The Peculiar Delight of an Awful (and Awfully Funny) Movie

I found this “treatise” I’d written some time ago about awfully bad movies and thought it would be fun to share it. Trigger warning: I talk about Sharnado. Read on at your risk! 

I love bad movies. You know, the kind that are SO bad they are, well, not good, but somehow FUN. Back in the day, we used to call them creature features—creatures eating other creatures and hapless characters. Of course, there’s Jaws and Tremors and Lake Placid. Not sure I’d call them so bad they are good. They just are…entertaining in a kind of gruesome way. The safe thrill ride for the viewer. If I’m roaming the dial and I see either of these, I’ll pause and watch them again. 

I have no clue why, because I know who gets eaten and when. 

I ‘heart’ Godzilla because we turned fifty together. I was nursing a broken ankle and he was getting shot by machine guns and nuked. We bonded.

But then there are the movies that are just SO bad, they are only good if watched in a group of witty people capable of Mystery Science Theater 2000-ing the plot and dialog (or lack thereof). 

Of course, there are movies so completely bad they aren’t even fun to mock. They are more likely to rob you of brain cells and, if you keep watching until the credits roll you realize you’ve been drooling down yourself. 

\There was one particularly horrible movie on SyFy a few years back that the Son and I tried to watch. The “plot” and filming was so bad I wasn’t even afraid of the alien bears. I’m terrified of bears, so if your bears aren’t scaring me? Not good.

We used to watch on, can’t remember if it was Friday or Saturday nights they had these awesome commercials. So funny, I actually checked YouTube for them. Can I find them? No. These commercials were seriously better than a lot of their programming at the time and totally YouTube worthy. 

Are we the only ones who saw/noticed them? The pizza delivery guy? The cops? The entrails? Come on!

Which brings me to…Sharknado. 

Please don’t hate me because I’m not feeling the love. Not even the love/hate. I was alone and mocking it to my hubs in the next room—who says, “What?”—not that fun. Add to that, I’m a writer and —I’ve been told—I write pretty nice dialog. So my ears were bleeding. And for me, the pacing was way off. I didn’t even have time to care before some characters got eaten. 

Granted, it is stretching things to expect some logic to character action in a movie about sharks flying through the air, but seriously? 

You’re isolated on the Bad Dude’s shark hunting boat—not to mention he’s twice your size and pointing a gun at you—and you threaten HIM? In my world we call them TSTL (too stupid to live). You’ll be happy to know he didn’t. But I did find myself cheering for the sharks. Okay, I wasn’t cheering. It was more like, “Yeah, he needs to get eaten—”

Mostly before I could get the thought fully formed in my head, all the Bad/annoying people (except the ex-wife) got eaten. Some of the actors/actresses really tried, but a lot of them were phoning it in. I think even some of the sharks were like, “Can you get that one? I’m tapped out.”

So, I’ll admit I didn’t watch the big finale. I had lost my ability to suspend disbelief. I needed company to make it to the credits and the hubs was already asleep in front of a Cops rerun. 

So sad to be all alone with Sharknado (slight nod to Thoroughly Modern Millie there. I can’t help myself. Do you ever do that?). So memo to self: if you’re alone, don’t watch critter features or movies widely known to be an “awful pleasure.” 

I think my other mistake was expecting too much—as in, expecting it to be so bad it was good. I won’t say it wasn’t. I’ll just say that my first watch lacked the elements I like in my really bad movies. If I try it again, I will make sure I have company in the room with me. 

And now I think I’ll see if I can find Tremors on. (My odds are good. Lol)

So, did you watch Sharnado? Loved it? Hated it? Wish you could scrub the memory of it from your brain? Plan to watch it every time it’s on? Have another/better awful movie to recommend. 

Perilously yours,

Pauline