The Mixed Messages of Birdemic: Shock and Terror

There are many reasons to try and provide a moral reason behind works of art. And while often those messages come through in clever allegory, through line metaphors, and even stand in characters for real life heroes and activists. But other times they crash into a windshield like a… well a really crappy bird.

Birdemic is trying to do too much. And is inspired by two wildly disparate movies: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. And the initial idea is actually interesting on the surface. What if climate change caused animals to turn and attack humanity? The problem is not in the idea… it’s in the execution.

What Birdemic does is forces us to root for really vapid characters who just don’t have any qualities that we can invest in. They seem completely forgettable and just wander around once the actual epidemic takes place. And that’s not interesting at all.

And what makes things worth is almost every interaction is with some environmentalist or climatologist that just spits preachy dialogue at the protagonists and ultimately seems like it wants to me more documentary or an informational video than a narrative movie. And that just doesn’t work.

And there is so much more that I could speak to because this movie just doesn’t make its point well, clearly, or in any meaningful way. It does such a poor job that you actually don’t know what the overall point of the movie is by the very end. Aside from a genuinely sad failure of an epidemic.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: Honestly the acting is all over the place. There are several really bad and wooden performances, but I think that’s more the fault of the dialogue than the actors. Several of them are actually trying and you can see effort, even if the movie’s (many) faults drag it down. (3/10)

Story and Dialogue: The plot on its own is not terrible in concept… just in execution. But the dialogue more than makes up the difference. Nobody sounds like a human being, most of the scenes I actually found tolerable were the ones where no one was talking. (1/10)

Filmmaking: There is some serious sound design disasters all over this thing. Music cuts out suddenly, lots of background noise, and just clunky and lazy choices that show very little skill or effort went into the crafting of this one. (1/10)

Design: Bad CGI is abundant, and the flat style and bizarre color correction doesn’t help it any. Characters have no reasons for their décor and much of what goes on around the characters just seems like thrown together sets mixed with completely obvious green screens. (1/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: Here is the thing… this movie… It is in no way good. But then as I watched it, I found myself really drawn into how awful it is, and because of that I genuinely think there is something about this one that makes you just want to watch it, even if just to be awestruck by how horrible it really is. (5/10)

Total Score: 11/50

Current Ranking:
Troll 2
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a Go-Go!
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Disaster Movie
Alone in the Dark
The Room
Glen or Glenda
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
Showgirls
The Horror of Party Beach
Battlefield Earth
Inchon
Mac and Me
The Terror of Tiny Town
The Apple
North
Howard the Duck

The final four are upon us! We are now firmly into the territory of movies that are less than a decade old. Next week might be the biggest release of any of these movies and I have been avoiding it for almost ten years.

So until then, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is Too Cliched to be Coherent

The Matrix was a masterpiece that revolutionized action cinema. The problem is that it inspired aa billion copycats that took the wrong lessons, specifically that it’s more useful to be cool than to be coherent, deep, or interesting. While there are a lot of bad action movies from the early 2000s, there is one that outclasses them all as the worst of the worst.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (say that five times fast) is a clichéd mess. The movie takes a very generic formula, a series of stock characters, a forgettable plot, and some slow and dull action scenes. And most of the time I watch these movies and see ways to fix the problem… but man this one is in rare form where you have to just scrap basically everything aside from the lead actors.

See the pairing of Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu is actually good, and given the success the pair were having in their careers made complete sense… and then this movie happened. And it makes sense why it happened. It was still in the time post 1999’s The Matrix changed the landscape for action films and everyone was trying to duplicate that success. But therein lies the problem.

See, the problem is that Ballistic is trying so hard to be cool, that it doesn’t take the time to be coherent. The plot is a frazzled mess, all of the characters seem like they were stock characters pulled from a C-tier video game. And on that note, the video game based on this movie was better received than this movie. That shouldn’t happen! The only interesting thing about this whole movie is the choice to make Sever a woman.

Ballistic has some moments that could be really interesting. It tries really hard to showcase its title characters but it never takes the time to fully develop anything and by the end of the movie you’re just struggling through the resolution, praying for the credits to stop the monotonous boring slog of cliches that have occurred for the past 90 minutes…

Ballistic takes a cliched characters, dumps them into a cliché’s plot, and then somehow makes the remaining aspects of the movie so bland, arid, and unremarkable that it just makes you question why it ever got to see the light of day. It certainly earns its place among the worst movies ever made.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: Nearly everyone in this movie gives radically forgettable performances. I would say Liu does the best work but only because she almost never speaks and uses that silence to help her avoid the overly clunky dialogue that everyone else is saddled with. Because no one gives a good performance in this monster. (3/10)

Story and Dialogue: The plot is bland, cliché, and ultimately forgettable. Nothing in this movie seems well motivated and none of the characters seem justified in any of their actions. This is only coupled with excessively bad dialogue where everyone sounds like a video game NPC reading those 3 preprogrammed responses they have been given throughout the movie. (1/10)

Filmmaking: Bad green screens, boring camera choices, flat shading, and awkward edits really pull this movie down. It never goes bold enough or slick enough to make an impact, and the final product is clunky and really stale as a result. (3/10)

Design: I mean, the design is so non-descript that it feels like there was really no conscious design choices, the characters have one costume alone, and none of the flashbacks feel like they change anything about the characters. Overall, it’s really atrocious, lazy design work. (2/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: This is one of those movies that’s just bad. It’s boring. It’s monotonous. It’s forgettable. It’s bad. (1/10)

Total Score: 10/50

Current Ranking:
Troll 2
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a Go-Go!
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
Glen or Glenda
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
Showgirls
The Horror of Party Beach
Battlefield Earth
Inchon
Mac and Me
The Terror of Tiny Town
North
Howard the Duck

This one fought hard to claw down the list. It didn’t quite make it, but man was it a fighter. I know that next week’s movie is also a fighter, but we have to wait for that one to come before we can talk about it. It’s one of the ones I’ve been looking forward to the most. So come back next week to talk about that.

But until then, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

Everything in Troll 2 is Dumb

There is something to be said about adding logical value to a movie. Characters should make sane rational choices, even in the most insane of circumstances. But when insane circumstances meet nonsensical character choices, the results can be pretty horrible.

Troll 2 (no actual relation to the first Troll) is a wild movie. The characters within the movie begin under odd circumstances with a vacation at through a house exchange in a small rural community of Nilbog (which basically anyone who can read at a second grade level can deduce is ‘Goblin’ backwards. That being said most of the characters in this movie never seen to figure it out even as son Joshua (Michael Stephenson) says the word goblin no less than one hundred times.

And that’s the major issue with this movie. Every character (at times including Josh) is just kind of illogically dumb. And the result is a final product that requires wild jumps in logic just to stay with. And this drags the movie down as a result.

There is an element of suspension of disbelief that comes with watching a movie. Every movie requires us, as the audience, to invest in the story and world it takes place in because we need to follow along without falling out of the story. The problem with Troll 2 is that it throws us out of the story because of how dumb it is.

There has to be some level of intelligence in the movie making process. And there also has to be some of that intelligence in the product, even if the movie is ridiculous it has to be logical to some degree. Because when it’s not, it’s very hard to get into the movie at all.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: I got three lines into this movie when I knew I was going to give it a 1. I only give it a one because I cannot give it a zero. No one in this movie is giving a good performance and every word, look, and choice just sounds like insanity. (1/10)

Story and Dialogue: The story is standard horror movie fair, with a really dumb vegetarian based twist. But where the score drops off the radar is with the dialogue. The attempts at humor fall flat, and the attempts to make the movie smart and meaningful fall even flatter. (1/10)

Filmmaking: The biggest thing that hurts this movie is how poorly the dialogue for the goblins is dubbed. It just looks insanely choppy and awkward. The camera also moves in a way that seems edgy or interesting without actually having any meaning. (3/10)

Design: This movie looks cheap. Everything from the costumes, to sets, to the props just looks like it was made with what was lying around and that really hurts the movie. Overall it’s just abysmal given that the quality of movies that was emerging during this time. (2/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: It’s not good. It’s just bad. There were two times I laughed and that’s because I knew the meme’s the terrible moment had become. Otherwise I found this movie really hard to stomach. (1/10)

Total Score: 8/50

Current Ranking:
Troll 2
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a Go-Go!
Glen or Glenda
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Horror of Party Beach
Inchon
Mac and Me
The Terror of Tiny Town
The Apple
Howard the Duck

We have a new king of the mountain! The trolls now rule the standings and we are officially halfway through this insane ranking. Will anyone be able to sink to lower depths in the next twelve weeks? Only time will tell. But it’s sure to be a wild ride.

So until next time thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

Mac and Me Just Copies a Better Movie

Hollywood has opened dozens of opportunities for filmmakers to craft original and interesting new stories. So it’s always surprising when movies choose to remake, repeat, or do everything they can to tell a story that, whether consciously or unconsciously, basically tell a worse version of a story we’ve already seen.

Mac and Me is a story plagued by what came before it. And not just because the movie is clearly in the same vein as another movie about a stranded alien befriending a small boy, but also because the movie that came before it was among the best movies of it time. The fact that anyone would try to recapture that magic, and do it shamelessly is kind of mindboggling.

Mac and Me is as if a five year old watched E.T. once, told their parent about it, and then that parent made a movie from that description. So not only does the result feel like a pure copy, it also feels like there are details lacking and moments that play less fantastic whimsy, and more inane nonsense.

And while it’s not abysmal in its own right, the constant comparison just drags the final product down and makes the overall result so much more horrible in retrospect. Because while many movies are bad simply through their own craft, its worse if the movie is clearly doing a disservice to a far superior product.

So there is a lesson to be learned from the failure of Mac and Me and it’s not only do you have to work hard as you craft movies, but you have to make those movies original, and full of new ideas, even if the story has elements of the past. Don’t just do something because someone else did it well, do it because it is asking a new question, expressing a new idea, or make your product different through originality, not by treading where others have chosen to tread.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: While some of the acting is subpar, there are solid performances in places. I say solid and not good because this movie just feels like a place between stiff and melodramatic that just never find that right balance. But it could be much worse to be sure. (4/10)

Story and Dialogue: The dialogue is not amazing, there are plenty of lines that just feel ridiculous. The story is just E.T. through a game of telephone, so while it has some inspiring moments, it also has ridiculous choices and weird diversions that do not help it make the story any better. (4/10)

Filmmaking: There are no wild cuts, or bizarre shots, but there are also some off early CGI moments and a healthy set of shots which just seem out of place or somewhat arbitrary. (4/10)

Design: Well, if you wanted the movie to look just like E.T. on a budget then you definitely succeeded. And the aliens look a little goofy but are no worse than any of the other ridiculous monsters seen in this series. The whole design is very bland but has nothing dragging it down too far either. (5/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: I don’t know if it was just me, but I was laughing so much throughout this. It was hysterical how they used goofy expressions, over the top moments, and wildly bizarre cuts make the whole thing very watchable, even if it is objectively terrible. (8/10)

Total Score: 25/50

Current Ranking:
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a Go-Go!
Glen or Glenda
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Horror of Party Beach
Inchon
Mac and Me
The Terror of Tiny Town
The Apple
Howard the Duck

And with that we’ve survived the 80’s. Next week we not only arrive firmly in the 90s but also cross the halfway point on our journey to determine the worst movie ever. It’s been a slog so far, but hopefully it goes smoother through the later half of this series. I’d say it can’t get worse but who am I kidding.

In any case, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

There is Nobody to Root for in The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

You know what makes a movie really hard to watch? An entire cast of unlikable characters. When we watch movies, it’s really hard to have a full dislike for the entirety of the movie’s cast. While there can be moral disagreements, offputting actions, and often tragic outcomes, we have to find some redeeming reason to watch them live their stories.

There is a major problem within The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, and it isn’t the ridiculous costumes, bizarre direction, or even the overly 80s style. The biggest problem with this movie comes down to the characters. When you break down the human characters you have: A naïve child, a greedy teenage fashion designer, a set of adult bullies who literally assault children, a group that imprisons and executes “ugly people” and a man who hides the titular kids because of stereotyped preconceptions.

And that’s not mentioning the grotesque Garbage Pail Kids themselves, who dispite their seeming aim as the heroes of the movie and a bunch of really low morally correct characters. They seem to be aimed as knock off E.T.’s with a turn towards the gross, vile, and bottom of the intellectual barrel style of humor.

And so what happens when a bunch of characters we don’t like face off against a bunch of characters we really don’t like? Well… we just have no reason to like anyone and so we have no reason to invest in any side of this movie. The final act of the movie is just chaos without reason and no one is coming through to help us enjoy the movie.

So what is the moral of this particular disaster? Well… make sure we like somebody! If we don’t then everything will fall apart before it even gets going and the longer we watch the movie, the harder it is to win us back. And so that means the movie has no way to succeed because we, as the audience, have no one to invest in.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: Aside from Anthony Newley, the cast of this movie delivers some of the least believable performances in recent memory. The lines sound like a bad childhood retelling of a movie they watched the night before. And the whole thing just fails to ever get off the ground. (3/10)

Story and Dialogue: As addressed in the previous section, the performances are terrible, and what’s worse is the dialogue doesn’t help it at all. It’s clunk, childish, and ridiculous. And the story that comes from that is basically a simple story of self-acceptance that gets muddled under a lot of childish humor. (2/10)

Filmmaking: Filmmaking is fine. It’s not amazing, but it’s in no way a disaster. (5/10)

Design: I mean… this should get low marks for the Garbage Pail Kids alone. They look horrifying, and while that’s the intent, it’s just terrible. The proportions make no sense, the designs are like a bad animatronic, and whatever critics mocked Howard the Duck need to re-evaluate what bad is. Aside from that the movie is bland with a dash of 80s. But yeah those suits just cannot be redeemed. (2/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: If you like fart jokes, burp jokes, vomit jokes, a toe chomping alligator man, and a really awkward Sylvester Stallone/John Travolta in Grease impersonation then this is possibly really fun. I was not a fan… but I did chuckle at the ridiculousness a few times. (3/10)

Total Score: 15/50

Current Ranking:
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a Go-Go!
Glen or Glenda
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Horror of Party Beach
Inchon
The Terror of Tiny Town
The Apple
Howard the Duck

Next week we get to watch the last movie of the 80s before diving into movies that existed while I was alive. But we’re not quite there yet and we have one of the most recognizably memed movies of the past few decades coming up.

So until then, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

The Over-reverence of Inchon

There are movies that are bad because they try too hard to be too big and wild. And then there are movies that are bad because they try too hard to be too genuine and reverent to the source material, and this reverence, while good in theory, ultimately brings the movie down and makes it boring and bland. And boring is almost worse sometimes than outright laughable.

Here is the problem with Inchon; it’s taking itself far too seriously in some respects and is just lampooning the history in others. Aside from Sir Laurence Olivier there are not real good performances that need to be there and the whole story paints a complicated story in an almost melodramatic light.

The movie takes great pains to show the real human drama that came out of the true incident of Inchon… at least with regards to the white people. On the other side there is nothing but crude communist stereotypes and bland side characters. No one is given dimension or any sort of genuine story arch and by the end you forget those stories were even a part of the larger movie.

And the truth is that this movie drags its feet and has very little actual war footage or battle planning. It is instead more a tragic story of how Douglas Macarthur’s final command and the escalation of the Korean war. But that narrow focus leaves it disjointed and confused and ultimately causes it to suffer.

So there isn’t much else to say besides the fact that the movie is bland, forgettable, dull, and it’s not surprising why so many people had a problem with it. The movie is not good. I don’t know if fully deserves its reputation as a poor movie but it is not hard to see how it got there.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: Aside from a well-crafted performance by Sir Laurence Olivier, the performances in this movie are either forgettable or entirely laughable. The whole production is a balance between stiff and wooden performances trying to be far too serious and comedically hyperbolized villains and victims. (3/10)

Story and Dialogue: The story of this movie is bland. It’s not bad, and it has a consistent and natural progression but ultimately it just falls short of being any sort of interesting. The conflict itself is an interesting backdrop but it fails to live up to standard since its just the subplot to a far more small scale main plot (3/10)

Filmmaking: This film is bland but ultimately not poorly made. The shots make sense and they are decently crafted both in execution and editing. (5/10)

Design: Given the scope of this movie, the design is actually one of the most impressive parts of this movie. The consistency across dozens of characters and the historic locations feel genuinely well designed. Overall the design makes this movie appear more put together than the final product ends up being. (7/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: No real argument so bad it’s good here. This movie is bland from star to finish. It has a few moments but ultimately, it’s just boring. (3/10)

Total Score: 21/50

Current Ranking:
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a Go-Go!
Glen or Glenda
Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Horror of Party Beach
Inchon
The Terror of Tiny Town
The Apple

That one was a rough movie to get through, hopefully the next few are going to end up being a bit more exciting. But I don’t think we should get our hopes up any time soon. After, these movies are called the worst for a reason.

So until next time, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

There is No Reason for The Apple

We always want movies to appeal to the widest audiences possibly, and that isn’t always completely possible. But in efforts to be exciting and memorable, sometimes movies sacrifice a lot of their souls for the chance to be cool. And the result is ultimately just a lot of nonsense without any real reason behind it.

The Apple is an odd musical, steeped in a loose biblical allegory, set in a science fiction 1994 America, and given a bizarre cavalcade of characters who make very little sense when all placed together. The entire ordeal is strung together by songs that while catchy on their own, do very little to serve the overall narrative of the story. All in all, The Apple is a rather odd choice.

And the biggest sin is that the movie was trying to be cool. There is nothing wrong with making an appealing movie, but it can’t be the soul purpose behind it. By making a movie that aims to be cool the movie loses the very ideals of storytelling that make us interested. This is evident from the very beginning of The Apple.

In a weird way, The Apple gets it message across, defying convention, no matter how appealing, for something with more substance and virtue is ultimately the best choice. But what stops the movie from actually leaving an impact is how it never learns its own lesson. It wants to be well loved and desired, even when it has not earned the right to be either by its merits.

So what is the real lesson to be learned from The Apple? Honestly, just have a purpose beyond making money, selling products, and garnering interest. Give a strong reason behind the art you make and even if that reason changes, don’t abandon it, because it might end up being the difference between good, and disastrous.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: The acting is very hit and miss. Some actors give very memorable and interesting performance, others are over the top and highly forgettable. Ultimately, it’s not terrible, but it certainly isn’t going to be winning any awards any time soon. (5/10)

Story and Dialogue: The Adam and Eve allegory is pretty in your face from the start, and dialogue is pure cheese from the beginning. I’ve seen enough to know there were some good lines here and there, and the lyrics in the songs are very catchy and somewhat memorable, but man are they laughable when they are off. (4/10)

Filmmaking: Filmmaking is actually fairly well crafted, especially for 1980. There are clever shots, interesting camera angles and ultimately nothing feels awkward or off-putting. While it’s entirely forgettable in the end, that doesn’t hurt it either. (6/10)

Design: For a bizarre 80s sci-fi movie the design is whimsical, even though it’s just goofy by today’s standards. Cars look like the Homermobile from the Simpsons, costumes are loaded with overly glittery 80s absurdity, and despite being bright and colorful, the whole thing just makes no sense. (5/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: The movie is fun. I will give it that. And the soundtrack is actually kind of decent when you take it out of the narrative of the movie. While it does have its forgettable characters and odd choices, it’s not an unbearable watch and can actually be kind of fun from time to time. (8/10)

Total Score: 28/50

Current Ranking:
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a Go-Go!
Glen or Glenda
Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Horror of Party Beach
The Terror of Tiny Town
The Apple

Here’s what I love about doing this series is that it’s really made me appreciate how well made and purposeful the movies are. I know there is a lot that goes into each and every one and while obviously we are seeing the worst of them here, it should help us see the true quality work that goes into the best. But it may be some time before we see a good movie again…

So until next time, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

The Horror of Party Beach and the Danger of Cutting Corners

There is an important question that has to be asked when it comes to making movies. Can you make a remarkable and well-crafted movie on a small and limited scale? There are certainly independent movies that showcase how to place story as the priority. But when movies try to capture a craze and embrace spectacle, then something is going to suffer. And the result could be the worst movie of all time.

The Horror of Party Beach is, by all accounts, nothing original. Embracing two of the biggest teen movie crazes of the sixties – monsters and beach party movies. So what is it about this movie that stands apart from these other low budget movies to get defined as the worst movie of all time? Well it comes from trying to do both movies in one and make it a serious movie.

When a movie is trying to honestly tell its story but struggles to achieve the intended goal, it becomes an unintentional comedic disaster. And Party Beach is working so hard to be serious that it is just wildly silly as a result. The movie just doesn’t embrace the campy nature of either genre and that causes its downfall.

And beyond that, the explanations, bad stereotypes, terrible effects, and so much more contribute to the end result. The movie comes up short in many different ways. But it seems the common denominator is cutting corners on production. The look of the characters, the design of the monsters, the clunky script and so much more show that the movie didn’t take time to give care to its world.

So what is the lesson here? There is nothing wrong with low budgets, or wanting to make an honest movie, but that has to be given care and time and can’t just be done hastily with several corners cut. On top of that, the acting, writing, shots, and overall product to a movie that is more unintentionally hilarious than scary, sincere, or some combination of the two.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes fun?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50.

Final Ranking will be from lowest score to highest score. Worst movie will be at the top of the ranking, best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: The acting in this movie is horrendous. Leading Lady Elaine (Alice Lyon) gives some of the worst dialogue delivery in any of the movies I’ve watched so far. Aside from that, the inclution of Mammy stereotype Eulabelle (Eulabelle Moore) does not help this movie feel genuine. Several of the other performances are stiff, cheesy, awkward, and ultimately make the monsters look better by comparison. (2/10)

Story and Dialogue: The story is by the numbers monster movie. The dialogue is cheesy and riddled with Eulabelle’s bad stereotyped dialogue, and a laughably bad exchange from a pair of drunks result in the worst drunk dialogue I can remember seeing. The story could have survived if the dialogue was better, but as a result, all of them suffer. (4/10)

Filmmaking: When compared to several other sixties beach and monster movies, this one actually isn’t at the bottom of the barrel as an effort in filmmaking, there are still moments of poor lighting, reused cuts for reactions, and awkwardly framed shots, especially closeups. But it certainly could be worse. (5/10)

Design: The design in most parts is average and somewhat forgettable. Where it gets terrible is the design on the monsters. A cross between the worst parts of a muppet, the creature from the black lagoon, a chicken, and a stopped sausage grinder. It alone drops this movies design score because they are impossible to take seriously from the very beginning. (3/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: This movie has a lot of unintentionally funny moments that make its watching more bearable than several of the other movies. But it doesn’t push the ridiculousness of the movie far enough to make it completely so bad its good. But its still got its moments where you want to rewatch the goofy monster antics. (6/10)

Total Score: 20/50

Current Ranking:
Glen or Glenda
Plan 9 From Outer Space
The Horror of Party Beach
The Terror of Tiny Town

We’re fully in it now. Bad movies are continuing to come and we’re continuing to watch them. So far this whole process has been surprisingly fun and exceptionally revealing as all these movies manage to be bad for different reasons. We’re going to keep this party a go going next week.

But until then, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

The Exploitation of The Terror of Tiny Town

What makes a bad movie? This is a question that has many answers. And as we begin this series we have to explore the wide variety of trends that lead, for one reason or another, to a movie finding itself lampooned and derided over the course of time. And we’re beginning by going all the way back to 1938 to discuss a movie based on gimmicky exploitation.

The Terror of Tiny Town is the first, and I’m quoting the movie here, “all midget picture”. The cast is 60 little people many of whom were members of the troupe Jed Buell Midgets. Producer Jed Buell created the movie after overhearing an employee make a joke about how economic disparity would force movie studios to produce films with “midgets as actors”. Oh what a terrible time the 1930s were…

The reason that Tiny Town suffers has more to do with the production decisions than the actual film itself. The film is unable to decide if it should be taken seriously or be completely silly. And this unfortunately hurts the product that the movie is trying to create. It’s sacrificing a chance to tell a genuine story and promote some real actors and singers for a single gimmicky idea meant to make money.

And according to records the movie was actually fairly successful at the box office so obviously something worked, but the quality of the movie has been continuously derided for over 80 years since its release. But I’m going to say a few things to really explore whether this movie deserves its title of the worst movie ever.

So the question is: is this movie serious or silly. And when you break it down, you quickly learn to ignore the gimmick and just take the movie for its story, it actually takes itself fairly seriously. The cast is trying, and while the plot has some oddities, it’s not that different from many other westerns. So you can’t count it out.

So let’s get into the specifics.

The movie is judged on 5 different criteria.

Acting – How believable are the performances?
Story and Dialogue – How cohesive is the story and the dialogue of the movie?
Filmmaking – Does the filmmaking work as a whole (given the constraints of the time)?
Design Elements – Is the look cohesive and sensible?
So-Bad-Its-Good Factor – is the movie so terrible that for whatever reason it becomes good?

As always, we’re ranking each category out of 10 for a total of 50. With the exception of the final category which will be ranked in reverse. Lower the score the more it was so-bad-its-good.

Final Ranking will be from Lowest score to highest so the best movie will be at the bottom.

Acting: The cast of this movie is actually not terrible. Some of the performances are a bit hit or miss, but overall, the actors do their best to bring the script and the story to life. Billy Curtis as the Hero gives a particularly memorable performance, as does Charlie Becker as Otto the cook brings a great comedic take to his role. While there are some less than quality performances, the overall product is pretty good. (6/10)

Story and Dialogue: While the story is standard, it’s not bad, and the dialogue is cheesy in places, but it is no worse than the wide variety of Westerns that follow it in the next several decades. The story is a fairly standard affair of a black hat trying to rustle up trouble and white hat trying to stop him. (5/10)

Filmmaking: The camera work isn’t anything special and the editing has some really awkward cuts but the product doesn’t turn into a disaster. I would say that given when it was made helps it a bit, but there are some bad choices that really don’t help the movie. (4/10)

Design: So they clearly took a normal set and put a small cast on it for comedic effect. And that, much like the cast, becomes less awkward as the movie goes on. The design is again standard but honestly not terrible though and the whole thing works pretty cohesively. (5/10)

So-Bad-Its-Good Factor: This movie is average and that doesn’t give it enough of a failing to gain much in the So-Bad-Its-Good category. While there are some gags that this particular cast allows for, the overall result is not terrible (7/10)

Total Score: 27/50

Current Ranking:
The Terror of Tiny Town

And that’s the first movie! I was surprised that this one was so tolerable, I have a feeling the rest of them will not be. But we’ll have plenty of time to see how they all shake up. We’re jumping into the filmography of the only director with two entries on this list – Ed Wood – next week so come back for that.

And as always, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!

The Next Blog Series: What is the Worst Movie Ever Made?

So with the end of the James Bond analysis, I’ve working on a way to keep this blog going. But there are only so many franchises with more than 20 entries it is clear that I’m gonna have to find a new angle to make this work. And so, this next blog, which will premier in the next couple weeks, will be an embarking into a new category.

What truly is the…

WORST

MOVIE

EVER?

I’ll be taking a look at twenty-five movies which have been called the worst movie ever made. These movies span close to 80 years of movie filmography and will span multiple genres and demographics.

While there were close to 100 movies that have been lambasted in the past, I chose these 25 based on the consistency of their negative reviews, and their popularity as both cult followings and pop culture references. Therefore, the worst movie will be one of these 25:

The Terror of Tiny Town
Glen or Glenda
Plan 9 from Outer Space
The Horror of Party Beach
Monster a Go-Go!
Manos: The Hands of Fate
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Apple
Inchon
Howard the Duck
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
Mac and Me
Troll 2
North
Showgirls
Battlefields Earth
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
The Room
Alone in the Dark
Disaster Movie
Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Jack and Jill
Movie 43
Saving Christmas
Cats

There are a few other rules that come into play with choosing these movies. No sequels or franchise movies (Troll 2 is not actually related to the first one and was only named that after it was shot). No porn (let’s keep this somewhat family friendly), and English language movies only (I don’t want to judge a movie’s dialogue on the translation of their subtitles). Therefore, these are the movies that made the cut!

There will a strict set of criteria with which these movies will be judged

Acting – Is the acting consistent, coherent, and believable throughout the movie. Are the cast giving good performances in spite of otherwise poor material, or are they giving caricatures, bad portrayals, or otherwise poor acting?
Story and Dialogue – Does the story make sense or is the plot just wildly inconsistent, incoherent, and otherwise a bunch of nonsense. Likewise does the dialogue make sense or is it completely devoid of reality and laughable.
Shooting and Editing – Is the way the movie is constructed fluid and logical, or does it appear to be random and almost thoughtless choices that makes the movie less sensical as a result.
Design – Is the design consistent throughout or are locations wildly random, props seemingly spontaneous and costumes without rhyme or reason.
The So-Bad-It’s-Good Factor – Is the movie so laughable ridiculous, wildly absurd, and totally bizarre that is somehow becomes humorous, lovable, or otherwise finds a way to redeem itself and be less likely to be the worst movie ever.

All these criteria will be judged on a score of 10 for a total score of 50. But unlike the previous movie rankings, these will be ranked in reverse order, with the worst movie at the top. And in 25 weeks, we will have a definitive ranking which will tells us what movie is the absolute worst movie of all time.

I hope you will join me on this journey as we explore this descent into some of the most horrid crimes against cinema that have ever been put to screen. New Blogs will be coming out every Friday starting next week.

But until then, thanks for taking to the time to get Ploominated!