Do you know how and under what conditions the background actors of cheaper and more expensive films work? If you are curious, read our article as well!