Sunday "Bad" Movies Q&A

For the 100^th week, I wrote up a special post contributed to by the readers of the Sunday “Bad” Movies blog posts and the followers of the Twitter account.  I thought that the post went fairly well and I got some positive feedback from it.  It inspired me to make a similar type of audience participation post for every month.  This is the one for November.

With that lackluster introductory paragraph out of the way, let me explain what this post will be.  This is a sort of question and answer post for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I went on to Twitter and asked for any questions that people had about the blog and the posts within the blog.  I’m going to answer those questions.  Basically, this post is meant to allow the readers of the Sunday “Bad” Movies to get to know me a little better and have a better idea of what goes into these posts.

Here’s how I’m going to format the post.  This opening little bit and the bit at the end will be in regular old style.  The questions being asked (either by me or the people who submit questions) will be in bold writing.  And my answers to the questions will be in italics.  Got it?  Let’s go on with the post then.  Question number one, coming up.

@erincandy: Why do you like watching bad movies?

This seems like the right place to start in this post.  Start with the most basic question about bad movies and me.  Why do I like watching bad movies?  There are a few factors that play into my liking of bad movies.  Many bad movies are entertaining.  Movies such as Miami Connection, The Room, or Gymkata.  On the surface, they might look like garbage.  They are ineptly made for the most part.  But they are still quite enjoyable, regardless of the ineptitude.  The Room is one of the most poorly made movies that I have ever seen, yet I cannot dislike watching Tommy Wiseau.  He’s so captivating in how bad he is.

The other side of why I like bad movies is that they are equally as important as good movies at moving the art form forward.  Whereas good movies can be meaningful or they can help to provide new technologies for film, bad movies highlight what not to do when making movies.  If you watch a bad movie, you can pick up on the mistakes that the filmmakers made.  You see what went wrong.  If you make a movie, you can use these mistakes to your advantage because you know what not to do.  The bad movies enlighten you on things that are done well in other movies.  They are just as meaningful to film.

@ImPABLO_i_WRITE: Are there any bad movies you have thought about covering but just don't want to?

Since I began the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I have always had the first two Human Centipede films in my mind as movies that would fit into the overall list of movies fairly well.  Though the first one is arguably not that bad, the second one is definitely a terrible film.  I have seen both before and could easily write about how I came into seeing the two movies; what caused me to watch the movies and that kind of stuff.  I know I have the post in me.  The only thing holding me back is that I watch the movies before I write about them.  Every time.  For example, this week’s movie is Winter’s Tale.  I rewatched the movie for the anniversary post after having seen the movie earlier this year for a post.  In order to write about the two Human Centipede movies, I would need to rewatch them.  I haven’t yet worked up the strength to rewatch the movies, especially the second.  The second one is one of my least favourite movies ever.  But I’m open to eventually watching them and writing about them.  Maybe I’ll do that next year after the third comes out.

@ImPABLO_i_WRITE: Are there any films that you flat out won’t do?

The default answer would be that I’m not going to do any good movies.  By good movies, I don’t mean entertaining movies.  I can find a lot of entertainment in movies that I would still consider bad.  Entertainment isn’t the only thing that a good film has going for it.  What I mean is that a movie like Citizen Kane won’t be showing up on the Sunday “Bad” Movies, even if it gets suggested to me seven hundred times.  It’s not a bad movie.

But I’m sure you’re asking about which bad movies I will not do for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I consider pretty much anything that is suggested to me, and I’ve got a long list of movies that I’ve found and want to get into the schedule at some point.  There isn’t one specific film that I have been keeping out of the schedule on purpose.  I have been avoiding the porn area of films, though.  Nothing against pornography.  It’s fun to look at sometimes.  They’re just a whole different beast in the movie world.  They’re more about the sex than the actual movie, and I’m not doing the Sunday “Bad” Movies for the sex.  So they are left out.

@MarceloJPico: What’s the one “bad” movie you’ve seen the most over the course of your entire life?

This one is a little tough to answer because it depends on what your definition of “bad” would be.  A movie like Paul Blart: Mall Cop is considered bad by most people, but I think it’s a well written, well made movie.  I’ve seen it four or five times now.  That’s not the most for a movie, even one that people would consider bad, but it’s getting up there.

My go-to answer for this one would probably be The Room.  It’s a movie I’ve seen six times.  I even wrote about that for my post about The Room.  I’ve watched that movie a bunch.  Twice by myself, a few times with my friends, and once in the theater.  I’ve also read Greg Sestero’s book about his relationship with Tommy Wiseau and their time working on The Room.  Then again, even that might not be the movie.  It all depends on what you would consider to be a bad movie.  There are movies that I have seen more than that.

Do you consider Jack Frost to be a bad movie?  Not the one that I covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  The one with Michael Keaton.  I don’t know how many times I have watched that movie, but every time I see that it’s on television, I will watch it.  I love that movie.  If you were going to say that it is a bad movie (I mean, it was watched for the best episode of How Did This Get Made that has ever been produced), then it’s probably the one.

@JEBermanator: What’s a film that should be appreciated more as a “so bad it’s good” classic?

I’m going to put a couple of minor limitations on this question.  Really, only one minor limitation.  I’m going to take intentionally bad movies out of contention here.  I love watching movies from The Asylum, but they intentionally make bad movies.  The classics of “so bad it’s good” are really the ones that are sincere in making a good movie, yet the people behind it make a movie that is terrible.  It’s that sincerity that helps to make the movie great.  A movie like Troll 2, where the director wanted to make a good movie and the product was so bad.  His sincerity comes through in the movie, which it what makes the bad so good.

That rambling finished, a movie that should be appreciated more as “so bad it’s good” is The Christmas Consultant.  I’ve only seen the movie once and it is already in my group of movies that I want to watch every Christmas.  The movie was made by Lifetime, a channel not especially known for producing good movies.  They make television quality movies.  Not good television movies like an HBO or Showtime, but the lower end cable television movies.  I mean, the network tries to produce good stuff.  They simply don’t do it.  The Christmas Consultant is one of those movies.

What makes the movie great is David Hasselhoff.  I never thought I would say that about anything, but here I am.  The idea of a family hiring some guy to create the perfect Christmas for them sounds like a crazy idea.  Hasselhoff sells it.  He goes so far to try and keep the movie afloat that he half succeeds.  His performance as the crazy consultant character, Owen, is a shining light in a pool of bad acting and ideas.  The movie should be beloved for his wacky antics.  However, I don’t think many people even know it exists.  This needs to be changed.

So that’s it for the questions in this edition of the question and answer post.  I may do another one in the future.  That all depends on how well this one goes over with you guys reading it, and whether I feel like doing another one.  I don’t yet know what I’m going to do for the bonus post next month.  I’m thinking of maybe getting some opinions on the worst movies of 2014 since it will end up being an end of the year post.  You know what?  I like that idea.  I’ll give you some of my opinions on the worst that I’ve seen and I’ll get some opinions from people who read the blog, follow the Twitter account, and/or have suggested movies for me in the past.  And we’ll take a look back at another year filled with good, bad, and terrible movies.  Thanks for reading, guys!  And girls!

Winter's Tale (2014) and its Cult Following

Movies come and go in the theaters all the time.  Recently, the amount of time that they spend with a theatrical release is less and less.  Sometimes this is due to the amount of movies that get released in a given window.  The more movies that there are, the easier it is for a less successful one to get pushed out.  Other times, the movies do so terribly that they get pulled quicker than they otherwise would have.  If they aren’t going to make money, what’s the point of showing them?  Theater owners aren’t going to want to play movies for an empty theater.

The premature removal of a movie from theaters can lead to many people not seeing a movie when it gets released.  They either didn’t make it out to the theater before it was taken away, or they put other movies ahead of it and hadn’t yet gotten around to it.  Usually this is the case for the bad movies that go to theaters.  Movies such as The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, or Winter’s Tale get passed over upon their initial release.  The few people who do see them remember them.  And they tell everyone else.

This is the kind of stuff that leads to a movie having a cult following.  The theatrical release doesn’t do much to make a movie popular.  It’s the word of mouth that comes from the few people who saw it that does.  They tell other people what the movie is like.  Other people get the urge to see it for themselves.  The following begins.  People see it, they enjoy it, and they tell more people.  A movie that wasn’t a big hit because of the quality then becomes a popular movie among people who like movies that are “so bad they’re good.”

“It’s the worst movie of the year, hands down.” -- @RealJDDuran

I bring this all up because of the already mentioned movie Winter’s Tale.  It’s a movie that I have seen picking up a following amongst my Twitter circle.  When it first came out, I remember almost nobody wanting to see it because it looked atrocious.  I also remember the few people who saw it talking about how crazy the movie was.  There was apparently a flying horse in there.  And Russell Crowe was apparently a standout.  It wasn’t convincing enough to get me to go to the theater to see it.  I waited until it came out on video.

Winter’s Tale was included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies schedule for the August 10^th post.  In the nearly four months since I saw the movie, I have been a strong advocate of getting people to watch it.  I have joined in with that cult following for the movie.  I want people to see how insane that Winter’s Tale is.  It’s not just a romantic movie.  It’s also a fantasy movie.  It covers a long span of time, it deals with demons and spirit horses and miracles, and it is downright ludicrous in what happens.  Winter’s Tale is filled with elements that need to be seen to be believed.

After first watching Winter’s Tale, I would tell everyone to watch the movie.  If they were considering it in even the smallest amount, I would toss my entire weight behind it in order to convince them that they should watch it.  I wanted to share the bizarre movie with as many people as I possibly could.  We would all know what made the movie as strange of a movie as it was.  I would have people to talk to about what I had seen in it.  I was trying to do a public service of getting people to watch one of the craziest movies of the year while also trying to get more people in my circle to be able to talk about the movie.

There were other people out there that I saw reacting to Winter’s Tale in a similar way.  We didn’t want to be alone in having seen it.  We didn’t want to love the lunatic movie by ourselves.  We wanted everyone to love what the movie was.  It is a movie about love and our love for how bad it is was driving the movie into the hearts of more people.  We were spreading the miracle of Winter’s Tale to the masses.

Yet the movie still hasn’t reached mainstream popularity.  It has remained under the radar for most of the movie watching audience, with us few people crying out about how unique it is.  The vast majority of people still have not watched Winter’s Tale.  And that’s a shame because there are few movies like it.  It is an absurd movie that stands on its own amongst everything that has been released in 2014.  It has a cult following of devoted fans.  If you can call them fans.  But they’re people who love it for what it is: pure insanity in film form.

And with that, I move onto the notes:

• The first note is obviously going to be a link to the original post for Winter’s Tale.
• You can find JD Duran at @RealJDDuran.
• An actor named Roman Blat was in Winter’s Tale.  He was also in New Year’s Eve.
• There is another post this week where I answer some questions about the Sunday “Bad” Movies that were submitted by readers, suggestors, and/or followers of the Twitter account.
• What are your thoughts about Winter’s Tale?  Have you seen it?  Did you enjoy it?  How do you feel about cult followings for movie?  Do the fans get annoying?  If you have any thoughts related to this post, you can drop them in the comments below.
• I mentioned The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure near the beginning of the post.  I’d also like to say that it was the movie I rewatched for the first anniversary of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• If you have a movie you would like to suggest for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can leave it in the comments.  You can also contact me on Twitter, or email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com.
• Next week’s movie will be Elves, the 1989 horror movie.  It can be found on YouTube.  We’re into the month of Christmas movies.  And yeah, I’ll put the next movie in the post now.  Not that anyone asked.
• Thanks for sticking around for two years.  Here’s to some more!

Evil Bong 2: King Bong (2009) and How It Improves Upon Its Predecessor

Around this time last year, I watched a movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that became one of my biggest disappointments.  That movie was Evil Bong.  I went into it expecting a stoner horror-comedy about a bong that was killing people.  I sort of got what I expected, but I also ended up with a bunch of self-serving call backs to other movies released by Full Moon Horror.  Those call backs distracted from the movie because more focus was put upon them than the original material in Evil Bong.  It wasn’t good at all.

Evil Bong 2: King Bong safely put any fears of the same self-promotion to rest by opting not to have any cameos from other Full Moon Horror franchises in it.  Instead, we are given a story about the characters introduced in Evil Bong, and a couple more characters introduced in this sequel.  No longer are we subjected to an onslaught of characters unrelated to the story, showing up just to say hi.  This strengthens the premise in a way that makes the sequel more satisfying than its predecessor.

The story of Evil Bong 2: King Bong is fairly simple.  After destroying the bong from the first Evil Bong, the characters are experiencing severe side effects.  Bachman (Mitch Eakins) has become a narcoleptic.  Brett (Brian Lloyd) has gained a lot of weight after eating a lot.  Larnell (John Patrick Jordan) has a heightened sex drive all the time.  They bring in their old roommate Alistair (Brett Chukerman) to help them out with these problems.  He decides that they should go to where the Evil Bong was made to find cures to their ailments.  While there, the group runs into the King Bong, an even worse bong than the Evil Bong.  They must fight to defeat it.

Evil Bong 2: King Bong is a case of a sequel done properly.  I am not trying to say that the movie is an overall good movie or anything of that sort.  It really isn’t that good.  But it takes a concept set up by the first movie and expands upon it in a way that strengthens the ideas.  The sequel removes any of the unnecessary fat that was in the first movie.  The characters are expanded on, some much more than others.  The needless cameos are non-existent.  And there is a backstory given to the Evil Bong that helps to enlighten any viewers on what is happening.

Let’s take a look at the characters and how they have grown since Evil Bong.  In terms of the smaller amount of growth, you have Brett and Bachman.  Brett has managed to get a career in baseball, and Bachman is working at a fast food restaurant.  Plus, there is Brett’s size, of course.  He grows in size.  Aside from those minor things, those two characters are the same.  Alistair, I don’t remember much about from the first movie other than he got a girlfriend.  She’s not even mentioned in the sequel, I don’t think.  Larnell’s grandfather gets to walk in Evil Bong 2: King Bong.  He also gets to be the greedy, money grabbing human villain of the movie.  That’s more than crotchety old handicapped guy from the first movie.  There’s also the delivery guy who is a major part of the sequel though he was only in a bit of the first movie.

The two big growths of character in the sequel are Larnell and the Evil Bong.  The Evil Bong has her history fleshed out in the sequel in a way that I wasn’t expecting.  She had been in a relationship with the King Bong in the past and the King Bong had betrayed her.  This was back when the Evil Bong was in South America.  There was also some weird magic Poontang Tribe stuff in the creation of the bongs.  It all helped to make the Evil Bong a little more sympathetic than in her first outing.  As for Larnell, the guy got to be the romantic lead.  He was the one who got the woman in the end, after overcoming his humping issues.  It was a new layer to a character whose initial outing was essentially in the best buddy role.

The romance doesn’t begin until the four former roommates travel to South America to find the source of their Evil Bong side effects.  There they discover a scientific study that is being done to research any and all healing attributes of the marijuana in the area.  Is this realistic?  Not really.  Not because of the healing qualities, which could arguably be there for some things.  The fact that the scientific research is being done without any interference by drug cartels doesn’t make a lot of sense.  This is all beside the point though.  Through this research, the guys learn about the Poontang Tribe and the origins of the Evil Bong.  They discover that the Poontang Tribe is real and there’s an even more evil bong called King Bong.  The find out the origins of the Evil Bong, and figure out that there are actually healing powers in the marijuana.  It’s backstory that was lacking in the first movie and helped to strengthen the sequel.

Yet the biggest strength that Evil Bong 2: King Bong has over the first movie is the fact that it does not have the many cameos that the first movie had.  The sequel was able to focus solely on the characters of the Evil Bong franchise, instead of inserting a bunch of characters from other Full Moon franchises.  The biggest problem in the first Evil Bong movie was the endless onslaught of cameos.  Every time that the movie started moving along, it had to stop to insert another character that people knew from a different franchise.  It brought everything to a halt.  It did nothing for the movie.  Evil Bong 2: King Bong does not have that problem and manages to chug along at a fairly even pace.  There are no painful pauses to include outside characters in the franchise.

With these additions and subtractions for the second movie in the Evil Bong franchise, the product was noticeably better.  It wasn’t a great movie by any means.  It’s still bad.  There’s bad acting, the locations aren’t all that great, and the character design of the bongs is still laughable.  But Evil Bong 2: King Bong is a step up from the movie that came before it.  It’s more enjoyable.  When it comes to bad movies, that’s all that counts.

Also enjoyable are my notes.  Right?  Right?  Here they are:

• Six actors were in both Evil Bong and Evil Bong 2: King Bong.  These actors were Robin Sydney, Sonny Carl Davis, Mitch Eakins, John Patrick Jordan, Brian Lloyd, and Jacob Witkin.
• Robin Sydney was also in The Gingerdead Man, directed by Charles Band, the director of both Evil Bong movies.
• Director Charles Band was also involved in the making of Robot Jox and Robot Wars.
• I watched this movie on a DVD released by Echo Bridge.  I wrote about Echo Bridge in the post for Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned.
• Have you seen any of the Evil Bong movies?  Should I cover Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong at some point?  Do you have any other thoughts?  There is a comments section below where you can discuss these movies.
• If you have a suggestion for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can leave it in the comments, email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com or tell me on Twitter.  All suggestions go into a master list from which I choose movies for scheduling.
• If you want a question about the Sunday “Bad” Movies answered in this month’s bonus post, you can email it to me.  I want questions.  Email them.