Bad Horror

[dr_mabeuse]

I am a big admirer of bad art. Really bad art, the kind of stuff that makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking. Some of the baddest of bad art can be found in the area of horror movies.

There must be something about the horror genre that lends itself to spectacular failure. I guess that when we're all primed to be scared out of our wits by some monster, and the monster turns out to be a collie dog with cardboard fangs ("The Killer Shrews") or giant bunny rabbits ("Night of the Lepus") or the director's wife's chiropracter ("Plan Nine From Outer Space"), the entire thing becomes a big farce.

I've got a pretty good collection of horror schlock but I'm always on the look out for more. What's the worst horror flick you've ever seen?

---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

As the mother of a son who had a *major* dino/reptile obsession which lasted for years (he's 15 now, and I'd say ages 2-10 were dino years), I can speak to this topic with authority. I know all the Godzilla movies (I'm not just about poetry you know ), and the many spin-offs (Mothra, etc.) that came from them. In fact (and this is maybe depressing--well to me), I know Godzilla trivia. For example, in which movie--there's only one--did Godzilla fly *backwards*? (I'll post the answer later).

Now there are people, doc, who might say Plan 9 from Outer Space (with its pie plate flying saucer) is it, or maybe Santa Claus versus the Martians (but there, Abbott and Costello lend a certain kitschy charm), but I'm gonna say Gamera. Gamera is the poor-man's Godzilla which, if you think about it, is rather a mind-boggling concept.

Gamera is a large flying turtle mutant defender of Japanese children (primarily boys as far as I saw though). His escapades usually involve fighting "evil" (Gamera is "good") equally mutant monsters that threaten the children of Tokyo. He is summoned by children singing to him. Here's a lyric from the epic Gamera vs Jiga:

Gamera!
Gamera!
You're so groovy, Gamera!
You're so groovy, Gamera!
You are groovy, Gamera!
Sun, Moon, Mars Mercury
There's a big monster headed our way
Coming out of deep freeze
Whether we like it or not
Here it comes, flying down
Go! Go! Go!
Down it with jet flame
Groovy, groovy Gamera!
Groovy, groovy Gamera!
You are groovy, Gamera

Who can argue with that, eh? Jiga by the way looks a lot like a big mean paring knife. So I'd say that film or Gamera vs. Zigra (batlike monster with triangular head).

See attached for exciting all action shot to support my case.

 

[Icingsugar]

I call your turtle, and raise you a Killer Clowns From Outer Space.

I mean, really. Can it get any better?

/Ice - who giggled his way through 'It'

 

[Angeline]

Hmmm. I dunno Ice; I have um "issues" with clowns (they strike me as stupidly sinister), but maybe the clowns and the turtle can duke it out. Now *there's* a movie.

(edited to add that I just looked at that picture--ayup, pretty dopey.)

 

[Icingsugar]

Hmmm. I dunno Ice; I have um "issues" with clowns (they strike me as stupidly sinister), but maybe the clowns and the turtle can duke it out. Now *there's* a movie.

Hehe. Clowns have always seemed oddly perverse to me. It must be those huge pants...

*makes a note to write a circus story after my NaNo November*

 

[whispering_surrender]

Showgirls....*shudder*

Okay, seriously, the worst, and possibly my favorite of all time would have to be 1985's The Re-Animator which is very loosely based on a H.P. Lovecraft story. Seriously hokey film with some lovely gore and dark humor. A true classic for the Grade B Horror afficiondo.

Whisper

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Now there are people, doc, who might say Plan 9 from Outer Space (with its pie plate flying saucer) is it, or maybe Santa Claus versus the Martians (but there, Abbott and Costello lend a certain kitschy charm), but I'm gonna say Gamera. Gamera is the poor-man's Godzilla which, if you think about it, is rather a mind-boggling concept.

Angeline,

While your knowing all the lyrics to the Gemara song gets you a choice seat at the main table, I have to take you to task about "Santa Claus Versus the Martians". Abbott and Costello had nothing whatever to do with this movie. Jaimie Farr from Mash and a young Pia Zadora (!) were in it, but no one else of note.

I think it's important to mention that when Gamera, a gigantic flying turtle with tusks, flew, flames shot out of his leg holes.

---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

Well then I meant some movie with Santa and those two, darnit. lol. I knew I should have checked. And doc? Know the answer to my Godzilla trivia question? Want to hazzard a guess?

I think it's important to mention that when Gamera, a gigantic flying turtle with tusks, flew, flames shot out of his leg holes.

Yes, it's almost frightening to consider the various possible causes.

 

[Guest]

All of these movies were seen on TV, don't know how many are available on video. I taped them (?) so have the details. Some are truly bad, some good-bad. Among these I'd rate "Konga" as the worst, truly enjoyable.

Perdita

Beginning of the End, w/P. Graves, dir. Burt Gordon, 1947
Dr. Cyclops - dir. Schoedsack, 1940
Dr. Phibes Rises Again - w/V. Price & P. Cushing, dir. Fuest, 1972
Frogs - w/Ray Milland & Sam Elliott, dir. McCowan, 1972
The Giant Behemoth - dir. Lourie, 1959
The Gorgon - w/C. Lee and P. Cushing, dir. T. Fisher, 1964
I Married a Monster from Outer Space - dir. G. Fowler, 1958
Invasion of the Saucer Men - F. Gorshin, dir. E. Cahn, 1957
Konga - w/Michael Gough, dir. J. Lemont, 1961
Mad Monster Party - w/Karloff and Phyllis Diller (!), dir. J. Bass, 1967
Son of Dracula - dir. Siodmak, 1943
War of the Gargantuas - w/Russ Tamblyn, dir. I. Honda, 1966

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

Why has no one mentioned "Night of the Lepus"... a movie dedicated entirely to killer rabbits.

See Link:

http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/nakedshower/lepus.html

Or "There's Nothing Out There"....a movie that predated "Scream" in it's self deprecating "movie genre" humor and whose villain is a space alien sent to earth to have sex with all the human women and who can only be subdued by shaving cream.

Link:
http://www.theresnothingoutthere.com/main_1.htm

I, like the good Doctor, am a connoisseur of the worst that the world has to offer. From television icons to cupie dolls.... I love it all.

My son has this clown doll given to him by his unwitting great grandmother whose face lights up bright red and sings out this eerie synth music-box tune reminiscent of a 1970's horror film.

Now that is art.

~WOK

Edited to add: Of course I didn't notice that the illustrious Dr. M had already mentioned the Night of the Lepus in his opening post...duh!

 

[oggbashan]

My favourite is still "Plan Nine From Outer Space" but:

"Wild Women of Wongo" is terrible. It appears to have been filmed entirely in some city's park as the jungle with US college girls as the predators and the local geeks as their victims.

I saw several Italian fan-fic films in the 1960s on wet Saturday afternoons. The films had cut and pasted from other films to make a new film, dubbed the result in Italian and then added subtitles in English or re-dubbed in "American".

One I remember was Godzilla meets Hercules. They were never in the same shot. How could they be? They were from different films. "Hercules" would make a long impassioned silent speech but the dub would come out as "Take that you monster!".

The heroine who was an anonymous Italian starlet would plead silently for mercy for two or three minutes (which seems forever in any film) and a squeaky voice would say "help!".

The cinema was memorable. Most of the seats were from the redundant Corporation trams but the back row was made of settees salvaged from the City dump. The tram seats were uncomfortable. The settees were flea-ridden. The screen had a wire mesh in front to divert the missiles thrown from the balcony. That didn't help the picture's definition.

I had a choice of seats. The stalls cost threepence (£0.0125) but were vulnerable to missiles from above including ice cream and the local cheap clone of Coca-Cola. The balcony cost fourpence but all the balcony's occupants were evicted into the rain if the missiles caused damage or fighting.

It was a refuge from the rain and entertaining even if the films weren't. The early part of the afternoon showed silent serials from the 1920s. Not "The Perils of Pauline" because the management couldn't afford anything that good even forty years afterwards.

We don't have cinemas like that anymore.

Og

 

[MathGirl]

Does "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" qualify! I know it was supposed to be bad, but it's ............... BAD.
MG
Ps. Does that caveman thing with Ringo Starr still hold the title of Worst Film ever made?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

My favourite is still "Plan Nine From Outer Space" but:

"Wild Women of Wongo" is terrible. It appears to have been filmed entirely in some city's park as the jungle with US college girls as the predators and the local geeks as their victims.

Hearing about those dubbed Italian movies and the cinema with the fence in front of the screen and the used car seats makes me green with envy, Og.

In the states we used to have Saturday matinees for the pre-teens that would show a couple of monster flicks and a bunch of cartoons. A theater full of screaming 13-year olds high on sugar and caffeine throwing empty popcorn boxes at the screen. I had one friend who went up in the balcony and when something gruesome was shown would make loud retching sounds and pour condensed vegetable soup onto the seething mass below.

I saw "Wongo" once, and it was superb. The lewad wild woman had a terrible Brooklyn accent and to appease the monster that lived in the cave, urged her fellow wild women to "Day-ance! Day-ance!"

An interesting sidelight to "Wild Women of Wongo" is that Tennessee Williams the playwrite was dating one of the male leads and used to come by and watch the shooting waiting to pick the guy up. I wonder if that's where he learned his craft?

(This information comes from the Zucker Brothers' Golden Turkey books. Highly recommended for fans of bad film.)

---dr.M.

 

[oggbashan]

(This information comes from the Zucker Brothers' Golden Turkey books. Highly recommended for fans of bad film.)

---dr.M.

I have both books but I was thrilled by bad films before the Zucker Brothers started writing.

My worst ever cinematic experience was in Split, Yugoslavia in 1962. The films were projected on to a whitewashed wall of Diocletian's palace from a window. The picture was faint because of lack of power to the projector and current fluctuations caused dim-outs.

The first film (in Serbo-Croat) was in glorious colour about the follies of neglecting your teeth. Twenty foot high pictures of rotting teeth and ulcerous gums were followed by a picture of a Yugoslav Government made toothbrush which was to be used with salt water.

The next film was about "Progress of the Agricultural Cadres" with smiling peasants wreathing Government-made tractors with flowers after a successful harvest of ... grapes from a vineyard where the tractors couldn't go.

So far the films had taken about ten minutes on screen and half an hour of real time because of re-loading and technical problems.

The next film was a great hit - "Steamboat Willie". That was followed by Keystone Cops with a talking head epilogue about how much more ineffective and corrupt capitalist police were than the Yugoslav variety. That caused the most audience reaction with catcalling and abuse at the talking head. The epilogue suddenly ended when vegetables left over from the day's market were thrown at the projectionist.

The finale was well known to the audience - Chaplin's Gas Street.

Our Intourist Guide told us that this enlightening entertainment was the highlight of Split's cultural life on Saturday nights. We asked what other films had been shown on previous Saturdays. The answer: "The programme doesn't change until next Spring."

We found the nightlife in Split once we lost the guide.

Og
PS. You can tell how impressed I was by the cinematic delights of Split. Forty years later I still remember the programme.

 

[cookiejar]

I saw this at a friend's house a few years back...I found a review...

1991's "The Refrigerator"

The Story
Steve and Eileen, a young couple, move to New York City and find a one-bedroom apartment renting for $200.00 a month (!?). Something has to be wrong, and indeed, something is seriously amiss: the apartment‰s refrigerator is the gateway to Hell!

The weirdness starts when Steve suddenly awakens one morning from a dream in which his boss appears in the fridge behind a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup. From then on he becomes obsessed with making waffles. Even stranger, items tend to mysteriously appear in the fridge that nobody purchased, such as a pint of Hagen Daaze (this film has the most creative use of product placement since MINORITY REPORT).

Things really get hairy, though, when a repairman enters the apartment and is literally devoured by the fridge. The appliance also chomps Eileen‰s nagging mother, and later excretes a torrent of blood and guts.

It turns out a voodoo priestess of some sort lives down the hall, who, together with Eileen and the building‰s super, takes on refrigerator in an outrageous climax featuring possessed appliances (egg beaters, blenders, etc.) on a rampage.

 

[cookiejar]

Last month I saw "The Thing With Two Heads" with Rosie Grier and Ray Milland...it's one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen...

 

[pop_54]

Jeez

It's got to be all the bloody Godzilla things, Jeez, plastic models or what.

A fair number of the old 1960's Hammer films came pretty close to crap as well.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers

One of my roomates in college dated a bad movie afficianado and this was the one he brought out when they wanted to get it on. It was guarenteed to empty the appartment before it even got through the credits.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Last month I saw "The Thing With Two Heads" with Rosie Grier and Ray Milland...it's one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen...

For those who don't know, in this flick a mad scientist graft's Ray Milland's rascist white head onto Rosie Greer's black body, leaving Rosie's head on as well, so that they're constantly arguing and bickering.

That's the movie where Rosie Greer punches Ray Milland's head in the face to knock him out. And then Rosie wants to get it on with his girlfriend but Ray keeps on making snide wisecracks. It's a classic!

---dr.M.

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

I almost forgot!

There were these great movies that I had to hunt down that were on moritorium....

"Criminally Insane"

&

"Crazy Fat Ethel 2" (The sequel to Criminally Insane)

Link:
http://starbase.mine.nu/~xup/slasherpool/htm/reviews/criminallyinsane2.htm

About a fat lady who kills people to get what she wants to eat. The second is so bad there are actually scenes of her "stabbing" someone and it is totally clear that she is stabbing a katsup laced pillow. Lest we forget to mention the super-8 film quality. It is beyond horrible.

Plus, it anwers the never ending question of: How slow can someone run when being chased by a 400lb lady with a knife?

Ahhhh yes.... I am a proud owner of both movies.

~WOK

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

Oh yes... and I forgot Ethel's "crazy fat lady dance" at the end of the second movie. Prompting a 10 year inside-joke among my friends.

Thank you Ethel.

Thank you in all your blubbering glory.

~WOK

 

[cookiejar]

I watched "The Tingler" with Vincent Price yesterday.. A doctor discovers a creature that lives in your spine and grows with your fear..."Scream for your lives!" I think he was one incredibly sexy guy...his movies are campy but I love him.

 

[Madame Manga]

Okay, seriously, the worst, and possibly my favorite of all time would have to be 1985's The Re-Animator which is very loosely based on a H.P. Lovecraft story.

I have a soft spot for that one--it was filmed in Santa Cruz, California. I lived there for five years and reluctantly moved away, and then the 1989 earthquake wiped out half the lovely old brick and stone buildings and storefronts in the downtown. For years the cellar pits remained, surrounded by chain-link; it looked like the place had been bombed out. That movie preserves some long-gone views I wish I had photographed for my own memories.

MM

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

I have a soft spot for that one--it was filmed in Santa Cruz, California. I lived there for five years and reluctantly moved away, and then the 1989 earthquake wiped out half the lovely old brick and stone buildings and storefronts in the downtown. For years the cellar pits remained, surrounded by chain-link; it looked like the place had been bombed out. That movie preserves some long-gone views I wish I had photographed for my own memories.

MM

I also lived in Santa Cruz... years ago.

If I remember correctly, they also filmed "Lost Boys" (among other films) there. I think they called it Santa Carla though. I remember being able to see my house in the opening shot.

Gotta love the people of Santa Cruz... never greater people in the entire world (IMO).

~WOK

Edited to add: I just watched the reanimater movie the other day. Made me wonder... why in all bad horror films when you are going to hide something terrible (in this case a dead cat) in a refrigerator...why do you always leave the door partly open?

 

[Angeline]

I watched "The Tingler" with Vincent Price yesterday.. A doctor discovers a creature that lives in your spine and grows with your fear..."Scream for your lives!" I think he was one incredibly sexy guy...his movies are campy but I love him.

When I was a kid, my sister and I went to the movies every Saturday, and when we saw the Tingler--I was probably around 7 or 8, some of the theater seats were wired to give a mild shock when the Tingler (which was a tricked-up lobster, I think) tingled.

There was a part where the Tingler had somehow got into a movie theater and was crawling down the aisle. What a scene! Tingler, tingling seats, people screaming. No vegetable soup, though (that was The Exorcist).