Have you ever seen a movie and known it was one of the worst movies you’ve ever seen? I don’t mean your basic knee-jerk, gut reaction, embellishment. When most people say something is the worst movie of all time, they’re being hyperbolic. Film fans, or maybe just the internet, have made a habit of describing things as either the best or worst without any in between. That’s how they get engagement, particularly on social media. But those things aren’t typically the best or worst. They’re in that grey area in between that people kind of forget exists.
When I say that something I’ve seen is one of the worst movies ever, I mean it. I’ve seen enough bad movies in my time, many of which have been thanks to this blog, that I know a good movie from a bad movie from a great movie from a terrible movie. I’ve seen things that most people would consider the worst, that I would consider alright. That’s because my threshold for the worst is further down. I have experience with movies worse than their hyperbole. I’ve experienced movies worse than a lot of people’s worst movies. My idea of the worst movies is different than most.
I can say, with certainty, that this week’s movie was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s down there with movies like Hip Hop Locos, Empress Vampire, and The Last Movie. It’s not that the movies contained content that offended me. These weren’t movies like Chicks Dig Gay Guys or Sleepwalking Land where the stories were flawed to the point of me hating them. This week’s movie as well as the other three I would lump it into were offensive as movies through their being. They were offensive simply because they existed the way they did.
You’re probably asking at this point what movie I watched this week. If the title didn’t already give that away. Bigfoot vs Megalodon was an animated movie about a space war. Kali (Jennifer Fourteen) was a princess in charge of the last remaining humans, aboard a space vessel. At her side was Van Helsing (Marco Guzmán), a clone she was trying to have a child with. Also at her side was Bigfoot (Marco Guzmán again). Together, the three of them led the charge against an alien front that wanted nothing more than to see them wiped out.
The first thing that set me off about Bigfoot vs Megalodon being a terrible movie was that it had Bigfoot in the title. I’ve seen a handful of movies about Bigfoot or a sasquatch being. There is only one that I would say was even remotely good, and it was the one that didn’t put Bigfoot in the title. Harry and the Hendersons was a good movie, when I was a kid. I haven’t seen it in maybe twenty years. It might not hold up. I don’t know. But in my memory, it’s the one Bigfoot/sasquatch movie I’ve seen that wasn’t flat out terrible. Including Bigfoot vs Megalodon, however, there have been three Bigfoot movies that made it into my lowest rated movies on Letterboxd. I wrote about Bigfoot vs. Zombies a few years ago when I slogged my way through that one. I never wrote about The Asylum’s Bigfoot, but I’ve seen that, too, and it was just as bad. Bigfoot vs Megalodon really took the cake on poor quality, though. It was worse than either of those, and worse than the vast majority of movies I’ve seen.
Bigfoot vs Megalodon was an animated movie. I didn’t know that going into it. I thought it was going to be something that SyFy would air. You know, something like The Asylum would produce, only not by The Asylum. It wasn’t. It was… A poorly animated mess. Not all the animation was bad. When it came to closeups of robots or space suits, the animation looked pretty good. The movements were still garbage, but the metallic surfaces were well done for closeups. Outside of that, it was bad. Bigfoot, now a soldier working for the human alliance, looked terrible. The megalodon, a Street Sharks inspired monstrosity on the side of bad, looked even worse. And don’t even get me started on the princess.
Or maybe do, because I’m about to get into it. Through 90% of the movie, the princess was in her space gear and looked alright. There was one scene, though, where she was out of her suit. I kind of broke down during that scene. She stood there in some sort of brown undersuit, in a doorway, her body facing forward, one hand on her ass cheek, and her head looking backwards. It was what I can only assume was an attempt at sexy. She monologued the entire time, while in this pose. A full minute monologue about potentially having a child with Van Helsing, alone in this room, in a “sexy” pose. It felt like a video game cut scene by a horny developer from the 1990s. This was a very horny movie without being titillating in any way.
The animation got much worse when it came to Bigfoot, the aliens, and Megalodon. The effort had been put in to make metal and plastic look decent. In close ups, at least. That effort wasn’t there when it came to the creatures. This was where Bigfoot vs Megalodon started to look like it was produced by The Asylum. They looked cartoonish in what was supposed to be a rather realistic looking universe. Their mouths didn’t match anything that was being said. Not that what was being said was good. It was garbage. But it would have been nice for the sound to be synced in some way. None of their animation was appealing to look at.
The final bit of animation stuff I want to touch upon was the looping and repeating of shots. There were many shots in Bigfoot vs Megalodon that were repeated from earlier moments. The one that comes to mind immediately is a hallway shot of Kali, Van Helsing, and Bigfoot going from one room to another. It was a repeated shot used a few times in the movie, and it was looped each time to make the hallway feel longer. The characters would be walking. Close up of one, close up of the other, back to that same hallway shot played again. Close up on one character, and show the hallway shot again from the beginning. Because the shots involved Kali and Van Helsing talking while wearing masks, the filmmakers were able to repeat the shots without the movements feeling off. It’s just that repeating the same footage over and over again didn’t help things any, either. It was still noticeable reused footage.
Now, most of my complaints so far have been about the animation of Bigfoot vs Megalodon. I had other issues, too. There were two storylines driving the movie forward. I’m going to start with the relationship story between Kali and Van Helsing. She wanted children to keep the royal bloodline going. She was a princess, after all. He didn’t want any of it. Children were not his thing. He was okay with having a whole bunch of sex with Kali. He didn’t want any children to come of it. They made their differing stances abundantly clear throughout the movie in a series of increasingly obnoxious statements. One of them, after Kali went behind Van Helsing’s back to test his fertility with semen he had left on her stomach, resulted in dialogue where Van Helsing said he didn’t want her to “stab him in the dick” with a needle to get her pregnant.
It was also frequently mentioned that Van Helsing was a clone. He wasn’t the original Van Helsing, but only the latest in a long line of Van Helsing clones. When he died near the end of the movie, he was simply brought back to life through cloning. It obviously wasn’t the same exact Van Helsing. It was a new version of him. But he still had many of the same memories and connections. Or, at the very least, he could be reminded of them and slowly regain those memories. Somehow. The biggest difference between the clone that had been a major part of the movie and the new clone was that the new clone was no longer infertile. He could now give Kali the baby she wanted. If he was willing to. Consent is important. Maybe not to Kali, but it is.
My other major story issue had to do with the titular battle. The movie was called Bigfoot vs Megalodon, but there was never really a fight between the two creatures. The closest they came to duking it out was that Megalodon was captured and being held captive by the humans, and Kali, Van Helsing, and Bigfoot talked to it through the cell window. There was never a Bigfoot vs. Megalodon fight. It was Bigfoot vs. Aliens or Megalodon monologuing about wanting to kill humans. That’s all there was, which made the title a disappointing falsehood.
Every one of those aspects of Bigfoot vs Megalodon compounded to make the movie almost unbearable. I couldn’t stand it. I would also be lying if I said there wasn’t a single moment that I enjoyed. As much as I wouldn’t force this movie on my worst enemy, there was one moment, just one, where I thought that maybe the entire watch was worth it. Van Helsing, in all his male machismo bravado, declared that he had to go help the space fight. Kali ordered him not to, but he ignored her orders. He said something like “I’m no good behind a computer screen. I’m a clone, not a cuck. See you sweetheart.” He then saluted while the most epic possible music started playing and ran down the hall to a fighter space jet. I laughed my ass off during that moment and might end up going back to it time and time again. Not the whole movie. Never the whole movie. Just that one little bit. That one shining diamond in the rough.
Bigfoot vs Megalodon was a bad movie. It was downright terrible. If I were to list off the five worst movies I’ve ever seen, it would be in there. I haven’t felt this much disappointment, rage, and disgust about a movie in a long time. Especially when the movie didn’t have outright offensive content. It’s not like this movie was telling people to pretend to be gay to seduce women. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Chicks Dig Gay Guys. This was just an all around poorly made movie that didn’t live up to its name, a name that was simple to meet the criteria of. There were ten seconds of good and that was only because they went too far in their bad. Do not watch Bigfoot vs Megalodon.
I’m not a person who would easily say “This is one of the worst movies ever made.” I’ve seen enough movies that my concept of the worst sets the bar far below most other people. I’m not going to go out and call every blockbuster release the best or worst movie ever. I’ve gone off the beaten path. There are movies out there that aren’t the major theatrical releases that ended up being better or worse than the mass consumption projects. So, don’t take this post lightly. If I’m saying it’s one of the worst movies, it’s worse than the trendy worst movie. By far.
It's time that we get to some notes:
- Bigfoot vs Megalodon was suggested by @BreakABone, who also suggested Birdemic: Shock and Terror (week 100), Steel (week 127), Catwoman (week 174), I, Frankenstein (week 217), Jonah Hex (week 249), Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (week 280), and Holmes & Watson (week 486).
- I mentioned Chicks Dig Gay Guys (week 145) and Bigfoot vs. Zombies (week 218) in this post.
- Three other Bigfoot movies I watched were Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend (week 31), Suburban Sasquatch (week 254), and Pottersville (week 316).
- Have you seen Bigfoot vs Megalodon? I sure hope you haven’t. What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
- Are there any movies that you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies? Hit me up on Twitter to tell me what they are. Or you can drop them in the comments below.
- Make sure to visit Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
- Next week should be a little better than this one. I’ll be revisiting a series that I’ve enjoyed three other times for Sunday “Bad” Movies. There are women. There is action. And, most importantly, there is Andy Sidaris’s weird sense of what makes a good movie. I’ll be taking a trip to Savage Beach next week. I hope you’re ready to join me. See you then.
No comments:
Post a Comment