“My name is Bruce Campbell and I would (probably) endorse this article.”
Last month I realised that I had so many reviews backed up for shitty films that I momentarily stepped back and wondered if I had been deliberately watching bad movies – something I have sworn not to bother with.
After a moment’s consideration I looked through the titles and decided that no – I actually watched all of them for a reason – they just all let me down. I then looked at the titles again and immediately second guessed myself, after all with titles like Dinocroc Vs Supergator and The Spookies what possible gain could I derive from sitting through what were undoubtedly going to be mediocre outings at best?
This is loser-talk – er… thought. If I decided not to watch anything that might possibly be bad I would hardly watch anything released to cinemas, after all most of it is ordinary at best. As Batman’s Dad once said “Why do we fall down? So that we can learn to get back up”, or something like that – I had my fingers crossed and was silently chanting in the hope that Katie Holmes would get her shirt off again.
So I decided that I watch a lot of bad movies so that I can occasionally find that one gem I can talk up until it gains a following or breaks big. The Descent is a great example, Tremors is another, both shoulda/coulda/woulda sucked and the easy way out would have been to ignore them both and go for the Sure Thing, only I wouldn’t have discovered two of my All Time Top 10 that way; and it is never as sweet if you have to be told what is good, always better to find it for yourself.
Above all let’s not forget that Watchmen was a sure thing too, hugging the mean works both ways.
Awesome.
B movies are generally those straight to DVD, bottom of the rack flicks that get no promotion, hardly any critical endorsement (or even reviews) and feature either zero recognizable actors, or one B movie staple surrounded by no-names.
The lifespan of a B movie is short, they zip from “New release” to “new to weekly” racks within a month or so and quite often 2 months later they find themselves in the ex-rental bin being sold for a couple bucks.
If you are renting a B movie it normally isn’t the headline film you take home, especially to the missus, but the final throw-in to complete the 7 for $10 package. Most likely it is at the bottom of the pile when you get home, and it ends up being shuttled back to the video shop unwatched with disturbing frequency.
In short B movies are the breadroll of the cinematic vale meal, you eat it once everything else is gone, but you make damn sure you get to everything else before you consider it, lest it take up valuable room meant for tastier things.
And now I am here to defend the place of the humble breadroll; I mean B movie.
Why?
Awesome-Er.
Let’s first start with analyzing what makes a good B Movie – and let me make one thing very clear:
The B Movie genre that exclusively targets males 18 – 40ish.
A B-Movie must satisfy some but not necessarily all of the following requirements:
- Low budget (duh).
- Short – few B movies last longer than 90 minutes, most in the 80s.
- As mentioned before the maximum “star” power must be 1 or less.
- At best the remaining cast is filled with “oh that guy”s n gals.
- The writer is often the director.
It operates in one of three main sub-genres
- Violent and gory,
- Thriller – always sex-thriller
- Niche horror – ghosties, vampires (no more!), werewolf & zombie mainly.
I’m going to exclude art-house and low budget stuff done by big players to make them feel like they are “giving back” (think George Clooney directed films), and stuff like Zombieland and Drag me to Hell, which have many of the hallmarks but were always going to do big business.
I’m talking more about films that aren’t ever meant to be released to theatres, films where the target was to break even or cater to a specific die-hard market.
I am also very much including cynical and lazy cash-ins that are purpose built to rely on name recognition and simple familiarity, even if the names are no longer there.
The difference between a hit and a ex-rental memory is generally that the good ones do one thing very well, in most cases that is in the horror genre, where a good new bad guy or some effective scares can be done on the cheap. Take Paranormal Activity and the original Saw for example, both were made for less than Paris Hilton snorts up her nostril on any given Wednesday, and both are now sequelised cash-cows.
Awesome-est.
Even if they aren’t classic the qualities most relevant to a movie being at least worth the buck or so are violence and nudity. Remember me saying B-Movies are male territory – now you know why.
There is a time and a place for B-Movie watching. The time is 10.37 pm at night when you’re wide awake for no reason. There isn’t anything else on, it’s too early to go to bed, too late to go out and you’re too tired to concentrate on a “good” movie.
All your brain can process at that hour are the more base visuals – titties and violence, satisfy those two criteria and guys 18 – 40ish are pretty easy to please.
I’ve reviewed a bunch of B-Movies over the past 18 months, many of them absolute crapfests, some masquerading as big budget flicks, and just a few very worthy of your time.
For the purpose of this article I have called them the Good (really), the Bad (kinda worth it) and the Ugly. (In reverse order.)
The Ugly
- Zombie Women of Satan
- Internet Dating
- Desert Heat
- The Spookies
- Single White Female 2
- Bikini Girls on Ice
The Bad
- Bitch Slap
- Naked Fear
- Killer Klowns From Outer Space
- Piranha 2: The Spawning
- Into the Blue 2
- Stuck
And the Good
- The Terminator
- Mad Max 2
- Crank 2: High Voltage
- Piranha 3D
- An American Werewolf in London
- The First Power
For the record I have identified over 60 films that I would label as B-Movies reviewed since the start-up of OGR, the sweet spot for such a film is around the 5.5 to 6, which in B-Movie terms means worth a look. About a third earned a 7 or greater, a third a 4.5 or lower (you take the good with the bad), only The Terminator, The Thing and Evil Dead were worthy of OGR (TM) “Greatness”.
Now Hollywood bean counters aren’t (always) dumb, they have now recognised that B-Movie charm can be profitable, leading to a spate of deliberately low-budget cheesy knockoffs, try these for examples:
- Grindhouse (Actually 90% of the films Rodriguez and Tarantino have done.)
- Machete
- Piranha 3D
- Slither
- Hot Tub Time Machine
- MacGruber
- The Expendables
- Paranormal Activity
- Black Dynamite
- Zombieland
- Jonah Hex – What you mean they were serious about that one?
Aside from the very fine Black Dynamite all of those films got a cinematic release, which is more than can be said for a lot of films featuring actual star power.
Hollywood has managed to harness the pulling power of a violent action flick with a itty-bitty o’ titty, therefore I will continue to pan for sloppily produced cheesy gold.
How I will relay that information will become more obvious in coming weeks, I haven’t got enough time to watch these 85 minute car-wrecks, let alone expound on their limited virtues…
Wait and see.
OGR
