Sunday, February 1, 2015

The Ten Movies in Weeks 51-100 That Best Represent the Sunday "Bad" Movies



I am currently 114 weeks into the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  That’s a lot of movies that I have watched and written about that fall into the bad movie category.  It has taken me over two years to get to this point, watching, on average, just over one bad movie a week.  It’s crazy to think that I have done that much work just so that I can watch and write about movies that most people would write off as crap.  I enjoy it, so that’s all that really matters to me.  Though, I do like that some people read and appreciate what I write.

This post is mostly for the people who read the blog posts.  More specifically, this is for the people who want to follow along, week by week, and watch the movies during the week that I’ll be writing about them.  I don’t think there is anyone that crazy, especially since it’s hard to find some of the movies.  But, just in case, I’m going to make this post for those people.  If you aren’t caught up or recently got introduced to the blog, this is more for you than anyone.

On week 61 of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I released a second post.  That post wasn’t about that week’s movie, Big Ass Spider!  It was instead a look at the first fifty weeks as I chose ten movies that represented the blog the best.  They weren’t the best movies that I had seen in those fifty weeks.  They were the ten movies that showed what the Sunday “Bad” Movies truly were.  There was good bad, bad bad, and unique movies included in those ten movies.  They were meant to be a way to allow anyone to come in and watch the movies with me without needing to watch all of the movies before.

I’m going to do the same thing again with this bonus post.  Instead of the first fifty weeks, I will be taking a look at weeks 51 to 100 and choose the ten movies that I think best represent the Sunday “Bad” Movies out of those fifty weeks.  Once again, these are not the best movies.  Nor are they my favourites.  They are simply the ten movies that I believe best tell someone what this blog is, what it is about, and what I do with it.  So let’s get started with the first of the ten movies.


I wanted to begin with the most unique of all of the movies I watched in the fifty weeks that this post is covering.  It was a movie framed like no other movie that I have ever watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies and I can’t think of any movie similar to this one.  The movie was set up to play out like an episode of a wrestling show.  There were character introductions with vignettes about how the characters ended up in the brawl, there were commentators that took the audience from one match to the next, and there were wrestling matches.  I’ve never seen a movie built this way.  For that reason alone, this movie is a good inclusion in helping a person understand the Sunday “Bad” Movies.

Many bad movies are memorable for one of three reasons.  1. They are really, really bad.  2. They have some ridiculous stuff happening in them.  Or, 3. They are enjoyable.  The Legend of Sorrow Creek does not fit into any of those three things.  It is one of the most forgettable movies I have ever seen.  I’ve been trying to think about it since I decided I was going to make this post and all I have come up with is that there was a car and a cabin in the movie.  I have no recollection of what happened in the movie.  No recollection at all.  This is the worst kind of bad movie that there is.  If you can’t remember a single thing that happened in a movie, what is the point?  Yes, I’m including this in a list of movies that people should watch out of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  It’s because forgettable is an important quality when it comes to bad movies.

I’ve been trying to push this bad movie on everyone since I saw it in August.  It is the perfect Hollywood bad movie.  You’ve got a solid cast of Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Kevin Corrigan, Kevin Durand, Jessica Brown Findlay, Matt Bomer, and even Will Smith.  You’ve got an insane story about love, miracles, stars, and immortality.  You have a flying horse.  There is so much going on in this movie that it is impossible to describe it in one paragraph.  I wish everyone would see this movie and understand why it needs to be seen.

There’s not much to say about why I included this one.  It’s based on a book that is apparently a whole lot different than the movie.  It stars an Olympic gymnast as an action hero.  There’s a game to the death in a made up country.  The main character fights with a combination of gymnastics and karate that is for some reason called gymkata.  And at one point, he fights off a bunch of enemies using a pommel horse that is in a town square.  Why is it there?  I don’t know.  It just is.  This movie is bonkers.

The biggest surprise of the fifty weeks, Big Ass Spider! ended up being one of my favourite movies that I’ve covered.  I chose it based on the name which just screamed bad movie.  What I got was a well-acted movie with a ridiculous concept executed perfectly.  I fell in love with the movie really quickly, and much like Winter’s Tale, I began telling people to watch it.  I wasn’t telling them to watch it because it was bad though.  This is a good movie that many people are going to think is bad because of the idea and name.  It’s really fun though and this inclusion is just because I like the movie so damn much.

Bad movies have a history of being heavy on ripping off ideas from other movies and television shows.  Metal Man is one that is closer to the source material than most that I have seen.  Sure, the story has major differences.  But there is still the fact that it is a man in a metal suit fighting crime, and the helmet closely resembles that of Iron Man.  It seems to be made on a low budget, yet it still ends up being entertaining enough.  Plus you get some Reggie Bannister in there.

Look at that name.  Just look at it.  What’s not to like about this movie?  It has Jesus Christ fighting vampires.  He has a sidekick who is a Lucha Libre wrestler.  There are musical numbers.  There are ridiculous sight gags that work wonderfully.  It has a low budget and has as much fun as it possibly can on minimal funds.  This movie perfectly captures the great attitude that many people making bad movies can have.

I feel the need to include a foreign movie on this list and I decided to choose the one that seems more out of the normal for North American audiences.  Infra-Man is basically a Chinese version of the Japanese television kaiju shows.  Something like an Ultraman or Kamen Rider, only in film form.  It has a lot of kung-fu, a lot of monster fights, and an appearance by Bruce Le (one of the many Bruce Lee knock-off actors that came to prominence following Lee’s death).  It was the first superhero movie to come out of China.  Well worth checking out.

It was hard to narrow down this category to one movie, but I had to go with Howard the Duck.  How do you not?  Throughout posts 51 to 100, I came across some interesting adaptations of material from other media.  House of the Dead came from a video game, Bratz came from a toy, and Howard the Duck came from comics.  Howard the Duck is the most important of the three films, however.  It was produced by George Lucas and quickly became known as one of the worst comic book inspired movies.  It still is.  And there is a lot of crazy stuff that happens in the movie, including a woman almost having sex with a duck.  The film was a colossal failure and along with other movies of the 80s and 90s, helped to keep Marvel out of being a respectable force in film until near the turn of the new millennium.  It’s one of the more important bad films.

Sure, I’m cheating a little bit by including both of the Birdemic movies in this final slot.  The thing is, both movies share a lot of similarities.  They are overlong when they don’t need to be.  The acting is stiff.  They both include a dance scene with music from Damien Carter.  And the bird effects are terrible.  These two movies that are a tribute to The Birds do nothing but showcase how terrible of a filmmaker James Nguyen is.  And they’re some of the most talked about recent bad movies.



So those are the ten… Er… Eleven movies from week fifty-one up to week one hundred that I think should be watched if you want a good idea of what the Sunday “Bad” Movies are.  Do I think there are more movies worth watching in those weeks?  Of course I do.  But I also want to make the Sunday “Bad” Movies accessible and narrowing it down to ten movies per fifty is much easier than the entire list, or even the smaller thirty movies I was debating on whether or not to include.  Ten (eleven) is doable for anyone hoping to catch up and then follow along.  You don’t even have to watch what I said you should.  It’s just a list I made.

That’s it for this post.  Another one will be going up shortly.  It’ll be the actual post for the week, about the movie The Hero of Color City.  Check that out when it goes up sometime during the Super Bowl tonight.

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