Unwatchable #23: “Manos: The Hands of Fate”
Posted: June 14, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
If you’ve been following the Unwatchable chronicles, lo these many years, you’re familiar with an issue I’ve encountered more than a few times in the course of my very important work. Many of the entries on the IMDb Bottom 100 list were also featured on the robots-chuckling-at-bad-movies show Mystery Science Theater 3000, which creates a sort of chicken-and-the-egg condundrum. Did people know these movies were terrible before they appeared on MST3K, or did the MST3K seal of disapproval convince IMDb users to vote films into the Bottom 100 that never would have made it otherwise? In most cases, I believe the latter to be true, and there’s no more open-and-shut case than Manos: The Hands of Fate, the long-forgotten 1966 horror movie that became the basis of perhaps the most famous Mystery Science Theater episode of all.
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Unwatchable #24: “Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow”
Posted: May 20, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
It’s been six months since the last installment of Unwatchable, and while I could try to come up with some legitimate excuse for my prolonged absence – say, that I’ve been busy negotiating with HBO over the television rights to this blog – the truth is, I just sort of forgot. When I finally did stop to think, “Gee, I haven’t done Unwatchable in a while,” it turned out I couldn’t find any trace of the movie that was ranked number 24 on the list when I started this project back in the halcyon days of the late, lamented Screengrab. That would be 1997′s Glam, described thusly by the IMDb: “Traveling from the backwoods to Los Angeles to visit his cousin, a writer discovers a world of sex, drugs, crime and violence revolving around a beautiful young woman and her mobster boyfriend.” It stars Frank Whaley, Natasha Gregson Warner and Tony Danza (!), was rated NC-17 for “a scene of explicit sexuality and some sexual dialogue,” and is truly a movie the ’90s forgot, as all existing copies appear to have been wiped from the face of the earth.
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Unwatchable #25: “Santa Claus”
Posted: November 10, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
Halloween and Election Day are both behind us, which must mean it’s Christmas season again, which in turn must mean it’s time to revisit a beloved, perennial Yuletide classic. No, not It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol or even the Star Wars Holiday Special (which has still not gotten the digitally restored 3D re-release it so richly deserves – and some people still think George Lucas is a genius!). You can have your Christmas stories and your polar expresses and your miracles on 34th street; when I’m relaxing in front of the fireplace, nursing an egg nog and wearing nothing but my “Jingle Balls” thong, there’s only one movie that truly summons the spirit of the season for me, and it’s simply called Santa Claus.
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Unwatchable #26: “Going Overboard”
Posted: September 17, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
When Adam Sandler’s latest comedy Grown Ups was released earlier this summer, it was largely derided as an essentially plotless (and pointless) paid vacation for him and his comedian pals. What many pundits didn’t realize is that Sandler had actually come full circle. I don’t think he talks about it much in interviews, but Sandler’s feature debut was, to quote IMDb, “shot entirely on a cruise ship going from New Orleans to Cancun.” Not only that, but this love boat was crammed to the rafters with beauty queens en route to the Miss Universe pageant, many of whom make bikini-clad appearances in the film. Not a bad first gig if you can get it, but as Steven Soderbergh once noted, having fun making a movie does not necessarily translate into making a good movie. (Quoth Soderbergh: “That shouldn’t matter. If that meant anything then Cannonball Run would be a great movie, because I’m sure it was fun to make.” Ironic words coming from the man who went on to make Ocean’s 12 and 13.)
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Unwatchable #27: “Bottoms Up”
Posted: July 20, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
If Uwe Boll is the king of Unwatchable, it’s quickly (or, more accurately given my recent pace at this project, very, very slowly) becoming apparent that Paris Hilton is the queen. I think this is not so much due to her acting (which is bad) or her choice of projects (which is worse). It’s just that people hate her. People who probably haven’t seen her work in the likes of Nine Lives and House of Wax nevertheless feel the need to pull up her IMDb page and cast negative votes against these films, because that’s the only way these otherwise powerless individuals can make it clear to the world that, whatever it is Paris Hilton stands for, they’re agin it. I suppose that’s admirable in a way, but what of the collateral damage? And by collateral damage, I of course mean – what about me? I’m the guy who decided it would be a good idea to watch the Bottom 100 movies and write about them as a means of entertaining you, and this is how you repay me?
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Unwatchable #35: “Santa With Muscles”
Posted: June 18, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
As those of you who check this blog on an hourly basis are all too aware, I was forced to skip #35 on our little countdown because I could not come up with a copy of the 1996 Hulk Hogan rarity Santa With Muscles at the time. But in this wondrous age of ours, YouTube always comes through eventually, and I knew it was only a matter of time before some Hogan completist posted the movie in excruciating 10-minute increments. As it turned out, the impetus for making this lost Christmas classic available was the release of a similar “wrestler-turned-actor plays beloved childhood icon” feature earlier this year: The Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Yes, The Rock’s latest ill-advised career choice made this column possible. There’s nothing left to do now but look in the mirror and ask ourselves: Was it truly worth it?
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Unwatchable #28: “Seven Mummies”
Posted: May 11, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 5 Comments »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
Long before I accepted my calling in life as your faithful movie janitor, it was my plan to write terrible movies instead of writing about them. I’m joking, of course – nobody sets out to write terrible movies, not even Seven Mummies screenwriter Thadd Turner – but I did spend my younger days toiling in the trenches of indie film, with limited success. One of my closest calls with fame and fortune came back in the late ‘90s, when some friends in the Austin independent film scene mentioned that a producer of their acquaintance was looking for a low-budget, action-oriented script that could be shot in Luck, Texas. You won’t find Luck on Google Maps; it’s a Western town set that was built on Willie Nelson’s property outside of Austin for the filming of Red-Headed Stranger.
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Unwatchable #29: “Seed”
Posted: April 7, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 7 Comments »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
Spring has sprung, baseball’s opening day has come and gone, and it’s time to get back to the business of counting down the worst of the worst. Yes, it’s been a long, cold winter for fans of Unwatchable, but after a rigorous course of psychotherapy and an aggressive regimen of mood-stabilizing medication, I’m finally ready to finish off the job I started…holy crap, almost two years ago. Of course, this means the Bottom 100 list I’m working with is now hopelessly outdated, what with all the new eye-gougingly awful films made in the interim – Uwe Boll alone has churned out another half-dozen atrocities since I started – but we can’t worry about that. A deal is a deal, and I promised to finish this grueling task…although you could help make it just a little less grueling by hitting the “Donate” button at the bottom of the page and sending me your spare change via Paypal. Just sayin’.
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Unwatchable #30: “Alien from L.A.”
Posted: July 27, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized 8 Comments »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
Back at the former home of Unwatchable, the late, lamented Screengrab, the venerable Leonard Pierce was moved to pen a tribute to Albert Pyun, perhaps our most underrated terrible director. “Both in his ridiculously prolific output and his utter lack of talent and shame, Albert Pyun leaves Uwe Boll in the dust,” Pierce boldly proclaimed. Urban Menace, Brain Smasher…A Love Story and Captain America were among the Pyun titles cited by my esteemed colleague, but somehow this early effort got off without so much as a warning. The time has come to correct this egregious oversight.
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Unwatchable #31: Snowboard Academy
Posted: July 3, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized 10 Comments »
Your fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
When I wrote about Meatballs 4 a few months ago, I offered the following advice free of charge: “Note to aspiring filmmakers: if the success of your movie is dependent on the audience perceiving a character played by Corey Feldman as ‘the cool guy,’ you have already failed.” It should go without saying that the same rule of thumb applies to Corey Haim, but if the makers of Snowboard Academy know this, they learned it too late.
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