Bad movie night is the best night

[Just This Guy]

If you are really up for a challenge, watch "Battlefield Earth" without the Riftrax commentary. That move is just about everything wrong with a movie that you can do, only without the excuse of it having a low budget.

Regarding MST3K, at least in the US, Netflix only has a small handful of the original series episodes. (~20) but they do have the new series. Hulu actually has a lot more of the classic episodes.

[crazyhamster]

I started watching BE once kind of as a self dare and lasted all of 5 minutes. Sorry, no can do.

[Reuben]

Thanks for the recommendations so far! I've only added one to my list, mostly because of content. (I watch with kids, so boobs and gore are out. That rules out most horror, it seems.)

I added Mazes and Monsters, which looks amazing. The most amazing thing about it might be that I've never heard of it, because it's right up our alley...

This Friday we'll probably watch Stop, or My Mom Will Shoot!

If you are really up for a challenge, watch "Battlefield Earth" without the Riftrax commentary. That move is just about everything wrong with a movie that you can do, only without the excuse of it having a low budget.

Oh, ho ho! This is already on the list, but I keep chickening out. Is it boring?

[Just This Guy]

Not really boring, but every bit of it leave you scratching your head. From constant weird camera angles, stupid & nonsensical villains, equally dumb heroes, totally implausible setups and plot conveniences, laughably bad dialogue,and overacting by all the characters. The whole film leaves you thinking "what were they smoking?" It is inept film making at it's finest.

I'll put it this way: any movie where the villain repeatably uses the word "craplosey" in total seriousness, that word will describe the movie.

[Corsair]

I added Mazes and Monsters, which looks amazing. The most amazing thing about it might be that I've never heard of it, because it's right up our alley...

I watched Mazes and Monsters when I was in high school and I was deeply annoyed that this movie is far more about mental illness than actually fighting evil Monsters in Mazes. The monster and the mazes were all inside Tom Hanks' schizophreniac head. I don't recall that it was all that great of a movie even if you were onboard with a psychological drama.

This was deeply disappointing to a teenager like me who had no interest in psychological drama. There was already enough useless drama in my teenage social life. The movie I was hoping to see was Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but that was still years in the future.

[Reuben]

Just watched a bad, bad movie tonight, a bit off-cadence, on a whim. Oldest daughter managed to make it halfway through. What is wrong with me?

Hillbillys in a Haunted House. Redneck road show meets Scooby Doo. Heck, one of the characters is named Jeepers. So Jeepers (an idiot), an idiot who sings, and Budget Dolly Parton stay overnight in Podunk, Anybama, in a haunted house. Because plot reasons. They occasionally do a musical number for non-plot reasons. When they're not singing hillbilly songs, they get caught up in an international espionage ring consisting of generic Asian spies with stock lackeys doing underspecified evil. There's a man in a gorilla suit, video phones without cameras, movie footage used for security video, shockingly transparent haunting tricks, people waving guns, and pervasive idiocy. What little plot exists makes little sense. But at least the songs are good, right?

Not really. They're just meh. I wish they were horrible.

Moses's brother Aaron plays one of two Alfred-esque lackeys, because apparently, generic Asian spies need as many long-faced idiots to buttle for them as they can get. There might be other famous people in this, but who cares? The most motivating thing in it is Budget Dolly Parton's torpedoes, but they can't carry a train wreck. Or maybe they could, but who cares?

Rifftrax augmentation highly recommended. "Launch the missiles!"

[Reuben]

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. The Golden Girls' mother teams up with Rambo in a buddy cop movie about a detective and his spunky, overbearing mom. Seriously. Strangely, it works better than you would think, and better than the 4.2/10 IMDB score would suggest.

In fact, we spent the first half of the movie wondering just when and how it would go wrong. Sure, it's weird to see Rambo drop a sign on some bad guys by shooting a chain at 100 feet with a handgun after establishing that the movie uses real-life rules. Okay, that bit where he tries to talk down the jumper and ends up despondent on the ledge himself because his mom shows off baby pictures below doesn't quite work. Though it starts a little aimlessly, there are genuine laughs, and the story is fresh and interesting. But Johnny English falls flat in a few ways too, and still clocks in at 6.2/10...

Then 45 minutes in, Rambo gives another detective a swirly for badmouthing his mom. Next scene, his ex-girlfriend the police lieutenant returns his favorite toothbrush in the hall, which has a cartoon frog head.

I can't... I don't... what?

It's like there are two writers: one who mostly nails the comedy, and one who sniffs glue and smokes shotgun shells. I dunno. Most likely it's an editing problem. Somebody should have made a different call on those two scenes.

Oh, and the director should have come up with a reason that Rambo couldn't have just taken the gun away from his mom to justify having him belt out the titular line.

I think cutting those two weird scenes would have mostly fixed things. See, if you're going to let yourself get pulled into the story, you have to trust the movie makers. If they squander that trust by throwing you out of the story too often, it breaks the spell and you start to notice things that don't add up. (Hmm....) Why didn't Rambo take the gun away from his mom to shoot the bad guy? Why did one of the bad guys break into Rambo's house? With weak arms and a weak stance, wouldn't that shot kick that gun right back into Rambo's mom's face? Why on God's green earth is Rambo wearing a shirt that looks like a cow threw up on it?

J. J. Abrams isn't actually much better at consistency.
His movies teem with fridge logic. What he is good at is drawing us in and keeping us engaged. We trust him because we don't have the time, mental cycles, or motivation to figure out that we shouldn't.

This movie about Detective Rambo and his mom, though? It works and it's funny, but it lets us go by being just a little bit too weird.

[achilles]

Krull? How dare you! I love that movie! (especially with James Horner's awesome soundtrack)

Mazes and Monsters is actually based on a true story of a kid that gets caught up in Dungeons and Dragons. It was during that whole moral panic about D&D and how it would turn your kids into satan worshippers.

I used to watch bad movies with my mom. She like the bad monster movies. We watched all the Sharknado movies together. Two bad movies in particular were Big Ass Spider and Avalanche Sharks.

You have to see the trailers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeRW_dClNkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rvSLOop59A

[crazyhamster]

I now desperately want to see both of those movies.

[achilles]

I now desperately want to see both of those movies.

Avalanche Sharks was just hokey. But there were actually some freaky moments in Big Ass Spider. Arachnophobia is deeply ingrained in the primate amygdala, after all.

[achilles]

Oh, I totally forgot about Mega Piranha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwjcHHVTlWM

[crossmyheart]

I just saw Logan's Run was on netflix or Hulu (not sure) I tried to get my kids to watch it but they lost interest too soon.


But a fun one to watch with the kids is the Flash Gordon movie from the 80's.

[Random]

The Stupids. A villain named Mr. Sender plans to steal everyone's mail and garbage. Well, that's what our hero thinks. I wanted the actual villains to destroy the world just so this nutjob would fail. Also, aliens show up.

I really like The Stupids. It's so stupid that it's entertaining.

I haven't heard of many on your list; I'll have to look them up (at least the plots). They could be interesting. (I have watched some of those on your list, and liked them.)

[Reuben]

The Stupids. A villain named Mr. Sender plans to steal everyone's mail and garbage. Well, that's what our hero thinks. I wanted the actual villains to destroy the world just so this nutjob would fail. Also, aliens show up.

I really like The Stupids. It's so stupid that it's entertaining.

I haven't heard of many on your list; I'll have to look them up (at least the plots). They could be interesting. (I have watched some of those on your list, and liked them.)

Oh, I thoroughly enjoyed The Stupids, as well as many of the others. They were worth the occasional deep hurting that watching some of the movies resulted in.

We've become more tolerant of getting forcibly ejected from a movie's story by a WTF moment, because we can always fall back on analysis. If the movie manages to pull us back in, then great! If not, then great!

[redjay]

Watched Monster Squad on Sunday afternoon. It was bad enough to enjoy with a younger teen.