The modern movie culture is built upon familiarity. Sequels,
reboots, remakes, and adaptations are all over the place. When you look at any
cineplex, the majority of films fit into one of those four categories. Think
about right now. There’s a new Terminator movie, a reboot of The
Addams Family, a Joker movie, a Maleficent sequel, and a Zombieland
sequel. The familiarity is ruling the box office through sheer abundance.
Even the movies that don’t come from an established property
feel familiar. One studio will release a film to success and other studios will
try and copy that formula to find their own success. Look at the Dark
Universe (a reimagining of a property that already existed) and how it
tried to capture the magic of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Almost
everything that gets released to theaters, home video, or streaming services
can feel like something else.
The Sunday “Bad” Movies can have that issue too. The first
film that was ever covered, Starcrash, was an Italian rip-off of Star
Wars. There have been sequels upon sequels throughout the nearly seven
years of posts. There have been book adaptations, comic adaptations, remakes,
and reboots. But every once in a while, a movie comes up that tells a story in
a unique way. It might not be fully unique (no story ever is), but it at least
tries something different with the way the story is told.
It’s time to look at some of the more unique movies to come
through the Sunday “Bad” Movies. These movies tried something new with their
material. If it wasn’t new, it was new to me. It was something I hadn’t seen
before. These movies stood out as one-of-a-kind. Seven movies, seven unique aspects.
One for each year that the blog has been around. Here we go.
Monster Brawl
Possibly the most unique of all the movies watched for the
Sunday “Bad” Movies, Monster Brawl was released in 2012. It depicted
many of the standard horror movie monsters that people knew and loved. It told
their backstories in small vignettes. That might not seem like too much of an
original story, and with that description, it wasn’t.
What made Monster Brawl stand out was the originality
in the story that tied everything together. The reason that the stories were
being told was that the monsters were coming together to battle it out in the
ring. They were going to wrestle one another to see which monster would come
out on top. It was a professional wrestling pay-per-view with monsters instead
of professional wrestlers. Though, there were professional wrestlers playing
the monsters, so it was really monsters and professional wrestlers. I’ve never
seen anything like it, and I don’t think I will ever again.
The Terror of Tiny Town
From the beginning of film up until the 1970s, westerns were
a force to be reckoned with. There were westerns that fit into pretty much any
other genre. There were war westerns, comedy westerns, drama westerns, and
musical westerns. Some of them stayed truer to history than others. There are
still westerns, of course, but not nearly as many as there used to be.
The Terror of Tiny Town came out in the 1930s and
played off many western tropes and stories that have been well worn throughout
the genre. There was one major difference, though. The film was marketed as the
first western with “an all midget cast.” It may have been the only western
where the entire cast was little people. There’s not really much else out there
like it, hence its inclusion in this list.
Funky Forest: The First Contact
This one made the unique list simply because of how weird it
is. Between the dangly arm thing, the television vagina, the dancing scenes,
and the techno forest music making love with trees scene, there’s a lot to
unpack with Funky Forest. The film is a fairly standard anthology style
movie. There’s no wraparound story, but it has a bunch of vignettes that play
one after another. The vignettes are some of the weirdest out there, though,
making for a wholly unique experience that needs to be seen to be understood.
God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness
The opening of this post mentioned all the sequels, reboots,
remakes, and adaptations out there. This is a sequel. That might make it seem
like there wasn’t too much originality in it. It was coming off two successful
Christian films about how Christianity should be taught and believed. The first
one had a student rebelling against his teacher because the teacher wouldn’t
allow his class to believe in Christianity. The sequel had a teacher being persecuted
for even mentioning religion in her class. This one should have been more of
the same, right?
Not quite. The difference between this and the others, and
what made the third God’s Not Dead unique among so many other Christian
films, was the moral of the story. The first two films were about Christians
being the victims. They were about how Christians were right and they should
preach their beliefs to everyone else until the other people agree with them.
The third film took a different approach. It was about inclusivity. Everyone
should be able to believe what they want to believe. A specific religion
shouldn’t be pushed on people. Those who want to believe it have the right to
believe. Those who don’t have the right to not believe. Everyone can make their
own decisions.
It was a refreshing take from a film subculture that is
usually all about Christianity being the only right way. To have a filmmaker
say that they can believe in Christianity but it’s okay for other people not to
was a nice compromise. It was nice to see that not everything had to be so
forcefully propagandic. There’s a place for everyone.
Remote Control
There have been a lot of meta horror movies to come out
since the release of Scream in 1996. This was not one of them. This one
came out a few years earlier, at the end of the 1980s. But it was a precursor
to what would come a few years later.
Remote Control was a movie about a movie called Remote
Control that mind controlled people in the same way that the movie within
the movie, Remote Control, could. Did you follow that? There were three
layers. Remote Control featured a movie called Remote Control
that featured a movie called Remote Control. What was happening in the
top layer mirrored what happened in the middle layer, and that mirrored what
was happening in the lowest layer. It was like an Inception of horror.
Only, where Scream played off the slashers of the 1970s and 1980s, Remote
Control played off of the sci-fi horror of the 1940s and 1950s. It was an
interesting throwback while using the 80s style, all wrapped in a meta
commentary that made it unique.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
There’s no real way around what this movie was about. It’s
right in the title. There was a bed. It ate people. For some reason, people kept
sleeping on, playing on, or hanging around this random bed. If you found a
random bed in an abandoned house, would you get on it? Probably not. But these
people did, and they paid with their lives.
If that story wasn’t unique enough for you, consider that Death
Bed: The Bed That Eats was presented like an art film. It wasn’t told in
the standard horror way, even though the story was clearly B-movie material. It
was presented as though it was a high form of artistic expression. It was the
Terrence Malick of horror films, only with less nature. The bed did end up
outside at some point, but the movie didn’t really involve nature. It involved
a bed eating people, people shooting at the bed, and the bed eating more
people. An arthouse bed eating people movie.
The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human
Rounding out the list of unique movies in the Sunday “Bad”
Movies is this romantic comedy done in the style of a nature documentary. A man
(Mackenzie Astin) and a woman (Carmen Electra) met at a nightclub. They soon
formed a relationship that would grow until they eventually got married and had
a child. Throughout their whole relationship, there was narration from David
Hyde Pierce.
Writer/director Jeff Abugov said that he got his inspiration
for the movie after seeing a nature documentary on the mating habits of
animals. That came through the movie in spades. The narration that was placed
over everything was needlessly specific. The wording of everything seemed more
technical than it needed to be. The way that the narrator spoke about humans as
creatures that weren’t fully understood, while speaking with authority was true
to nature documentaries. The narrator tried to be in the mind of the humans
while not understanding the human mind at all. It was an interesting take on
the romantic comedy genre that I’ve never seen anywhere else.
The Sunday “Bad” Movies has been filled with movies that
aren’t quite like others. And some that are too much like others. There are
rip-offs, remakes, and sequels. But once in a while, something slips through
that feels like nothing else out there. It could be a Christian movie that
isn’t preaching about Christianity being superior to everything else, or it
could be a romantic comedy placed into a nature documentary shell. It could be
a triple layer meta science fiction horror movie or it could be a bunch of
overdone monsters placed into a wrestling ring. There are a bunch of derivative
bad movies, but there are also ones that try new things. That’s the fun of bad
movies.
In a world where remakes, reboots, sequels, and adaptations
rule the theaters, it can be a delight to find something a little different.
When filmmakers try new things, it can make for a pleasant surprise. These new
things might not always work out, but they’re at least interesting. They foster
discussion. Trying something new will always be better than doing the same old
thing again. And it will maybe inspire others to think outside the box when
they’re telling stories.
Now let’s get a few notes in here:
- Here are the posts for Monster Brawl (week 99), The Terror of Tiny Town (week 326), Funky Forest: The First Contact (week 182), God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (week 319), Remote Control (week 246), and Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (week 118).
- Carmen Electra starred as Jenny Smith, the woman, in The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human. She was also in the movies Two-Headed Shark Attack (week 7) and Date Movie (week 164).
- The male, Billy, was played by Mackenzie Astin. He showed up in Elf-Man (week 213) and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (week 345).
- Lucy Liu made her return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human after being in Ballistic: Ecks vs.Sever (week 33).
- Marc Blucas is now a returning actor, thanks to The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human. He was previously seen in View from the Top (week 83).
- Jonah Hex (week 249) was the first appearance of Lisa Rotondi, who returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human.
- The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human was the second appearance of Linda Porter, who was in The Karate Dog (week 281).
- Finally, Jack Kehler was in The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human, the same year he was in Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
- Have you seen The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human? Are there any other movies that you’ve seen like this one? Are there any that you think try something completely different from other movies? Did they succeed or fail? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
- Speaking of Twitter, there are polls going on as I try to narrow things down to one movie for the seventh anniversary rewatch. Torment me. Or let me watch something enjoyable. Just vote on what I should rewatch. The polls are on Twitter.
- Twitter and the comments are also good places to let me know about what movies I should feature in future Sunday “Bad” Movies weeks. New movies, old movies, doesn’t matter. As long as they fit with the “bad” movie idea. Suggest away.
- There’s an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that has some fun stuff sometimes. Check that out if you want to keep up with the pictures and videos I put there.
- Now it’s time for the next post. The next one is a movie that was suggested to me by @ImPABLO_i_WRITE. It comes from two great comedic Colorado minds. Orgazmo will be the featured movie on Sunday and I’ll be writing about that one. Come back then to see what I had to say. See you then.
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