The Creeping Terror

This movie is the crowning achievement of psychoanalytical hipster movies. Small town America gets invaded by an evil monster—sounds like something we’ve seen a dozen times every year since the thirties, right? Wrong, because in this movie the monster is a giant penis with a vagina that eats people. Just look at that class illustration on the box art if you don’t believe me.

Clearly a comment on the repressed sexuality of the fifties and not at all an attempt to make a legitimately scary movie, The Creeping Terror teaches us lots of stuff. Such as that if you do anything even remotely sexual, such as dancing, then a giant hairy penis will barge into your place and kill everyone. The creeping monster is the vengeful messenger of god.

Obviously this is a movie for the educated man, since it is full of deep meaning and imagery. The monster represents the droids that will defeat communism, and the professor who tries to learn from the monster represents the Taco Bell employees who get your order wrong. How complicated could this taco possible be, seriously.

10/10, best movie since Inception.

Gigli

This is probably the best fucking romantic comedy you could ever see. Forget all that You’ve Got Mail / Maid in Manhattan garbage—you don’t know  anything about chick flicks until you’ve seen this amazing movie.

In this movie, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are gangsters who kidnap an autistic teenager for extortion love. And if you think they’re bad parents the you must be dumb, because the director is clearly casting them as good people. Therefore you are wrong and should be ashamed of yourself.

This movie has also caught onto the fact that Baywatch is a religious experience, and being on the Baywatch set is akin to reaching nirvana. The film depicts one family’s quest to reach the set of Baywatch as a journey towards respect and understand, with J.Lo ranting about her vagina all along the way. Love is magic and this movie is amazing. It changed my life for the better, and I learned many things, such as the fact that all lesbians are into men. Thanks, Jennifer Lopez, for teaching me about lesbians. Also fuck you.

Highlander 2

This is simply the most satisfying sequel I have ever seen. It is a rare movie that can surpass the original, but Highlander 2 does just that. Don’t take my word for it: the fans and critics alike have shared a rare bond over the striking class and beauty of this visual masterpiece. Yes, it’s a science fiction masterpiece that puts Bladerunner to shame with the versatility of it’s special effects and leaves nothing out in terms of blowing me away with it’s amazing plot. In a stunning turn of events, the mystical warriors we met in the first Highlander movie are revealed to be time travelling space muslims from the planet Gorak. It takes a truly tortured genius to create a work of this magnitude. For the first time in the Highlander series, everything is just as it should be and it’s no wonder this plot device became a defining feature of the Highlander movies, completely redacting the backstory of the first one and laying the groundwork for everything that came next. Everything makes sense now.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

There hasn’t been a decent Christmas movie made in fifty years, and it’s all because nothing can top the gems made in the good ol’ days. Among them is this classic holiday staple, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a charming fireside story of interplanetary space politics and heavy metal death machines. When Santa is kidnapped by Martians, he must fight for his life against the corrupt political system that used him for toys and left him behind, armed only with his silver tongue and accompanied by one tagalong alien slave determined to save his race.

Basically this movie is just like District 9, except it’s about Christmas. It features important Christmas morals, such as the fact that it is rude to use your freeze ray on Mrs. Claus and Santa will fuck up your shit for it. And since this movie was made in the sixties, the effects are better than District 9’s because people did special effects properly back then. Just look at this amazing alien design:

Blackface makes legit alien.

Freddy Got Fingered

Tom Green stars in what is seriously one of my favorite films, Freddy Got Fingered. You might remember Tom Green from a TV show in the nineties where he ran around in garbage bags and sucked on a cow’s udder in every episode. This movie is like that, except bigger in it’s vision. Essentially plotless until the last twenty minutes, the film revolves around Gordon Brody as he tries tries to get a job as an animator, and then accuses his father of molesting his brother. And Tom Green does what he does best: making every scene genuinely fucked up. Take this one, for example:

Some scenes are pretty gross but the overall tone is similar to this one. The characters hate each other, get into weird situations and break things. To be frank, this film is messed up but there is no real reason for it to be on the list of worst films. The only reason it is is because it was shown to the wrong audiences. This is the type of movie that only appeals to cult audiences and when you show it to the general public there’s going to be a backlash.

Produced by a major studio and shown in big theatres, Freddy Got Fingered was just asking for trouble. But like Troll 2 it’s got plenty of dedicated fans who keep it from fading from the public consciousness.

Howard the Duck

George Lucas presents Howard the Duck, a story of a duck who travels from Duckworld to Peopleplanet, who kicks ass and romances the broads who ain’t ducks. Which makes no fucking sense, but who cares. Much like Labyrinth and Star Wars, Howard the Duck features brilliant special effects that absolutely blew me away because of George Lucas’ special effects wizard magic. It touches me, right here, to see so much hard work and effort on behalf of artists get funneled into a George Lucas bestiality film. But it’s for the better good of art that we get to sit through this movie.

Labyrinth came out the same year as this film and let me tell you, David Bowie doesn’t have shit on this. And I’m not kidding when I say that even though George Lucas didn’t write the thing his mark is upon the works. Who else could think of something as witty as “Quack Fu,” the duck based karate? This man is a misunderstood poet. Industrial Light and Magic just makes all the karate amazing. I especially enjoyed the scene were Howard beats up an entire hick biker gang at a sushi restaurant. This happens to me a lot, so I can relate. 

Catwoman

Halle Berry stars as Catwoman in what is clearly one of the best films to be set in the Batman universe. The plot is simple: after some g-men at a cosmetics company have her killed, a magic cat transforms Berry into a super hero better known for being in one of the less popular Tim Burton versions. Halle Berry seems made for this role, as her portrayal of this tortured soul is simply masterful. I was hanging on the edge of my seat because I just could not handle how witty this movie is, especially Catwoman’s fat friend who asked all of the questions I was just dying to have answered.

Director Pitof takes his cues from Schumacher’s versions of Batman; however, the film is nowhere near as good as my personal favourite, Batman Forever. Certainly we can agree that this series hit its peak with Batman and Robin, which despite being the best film quickly became the most overrated thing in the world until Inception came along. So while we can easily agree that Catwoman is one of the better films, it is by no means the best. Although it is great to see Hollywood treating DC with the seriousness it deserves.

Garbage Pail Kids

This film is absolutely remarkable—a stunning masterpiece!

The 1987 film of the still popular Garbage Pail Kids trading cards was largely misunderstood by audiences at the time. This timeless story about growing up and the loss of childhood innocence really struck a chord with me. It features stunning makeup affects that were truly groundbreaking at the time and remain visually stunning even when put to today’s standards.

With animatronic puppetry that would put Jim Henson at his best to shame, this movie dazzles with the sheer ingenuity of the puppets at play. The focus on the eyes of the children is what really does it—they look so lifelike and real, it’s almost like they are actual people. When I look into the eyes of Messy Tessy, I feel like I am looking into a mirror. And the opening sequence with the garbage spaceship coming to Earth is much more spectacular than any space scene from the Star Wars series.

Although this film is not without its controversies. Snubbed in all categories at the 1987 Oscar Awards, Garbage Pail Kids has been largely abused by the passage of time, falling from the eye of mainstream audiences and into cult status. Nevertheless, it remains a cinematic benchmark of the Hollywood tradition.

The Room

The magnum opus of a truly tortured genius, The Room stands as the crowning achievement of the Hollywood tradition and is the one film, above all others, which we must preserve for future generations. If the world erupts in a nuclear holocaust, the one film we must save for our squidlizard successors is The Room, for no other purpose than that this is the highest point our society has achieved and we can only decay from here on out. With this they will perfectly understand our triumphs and failures, our hopes and dreams, and, most importantly, why we inevitably destroyed ourselves.

This is a story of the human spirit. It has some tear jerking performances by the incredibly skilled actor Tommy Wiseau, a man who can evoke many emotions from his audience with his witty dialogue and chiselled good looks. Tommy plays Johnny, a rastafarian bank employee and spoon art collector whose fiancé and best friend are doing horrible things like drinking scotch and smoking marijuana. Obviously the two are cheating on him behind his back. His quest to prove his suspicions is a journey of wit and realization, interspersed with some serious football action that puts Rudy to shame. ‘Cause Johnny actually gets on the field.

Yes, it’s an action packed sports film and romantic thriller that will please audiences of all ages, just so long as they’re over eighteen. The acting is deeply moving and the love triangle is so nuanced that we can never tell who is in the right at any time. Unlike many romance movies, none of the trio is a strawman evil character there to deliver some sort of moral lesson.

Truly this is the Gone With the Wind of our generation. 

Troll 2

Troll 2 is the most charming shitty movie I have ever seen. There’s something beautiful about a movie that derives all its horror from an evil vegetarian witch and her goblin children as they perform various plant-related acts of evil and turn everyone into goop. Somewhere in what appears to be Pennsylvania lies the town of Nilbog which is the source of all goblin related evil in America. When I first watched this I thought the location was called Nil Bog, as in a scary swamp—perhaps a negative swamp where zero visitors survive. But no, it`s just goblin spelled backwards. Oh, the funky horror.

And never mind that the Druids and Stonehenge have nothing to do with America. You`re not watching this for the plot; you`re watching for scenes like this:

The truest moment of catharsis in this whole movie. The fly on his face really makes it even funnier.

There`s a reason that this movie is derided but never hated: there`s a great deal of love in the works and you can feel it. From that one mask (you know which one) that never stops being funny, to the kid defeating the witch with a bologna sandwich, to the sheer gall of the film to depict vegetarians as the evil creatures they so are, there`s a lot to love in this movie.

Wikipedia’s Official Shitlist

Wikipedia has done a rare service for fans of bad movies everywhere: they’ve made a list of the worst movies of all time. This is, of course, nothing but good news for me. Loving bad movies is the greatest of all nerd sports. You have done well, Wikipedia, and you will be rewarded in statements without citation.

The (shit)list:

• Glen or Glenda
• Robot Monster
• The Conqueror
• Plan 9 from Outer Space
• The Beast of Yucca Flats
• Eegah
• The Creeping Terror
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
• Monster A Go-Go
• Manos: The Hand of Fate
• Myra Breckinridge
• At Long Last Love
• Heaven’s Gate
• Mommie Dearest
• Inchon
• Howard the Duck
• The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
• Hobgoblins
• Mac and Me
• Troll 2
• Highlander II: The Quickening
• North
• Showgirls
• Bio-Dome
• An Alan Smithee Film Burn Hollywood Burn
• Battlefield Earth
• Freddy Got Fingered
• From Justin to Kelly
• The Room
• Gigli
• Catwoman
• Alone in the Dark
• Birdemic: Shock and Terror