As we all know, there are bad movies and then there are BAD movies. There are bad movies that are bad in the sense Snoop Dogg would describe them, meaning - confusingly - good, and then there are films that are bad in the sense used by men who can't get away with wearing their hair in pigtails, in that they're not very good at all.
The truth is, all of us realise that, sometimes, films can be so bad, so atrociously and joyfully hopeless, that you can't help but be endeared. The sort of film we all think died a death in the late 80s but all secretly hope is still living on like one of it's own badly made-up creations. Shambling zombies with cornflakes stuck to their faces with PVA glue, still tormenting bad actresses in too much make-up and not many clothes. The sort of film we love precisely because, well, it's a little bit shit. Like The Wrestlemaniac, which I sat down and watched last night with the sort of childish, hand-clapping glee usually reserved for teenage girls watching High School Musical.
The film's premise is based around a film crew - one of whom looks like a knock-off version of the fat curly one from Lost - and a trio of wannabe pornstars - one of whom looks like a knock-off verson of Jennifer Esposito, which was a much more enticing prospect - having their van break down in the middle of an old Mexican ghost town inhabited solely by an insane masked wrestler played by current WWE star Rey Mysterio's dad. The insane lucha libre'er (is that even a word? - Ed) was apparently dumped in the town when he started killing people, and now whenever someone happens upon his little corner of the desert, he rips their faces off - actually poorly-made papier mache masks with the actor's real faces underneath, smeared with what looked like blackberry jam - and leaves them to die.
Anyway, after about ninety minutes of wonderfully predictable murder and mayhem - in which the fat Lost-alike is bodyslammed to death by a middle-aged wrestler jumping off an oil drum - the bemasked lunatic has killed them all and stolen their van, riding off to what we assume is some sort of major population center, and the only one who hadn't had her face ripped off was the fake Esposito, who ended up with a spike through her instead. Which was a shame, as the idea of Jennifer Esposito smeared with blackcurrant jam had been moving steadily up my favourite mental image charts for the previous hour and a half.
None of it was very good, but the charm of the entire film was that it was completely and utterly aware that it wasn't very good. While not exactly played for laughs, the entire thing was so completely campy from beginning to end that you really couldn't help but cheer for the masked mentalist every time he hoved into frame, tossing pornographers and giggling starlets in all directions and smothering them all in breakfast condiment. The gore was there and pretty much everyone ended up completely soaked in either their own blood or someone else's, but there was no real sinisterness to any of it, and everyone involved clearly understood the rediculousness of Rey Mysterio's dad pulling people's faces off in the desert, and just ran with it.
The best part is, however, the film was released in 2006, so it's only 2 years old. The B-movie is alive and well.
Contrast this to another film that I've been getting bombarded with lately, Saw V. Their entire advertising campaign - on the sides of buses, at least - centers around the fact that their original poster submission was banned for being too graphic. I don't know how many of you have seen any of the preceeding forty-eight hundred Saw films, but they have been described elsewhere as 'torture porn' and it is completely correct. As someone who can sit down and watch a wrestler kill porn stars for an hour and a half and laugh myself stupid, I genuinely cannot see the appeal of watching 'Man walks into a room, gets eviscerated, repeat' for the best part of what feels like about nine days.
It's the unrelenting gloom that gets to me. There is simply no entertainment other than the violence and pain being portrayed, and if I was going to make a film solely based around those elements, I'd save an awful lot of money by just running around a slaughterhouse with a camera punching Fresians. Is there even a plot? I've been totally thrown. I thought the bloke controlling that odd little puppet had died of cancer, and his assistant who used to play the dumb one in Becker - clearly a talented actress, as it has to be difficult to play the dumbest person in the room when your co-star is Ted Danson - had gotten her head shot to bits. I'm told I won't believe how it ends, but the only interest I have at all is in seeing what sort of rediculous deus ex machina they pull out to lead on to the inevitable and in fact already green-lit Saw VI.
I know that it seems slightly hypocritical of me to complain about the lack of realism involved in Saw's seemingly indiscoverable warehouse full of atrocities that is both big enough to house all these traps and yet completely undiscoverable - someone has to have built those things, right? - while singing the praises of a film about a mad wrestler pulling people's faces off, but the difference is that The Wrestlemaniac was clearly meant to be rediculous, whereas Saw aims to be so serious it makes your head want to explode. It doesn't want to make you jump and giggle, it just wants to make you feel sick and I genuinely cannot see the appeal behind it, and it's all a little bit Year of the Sex Olympics to me, sitting around watching torture-porn.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, just be glad you've never seen Leonard Rossiter in a dress.
Goodnight.
The truth is, all of us realise that, sometimes, films can be so bad, so atrociously and joyfully hopeless, that you can't help but be endeared. The sort of film we all think died a death in the late 80s but all secretly hope is still living on like one of it's own badly made-up creations. Shambling zombies with cornflakes stuck to their faces with PVA glue, still tormenting bad actresses in too much make-up and not many clothes. The sort of film we love precisely because, well, it's a little bit shit. Like The Wrestlemaniac, which I sat down and watched last night with the sort of childish, hand-clapping glee usually reserved for teenage girls watching High School Musical.
The film's premise is based around a film crew - one of whom looks like a knock-off version of the fat curly one from Lost - and a trio of wannabe pornstars - one of whom looks like a knock-off verson of Jennifer Esposito, which was a much more enticing prospect - having their van break down in the middle of an old Mexican ghost town inhabited solely by an insane masked wrestler played by current WWE star Rey Mysterio's dad. The insane lucha libre'er (is that even a word? - Ed) was apparently dumped in the town when he started killing people, and now whenever someone happens upon his little corner of the desert, he rips their faces off - actually poorly-made papier mache masks with the actor's real faces underneath, smeared with what looked like blackberry jam - and leaves them to die.
Anyway, after about ninety minutes of wonderfully predictable murder and mayhem - in which the fat Lost-alike is bodyslammed to death by a middle-aged wrestler jumping off an oil drum - the bemasked lunatic has killed them all and stolen their van, riding off to what we assume is some sort of major population center, and the only one who hadn't had her face ripped off was the fake Esposito, who ended up with a spike through her instead. Which was a shame, as the idea of Jennifer Esposito smeared with blackcurrant jam had been moving steadily up my favourite mental image charts for the previous hour and a half.
None of it was very good, but the charm of the entire film was that it was completely and utterly aware that it wasn't very good. While not exactly played for laughs, the entire thing was so completely campy from beginning to end that you really couldn't help but cheer for the masked mentalist every time he hoved into frame, tossing pornographers and giggling starlets in all directions and smothering them all in breakfast condiment. The gore was there and pretty much everyone ended up completely soaked in either their own blood or someone else's, but there was no real sinisterness to any of it, and everyone involved clearly understood the rediculousness of Rey Mysterio's dad pulling people's faces off in the desert, and just ran with it.
The best part is, however, the film was released in 2006, so it's only 2 years old. The B-movie is alive and well.
Contrast this to another film that I've been getting bombarded with lately, Saw V. Their entire advertising campaign - on the sides of buses, at least - centers around the fact that their original poster submission was banned for being too graphic. I don't know how many of you have seen any of the preceeding forty-eight hundred Saw films, but they have been described elsewhere as 'torture porn' and it is completely correct. As someone who can sit down and watch a wrestler kill porn stars for an hour and a half and laugh myself stupid, I genuinely cannot see the appeal of watching 'Man walks into a room, gets eviscerated, repeat' for the best part of what feels like about nine days.
It's the unrelenting gloom that gets to me. There is simply no entertainment other than the violence and pain being portrayed, and if I was going to make a film solely based around those elements, I'd save an awful lot of money by just running around a slaughterhouse with a camera punching Fresians. Is there even a plot? I've been totally thrown. I thought the bloke controlling that odd little puppet had died of cancer, and his assistant who used to play the dumb one in Becker - clearly a talented actress, as it has to be difficult to play the dumbest person in the room when your co-star is Ted Danson - had gotten her head shot to bits. I'm told I won't believe how it ends, but the only interest I have at all is in seeing what sort of rediculous deus ex machina they pull out to lead on to the inevitable and in fact already green-lit Saw VI.
I know that it seems slightly hypocritical of me to complain about the lack of realism involved in Saw's seemingly indiscoverable warehouse full of atrocities that is both big enough to house all these traps and yet completely undiscoverable - someone has to have built those things, right? - while singing the praises of a film about a mad wrestler pulling people's faces off, but the difference is that The Wrestlemaniac was clearly meant to be rediculous, whereas Saw aims to be so serious it makes your head want to explode. It doesn't want to make you jump and giggle, it just wants to make you feel sick and I genuinely cannot see the appeal behind it, and it's all a little bit Year of the Sex Olympics to me, sitting around watching torture-porn.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, just be glad you've never seen Leonard Rossiter in a dress.
Goodnight.
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