20 Bad DVDs No Collection Should Be Without
#10 - #1
Return of the Living Dead
CATEGORY: The Horror!
Night of the Living Dead is creepy and Dawn of the Dead is a classic, but neither of them quite have the cheesy, gory, ludicrous punch of Return of the Living Dead, with its cast of unforgettable 80s punks and a half-dog. The plot: a toxic rain brings an entire graveyard full of corpses back from the dead to terrorize a bunch of people trapped in a mausoleum/chapel/crematorium. You may not realize it, but this is the first time zombies ever uttered their now-famous catch-phrase, "brains." This was also the film that popularized "fast zombies" (as opposed to the slow, lumbering, easily-escapable kind). Sorry, 28 Days Later. It's hard to figure out what the coolest part of this movie is, though. Is it the super-awesome zombie who looks like he's covered in tar, likes to eat people's skin, and clearly used up the film's entire budget? Or is it the fact that director Dan O'Bannon also wrote the screenplay for Alien?
Star Wars Holiday Special
CATEGORY: Just Plain Bad You'll be hard-pressed to find this TV special on DVD unless you put on your geek guise and head to a local comic convention-and even then, the best you're looking at is something transferred from a tape made in the 70s when this show aired, cuz George Lucas tried his damnedest to make sure no one ever saw this classic piece of tripe again. The "plot" involves Chewbacca's family, waiting for their big, furry daddy to come home for the Wookiee equivalent of Christmas. Bea Arthur plays a bartender at the Mos Eisley cantina (awesome), and Grandpa Wookiee ("Itchy") spends an unhealthy amount of time wearing his "virtual reality" helmet, drooling over some human super-diva in a display of creepy cross-species carnality. Oh, and Chewbacca's son is named "Lumpy." Absolutely insane.
Hell Comes to Frogtown
CATEGORY: The Horror! The title is a very literal representation of what you'll find in the film: Sam Hell, played by WWF legend Rowdy Roddy Piper (he's our golden boy!), takes his gun and electric codpiece and goes to a town full of giant mutant frog people. Evil frog people. Mutated as a result of radiation from a nuclear apocalypse or something. And they stole all the human chicks, the sons of bitches, because a big fat frog wants to make tadpoles with them. It's got a big ugly amphibian man instructing a woman to do "The Dance of the Three Snakes," which is pretty much exactly what you think it is.visuals included.
Meet the Feebles
CATEGORY: The Jackson Collection This Muppets parody (to put it in a G-Rated fashion) was Peter Jackson's second film, and it's absolutely appalling. The premise sounds hysterical-puppets involved in porno rings and such-but the joy of this movie comes not through laughter (because it's really not funny), but through watching the looks of mouth-agape horror on your friends' faces as you subject them to an endless parade of heroin-addicted frogs who have Deerhunter flashbacks, flies who eat the excrement of bunnies with AIDS, filthy cat puppets who give oral sex to giant walruses, and nasal orgasms. It's a sick, private joy, this.
Battlefield Earth
CATEGORY: Just Plain Bad Making a movie based on a science-fiction novel by the dead founder of your religion sounds like the plot of a movie in its own right, but that's exactly how Battlefield Earth was spawned. Despite its lofty heritage, the story seems like it was written by a committee of kindergartners ("What should our movie be about?" "Spacemen!" What do the spacemen want?" "Gold!"), and the Creature Shop won't be giving Jim Henson's a run for its money any time soon: Everyone was given a single Halloween costume prop (You, wear these big boots.you, try on this six-fingered hand.you, wear this funny Klingon forehead) and told to be big and mean and laugh a lot. Just like anyone who's mastered the secrets of the cosmos would do.
Road House
CATEGORY: Just Plain Bad One-time Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Mike Nelson once called this the cheesiest movie ever made, and he would know. The utterly ridiculous premise: Patrick Swayze is a bouncer/philosopher who has bar fights and deep conversations about life, the universe, and everything. Like our #1 DVD on the list, the movie takes itself utterly seriously, which winds up being its ultimate downfall. It invites us to deride it when it unfairly asks us to care about the secret, intense inner lives of people who break up bar fights for a living. Whether or not the metaphysical Road House really exists is not the point. It's how you get there.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
CATEGORY: Just Plain Bad Since it's been repeatedly dubbed the "worst movie ever made," and the disastrous production has been lovingly chronicled by Tim Burton in an award-winning feature film, it's probably the most obvious movie on this list.but we'd be remiss to leave it off. Spaceships made out of paper plates, cardboard gravestones that collapse at actors' feet, guys in silver suits and the untimely demise of Bela Lugosi. Few movies with such noble intentions have ever borne such ignoble fruit.
The Apple
CATEGORY: Face the Music This "lost" musical in the Rocky Horror Picture Show vein was recently released on DVD due to.well, apparently someone's demand. It tells the tuneful tale of two folk troubadours in "the future" (we know it's the future because of the shiny silver pants) who get signed to a giant corporate record label (called BIM, a parody of BMI.or maybe IBM.not quite sure) run by the Devil. You'd think the pointy beard would be a dead giveaway. Words fail when the songs begin, and the entire city Jazzercizes at their appointed hour to a song that repeats the line "Hey, hey, hey! BIM's on the way!" The songs (about such subjects as motorcycles and, yes, apples) are absolutely electrifying, incredibly catchy, and totally surreal, especially when Our Hero wanders into dream-like dens of inequity, opium, and pleasure while guys in S&M rat suits dance in the background.
The Worst Witch
CATEGORY: Kids' Fare Gone Wrong Whoever conceptualized this wonderful danse supernatural should sue J.K. Rowling, since this is obviously where she got the idea for Harry Potter. The plot: bumbling pagan-in-training Fairuza Balk (called "the worst witch" even by her teachers because she's such garbage) has to prove she's not a piece of crap. Charlotte Rae (TV's Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life) plays a shocking dual role as both the headmistress of the school and her evil twin sister, but Tim Curry steals the show when appears to Rocky Horror it up for four minutes by singing a ditty called "Anything Can Happen on Halloween," which features every cheesy 80s video effect you've ever seen, and even invents some you haven't. A must-have on every possible level.
Showgirls (VIP Limited Edition)
CATEGORY: Just Plain Bad
The most entertaining piece of shite ever made.and it's got boobies! You have to believe that most of the movies on our list knew on some level how crappy they were, but you can tell Saved By The Bell's Elizabeth Berkeley sincerely believes she's giving an Oscar-caliber performance as mental patient/dancer Nomi, a cheeseburger-loving amateur nail artist who goes to Vegas to make a new life and finds herself drawn the into the seedy, cutthroat underside of Sin City's professional performance industry. One need look no further than the infamous "pool scene" for proof of this movie's awesomeness. Go grab the recently-released DVD box set, because it's pretty much a party-in-a-box, with pin-on pasties and shot glasses. And if you haven't had a Showgirls party, you haven't really lived.
