To be a truly GOod Bad Movie, it has to be utterly shameless. No irony, no sense that "We know better than to do this." Bad Movies glory in their decisions.
The Apple does this in spades, but because it is the Greatest Movie Of All Time, it needs no defending.
I just realized that DUNE and POPEYE are similar in that they are unmistakebly the work of idiosyncratic directors who are probably trying to tackle a genre/subject/whatev that's dead wrong for them.
The funny thing is that I do think Dune captures a LOT of the tone of the book, and in doing so illustrates perfectly why Dune should never have been adapted for the screen.
Hm. So, where does Big Trouble in Little China fall? I mean, it glories in its decisions, and is shameless, and is fun, but a heaving pile of enthusiastic nonsense.
And very knowing nonsense on top of that. But I'm not sure I'd even call it bad - wouldn't it be like calling BUCKAROO BANZAI a bad movie?
Ooh, has anyone else seen Oblivion? Now THAT'S a fantastic bad movie. Evil space aliens and bad bingo puns.
The funny thing is that I do think Dune captures a LOT of the tone of the book, and in doing so illustrates perfectly why Dune should never have been adapted for the screen.
The biggest problem I had with DUNE, but also one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much, was that it was painfully obvious that Lynch wanted to spend all his time with the Harkonnens, and it threw the whole balance of the movie off.
While I can enjoy that kind of audience-winking, too, it can't beat sincerity for enjoyment of the form. "So bad it's good" shouldn't be on purpose, it spoils the fun.
I don't know. I find that unintentional badness is often less entertaining than its reputation leads me to expect. I saw
The Evil Dead
with a bunch of friends, and although I laughed, I laughed because of the friends, not really because of the movie. Whereas,
The Evil Dead 2
had me in that laugh-so-hard-you-become-inaudible kind of place. The former was unintentionally bad, but the latter intentional.
Most of the time, if I find myself in vast cognitive dissonance with the director's intentions, I cannot enjoy the film, even to mock. I have to be won over in good faith before I can enjoy a bad movie.
What about that movie with Rowdy Roddy Piper and the aliens? That's fun and not very good.
Ooh, has anyone else seen Oblivion? Now THAT'S a fantastic bad movie. Evil space aliens and bad bingo puns.
Not to mention George Takei.
I don't know about everyone else, but They Live kind of falls down in the enjoyable department for me.
the movie that occurred to me was one I flipped on to recently: FLASH GORDON.
Dude. Totally. As well as Clash of the Titans.
And....
Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
