The Years of the Movies in the Sunday "Bad" Movies and The Million Dollar Duck (1971)

Over the past two years of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I feel that I have built up an interesting collection of movies that I have watched and written about.  They span the many different kinds of bad movies.  There were good, entertaining bad movies like Miami Connection and Ghost Storm.  There have been good movies that get a bad reputation for one reason or another, such as Parental Guidance.  I’ve seen some surprisingly fun movies like Big Ass Spider! and Hansel and Gretel Get Baked, and I’ve seen some terrible movies like The Legend of Sorrow Creek and Playing for Keeps.  The one thing that they have in common is that they could fit under the bad movie description in one way or another.

Yet there’s one thing that has been bothering me about the Sunday “Bad” Movies as of late, and it’s a problem that has been alleviated a tiny bit this week.  The issue I have been having is that I have heavily depended on newer movies to fill the schedule.  And that’s my own fault.  As I have been making each of the sections of the schedule, the decision on what movies make it in comes down to my own personal preference.  If I decide I want to watch the movie, I’ll toss it in there.  Sometimes I schedule around something happening around that time (Warriors of Virtue to line up with the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or New Year’s Eve for my New Year’s week post), but the final decision is mine.  People suggest movies, I put them into the schedule at my own discretion.  It just happens to be that I have chosen many more new movies than old.

The other major factor in bumping up the newer movies is a choice I made early on that I would throw a release from the past few months into the schedule every once in a while.  This was to feed my own hunger for some of the newer bad movies that come out.  I wanted to see The Coed and the Zombie Stoner when it was released, and the “new” release week I had coming up in the schedule was a good place to put it in.  There is a legitimate reason for having these new movies in the schedule, but it only makes the blog weighted heavier in new movies than old.

To better explain all of this year stuff, I’m going to get into some numbers stuff.  So you might get bored.  I understand that, and wouldn’t blame you for not reading this post at all.  It will likely be one that doesn’t get too many actual reads.  All of the numbers will be up to and including this week’s movie The Million Dollar Duck (a strange little Disney produced slapstick comedy about a family that has a duck that lays golden eggs).  The movie wasn’t all bad, but it led me to thinking about why I don’t have too many movies from that era in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  That’s where the numbers come into play.

The Million Dollar Duck is the 140^th movie that has been included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Those 140 movies span over the 119 weeks that I have been writing these posts.  That averages out to about 1.17 movies per week, which is a number that none of us needed to know but I calculated anyway.  Of these 140 movies, 91 of them have been movies released since 2000.  That means that 65% of the movies that I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies have been released in the past 15 years.  Only 35% of the movies were released before the turn of the millennium.  If I put the movies in order of the year they were released, the midpoint (movie 70) would be in 2006.  This means that half of the movies I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies are from the past decade.  The other 50% of the movies span from 1964 (Santa Claus Conquers the Martians) to 2006.  That’s 42 years.  Half of the movies were released over 42 years.  The other half were released over 10 years.  That shows you just how heavily weighted the Sunday “Bad” Movies have been to newer releases.

What I need to look at in order to find a solution to my problem is why so many of the movies seem to be newer.  As I said before, there are the new movies that I toss in every once in a while.  I try to keep that to one for every ten weeks.  Once in every ten week block, I will toss in one of the newer releases that I want to see.  I’ll throw in The Hero of Color City during that week, and then I’ll move on.  So, in a span of 140 weeks, there should be 14 movies or so that were added to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in that context.  That explains 14 of the 70 movies that fall into the past decade.  I’ll add six more to that because of early tinkering with the Sunday “Bad” Movies where I was trying to figure out what the blog series would be (back when it wasn’t its own blog and was just a series of posts on my other blog).  So, we’re up to twenty of seventy.

Another large factor is the suggested movies.  I’m not going to put the blame on the people who have been suggesting movies for me to watch.  Sure, they’ve probably suggested more newer than older because the newer stuff is fresh in their minds as they are suggesting, but I’m the one who ultimately decides what makes it into the schedule.  I look through the suggestions and choose the ones I most want to watch, or the ones I think fit best into the schedule.  So it’s still my fault that things lean towards the new.  47 suggested movies have made it into the schedule so far.  If a movie in one of the franchise weeks was suggested, I’m counting all of the franchise movies into this count.  Of these 47 movies, only 19 of them are from the past decade.  Wow.  I thought that would be more.  Anyway, 19 added to the 20 makes for 39 movies out of the 70 that are from the past decade.

The other thirty movies are all of my doing and part of the reason that I feel I depend too much on newer movies for what I watch for the blog.  Some were chosen as part of franchise weeks (Anaconda movies, or the Death Race movies).  Other movie were movies that popped up on Netflix and were too good to pass up (Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend, or Bratz).  I’ve just been led to watching more recent movies because of one thing or another.  It just happened.

Having half of the movies I’ve watched be movies from the past decade is one of the biggest pet peeves that I have had while doing the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I still appreciate each and every movie that I’ve watched.  They have each added their own touch to the blog and the posts therein.  However, in the future, I hope to bring more variety into the blog through the years that the movies come from.  I would like to add some more movies from the 80s, 70s, and maybe even earlier to the schedule.  The next section of the schedule is already complete so it may not happen there.  I forget what I scheduled.  After that, though, I hope to lessen the weight on newer movies.  I will still keep the new movie in every ten.  Other than that, I’m going to try to toss a wider timespan into the schedule.

Now, because I know this post focused so little on the movie of the week, I’m going to give a quick review of The Million Dollar Duck.  I feel that you guys deserve that much.  Especially since it was a movie that was suggested to me.

I said earlier what The Million Dollar Duck is.  I’ll go a little deeper though.  Dean Jones plays a character named Albert Dooley who is doing some research about a duck’s ability to learn.  When he brings his wife Katie’s (Sandy Duncan) applesauce to the lab, the duck eats it.  The duck then begins to lay golden eggs whenever it hears the sound of a dog barking.  People come after the duck to get the golden eggs and some slapstick comedy antics ensue.

It’s been said by me many times before that I am a sucker for well-done slapstick comedy, and I’d say it was fairly well done throughout The Million Dollar Duck.  Cheesy, yes.  That comes from the performances, premise, and the fact that it’s a Disney movie.  It was still well done, though.  It was entertaining throughout, from the pool sequence where everyone was falling in and trying to get out, to the chase scene where one character is on a lift bucket and swinging around.  I had a ball with the comedy in this movie.

That about does it for this week’s post.  In the future, I hope to include many more movies from many more years, instead of focusing on movies from the past decade.  That likely won’t happen.  For whatever reason, I will likely stick to the sort of scheduling that I’ve always been doing.  Oh well.  It was an interesting enough issue to bring up.

I also need to bring up some notes:

• Here are links to the posts of all of the movies I mentioned in this post: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Death Race, Playing for Keeps, Miami Connection, Parental Guidance, Bigfoot's Wild Weekend, Hansel and Gretel Get Baked, New Year’s Eve, Big Ass Spider!, Bratz, Anaconda, Warriors of Virtue, Ghost Storm, The Legend of Sorrow Creek, The Coed and the Zombie Stoner, and The Hero of Color City.
• The Million Dollar Duck was suggested for the Sunday “Bad” Movies by @JEBermanator.
• Have you seen The Million Dollar Duck?  What did you think of it?  Do you agree that the Sunday “Bad” Movies focuses too much on newer movies and not enough on older stuff like The Million Dollar Duck?  The comments section is open.
• If you have any suggestions for movies that I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can comment below.  You can also email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com or find me on Twitter.
• Next week is a double feature of Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun Back 2 tha Hood.  See you then, for this wacky St. Patrick’s Day (week) celebration of bad.