You may be asking yourself, "Do we really need another 'bad movie' critic?" I think we do. I spend my nights watching movies and my days seeking out articles on the very films I've just watched, either to better digest the experience, to gain clarity on foggy concepts, learn the often juicy pre-production history, or simply to feel that delicious sensation of someone articulately agreeing with my own opinion. And honestly? I can't get enough. It's so disappointing to discover a movie that the Internet seems to know nothing about aside from a few stray comments on its IMDb page.
Every day I ask myself, "Why hasn't anyone seen this? Why are there so few thoughtful essays on older movies? Anyone can write about the next Marvel movie! I want to talk about the claymation effects in this shitshow from the 70's I watched last night! Where is my forum?!" So I made one. This one. You're here. Welcome.
A little introduction to myself: I've loved horror since I can remember, even if I didn't know it yet. I was attracted to strange and creepy concepts long before I ever worked up the nerve to watch a real grown up scary movie. Though I devoured things like Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and the usual baby-goth lot of Tim Burton movies (as well as a frankly unsettling amount of Unsolved Mysteries for a grade school kid), I was a definition scaredy-cat. Things easily consumed in the daytime would haunt vividly at night, so I was careful in what I took in. Despite my itching curiosity towards every creepy movie trailer I saw, I had nightmares for weeks after just looking at the cover of Child's Play on the video store shelf.
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| I don't wanna play. |
It took years before I could sit through the entirety of The Sixth Sense with my eyes open--which in hindsight is more spooky drama than horror, but I was eight so it scared the fuck out of me.
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| No child should have to see this. |
My first real horror movie was The Lost Boys, shown to me courtesy of my mom when I was nine. I thought it was a masterpiece. A parade of beautiful men in bedazzled leather and shredded jeans, straddling motorcycles, howling at the night, generally being just too cool...and then the fangs come out.
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| This was my fantasy before I knew what sex was. |
I was swept away into vampire mania (this lasted many years but I'll just let you take a guess when that petered out), but also into horror itself. Surviving my first encounter with sexy vampires emboldened me, and thus I waded into the rotting trenches of the Movie Gallery horror section to face new monsters. Unfortunately, being a child of the 90's-00's, I didn't exactly see the height of the genre's potential--meaning that most of the current selection was garbage.
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| Pictured: The New Millennium |
So I instead sought out the written word: I graduated from Goosebumps to Stephen King, which became its own obsession. When I read King's wonderful Danse Macabre (I'll save my gushing over that for another day) and discovered that horror movies, even the silly ones, could be intellectual, I decided to give the movies another try. Bravo's amazing and sorely missed 100 Scariest Movie Moments (and the continuations) gave a huge boost to my to-watch list. Netflix had come along by this time and I set about clogging my parents' queue with horror classics. It was unstoppable gory madness on my bedroom TV and along my bookshelves throughout high school.
In just a few short years, I transformed myself into a seasoned horror geek. I started picking up favorite directors, and iconic actors, and all their distinctive flavors. I instinctively favored practical effects to CGI splatter. I realized that the line between comedy and horror is nearly invisible, and that brought a new level to even the worst bad movie. Most importantly, I discovered the joy that lies in horror beyond the thrill of awesome gore or a particularly effective jump-scare--the pleasure the horror kid finds in "living through" something heinous and coming out better for it on the other side. That victory in cracking a film's mystique, discovering the message secretly written in all that blood.
Despite my love of meaningful horror, this blog won't be about those movies that necessarily aim to be taken seriously. I'd rather like to find the meaning hiding in what would otherwise be considered crap, if there is any to find. I'm talking those movies you find in 15-film collections of "classics," Goodwill VHS shelves, and in the lonely corners of Netflix's streaming service. I've found that with enough booze and/or drugs and the right kind of friends, any movie can be mined for intellectual discussion, or at the very least, unintentional comedy.
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| Play it at home! |
There are definite wrong and right kinds of bad movies--the wrong ones being hastily-generated projects that carry themselves on a half-baked gimmick, or ride on the coattails of a series, or are simply godawful boring. The right kind of bad movie--even in the face of an awkward script, terrible editing, or laughable effects--comes from a place of earnestness and sincerity that makes it a joy to watch. Sometimes its brilliance comes out in the performance of the main character's wacky best friend, or in the loving effort put into making the hokey monster, or even in the unexpected gutpunch when you realize this movie is making you feel something. You know it when you find it. I've found a few that I'd like to show you, some you may never have seen before, and some that may never leave you the same.
So, do we need another goddamn person on the Internet babbling about movies? I say yes. Yes, because sometimes gems are forgotten in the rush of Hollywood's golden stream (indeed, that was a pee joke). Yes, because there will never be enough people talking about how important horror is to our culture, even the crappy ones. Yes, because everyone deserves a platform for their long-winded, self-serving opinion, and this one's mine.
So jump on board my contrarian train! Let's watch some shitty movies together!
