bad movies

[yendi]

So, with Elayna at her Karate sleepover last night, I enjoyed the opportunity to spend the night reading, thanks to felisdemens loaning me her copy of Book of the Dead 2: Still Dead. I then watched the two worst movies of the last five years on Tivo.

They were Wendigo, starring Oscar-nominated Patricia Clarkson and Erik "Dewey" Per Sullivan, and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. Honestly, these movies are the reason that MST3K needs to be back on the air. Wendigo, I expected to suck, but I was still amazed at how much (Freeze-frame shots of a deer walking on two feet! Aieee!) Ballistic should, by virtue of having Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, and Ray Park, have managed some decent action scenes. Yet other than the great Liu/Park fight at the end, the action was ludicrously bad. Not even in a good way. It was like watching a train wreck. A very repetitive and boring train wreck. I'm pretty sure that the script was four pages long, which explains the constant use of slow motion (and not in a stylish, John Woo-when-he-was-good way). The IMDB reveals that the director has done nothing since, and almost nothing before. The writer gave us Left Behind: The Movie, Halloween 4, Spawn, and Rapid Fire, which should have been a major warning. Throw in Princess Kitana as Antonio's ex-wife (in a role that made no sense whatsoever), and you've got the suckfest of the century.

Both of these were on HBO. I wouldn't even bother with renting them or letting them waste space in your Netflix queue, unless you're throwing a party.

Comments

[tablesaw]

Wait, Elayna went to the sleepover? I thought she was le vomitique.

Re:

[yendi]

It was a reaction to some food she'd eaten the day before, it seems. She had full energy by the end of the day, and we stayed home, so we were a two-minute walk away if needed.

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute... Elayna was out of the house, it was the night of a pagan lover's festival, you and 'song are engaged, and yet on your night away from the kidlet you read books and watched bad movies?

o_O

Drecks vs. Sever

[mendoza.livejournal.com]

Some of my friends and I rented Ballistic once. We also rented that Britney Spears tour de force, Crossroads. Now those are two great tastes that taste great together, assuming you're going for a night of mockery. I agree with you, EvS seemed like it should have been better than it was, given the cast. Half the time I couldn't quite figure out what they were trying to do, but since I never cared about anyone or anything in the movie, it wasn't a big deal.

I'm trying to persuade them to rent Glitter next time.

MST3K!

[crystalrowan.livejournal.com]

I am so glad I'm not the only one who feels that there are LOTS of great candidates for MST3K.

I was such a MSTie. :) I miss that show. I need to find more copies on DVD! I have Beginning of the End on DVD, but that's the only one (aside from the movie - This Island Earth) that I've found so far that I wanted.

[lordrexfear.livejournal.com]

While Wendigo the film may suck shit... the comic book adaptation (http://www.glasseyepix.com/html/comic.html), which is based on the SCRIPT not the actual film itself, was one of the better one-shot independent projects of recent times. The animated series (http://www.thewendigo.com/html/TheWendigo.html) looks like some excellent stuff too. That's all more because of Brahm Revel (http://www.ognitoinc.com/) than Fassenben though.

On Ecks vs. Sever, Alan McElory was paid hundreds of thousands to write the first WWE film which shall star Triple H and be directed by Conan the Barbrarian's John Milius. The title? Jornada del muerte (http://movies.hsx.com/servlet/SecurityDetail?symbol=JORNA). Of course the film might never come out.

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

Wendigo had just enough potential that I watched it in spite of myself. Alas, it was arse. The atmosphere was great and creepy and ominous, but it fizzled into pointlessness, and the characters were all flat and dull. And the monster was completely ludicrous, and shooting it in Spaz-o-vision did not make it any more effective. Seasick does not equal scary.

Re:

[yendi]

Seasick does not equal scary.

It didn't occur to me until just now that the filmmakers were obviously working in the post-Blair Witch era, and probably assumed that seasickness and rural hauntings were all they needed to make something scary.

Re:

[yendi]

Um, yeah. What's your point? :-)

Re: Drecks vs. Sever

[yendi]

Ooh, and Showgirls!

Re:

[yendi]

I could see the story working out in comic form, mainly because the art could lift it up, and the spookiness could really be played up well (there's no such thing as a bad special effect on the page). I'll have to look for it.

Re: Drecks vs. Sever

[mendoza.livejournal.com]

Yes! Very good call. Showgirls: an X-rated movie so un-erotic I could practically watch it with my parents.

Re:

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

I watched the Making Of, and they were soooo proud of that ridiculous deer thing...