I’ve been writing the Sunday “Bad” Movies blog posts for
over seven years. It all began in December 2012 with the post for Starcrash.
Since then, the blog series went through many transformations. It started as a
poll each week to choose a movie I would write about. I soon put that aside and
started scheduling out the movies, with suggestions thrown in. Every tenth week
became a week where I would check out multiple movies from a franchise. I did
reviews every week, for a while, before deciding to write whatever I felt like
writing. I tried to make a format for each week, which lasted a week or two
before I felt it didn’t work. And everything moved from one blog to its own
blog. Those changes were all within the first two years.
The movies that I’ve covered have varied drastically in
quality. Some of them have been big budget movies that just didn’t work. Others
were low budget flicks that may not have had the talent to be good, but still
ended up being a bunch of fun. Some were intentional B-movies, while others
were too serious for their own good. Some I liked and some I didn’t. This post
is about the ones I liked.
Week 315 marked the beginning of the seventh year of the
Sunday “Bad” Movies. I was coming off one of the craziest months of my life,
which would change everything for me. I’m not going to get into that right now.
The seventh year concluded on week 366, with the yearly rewatch for the
anniversary. Like any year, there was stuff that I liked and stuff that I
didn’t. This post will be covering my top ten of the seventh year. Here we go.
10. Cool as Ice – Week 348
There have been many instances of musicians moving into
acting. There have been many instances of rappers moving into acting. There has
only been one Vanilla Ice who moved into acting, and Cool as Ice was his
big moment to shine as the star of a movie. It didn’t really work out.
The dialogue was laughably bad, with lines like “Words of
wisdom: drop that zero and get with the hero.” The action wasn’t great either.
There was once scene where he jumped a motorcycle in front of a horse, causing
the horse to throw its rider, the love interest. And, of course, Vanilla Ice did
some rapping. That part wasn’t so bad because I quite enjoy the cheesy rapping
of one Robert Van Winkle.
None of it was bad in an offensive, I truly hate this, kind
of way. It was one of those enjoyable train wrecks that ended up being as
entertaining as something well done, but for different reasons. Vanilla Ice
would go on to feature in a bunch of other movies, including some of the 2010s
Adam Sandler stuff, but Cool as Ice was the one time he got to headline a
movie. It has become a moment in history, a part of the short superstardom of
Vanilla Ice.
9. Gotcha! – Week 357
When I schedule movies to be a part of the Sunday “Bad”
Movies, there are a few different things I look for. First and foremost, the
movie should have a reputation of being bad. I wouldn’t want to include
something with high critical praise and a bunch of prestigious awards because
that wouldn’t quite fit the “bad” moniker. Direct-to-video comes up a bunch, as
does low budget. Sometimes I look for things with a semi-unique gimmick as
well.
I initially chose Gotcha! for the Sunday “Bad” Movies
on the premise of it being a paintball movie. There was a little bit of
paintball involved, sure, but it definitely wasn’t the paintball movie that I
expected. Instead of paintball, I got a cold war espionage romance. A college
kid went to Europe. He fell in love with a woman who took him on a trip to
Berlin. When they crossed into East Germany, she was taken by some nefarious
fellows. She slipped something to the college kid that he then smuggled back to
West Germany before being chased back into East Germany and playing a bunch of
flip flopping of borders.
Gotcha! wasn’t as bad as most of the movies in the
Sunday “Bad” Movies. It was better than many of the 1980s movies that I’ve
watched as part of this blog. There were still some questionable choices,
though, like ending the movie on the main character shooting a college girl in
the butt with a tranquilizer dart when she wouldn’t go on a date with him.
That’s not the best. All in all, though, it was a decent spy movie and maybe
not the typical bad for the blog.
8. The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human –
Week 362
This was another one of those unique movies where the
gimmick hooked me into including it as part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I don’t
remember how I heard about the movie, but when I found out what the conceit of
it was, I knew that it needed to be included. If it wasn’t included, I would
regret leaving it off the schedule. That’s how much the unique aspect spoke to
me.
It followed the burgeoning romance of a man and a woman from
their meet cute until they birth their first child. The thing is, it was framed
like a nature documentary. The people were treated like wild animals. The
narrator was a documentary narrator, using technical terms to describe the
humans and everything they did. He was shocked that they would use
contraception while having sex. He wanted the male to impregnate the female, as
would happen with sex in any other species.
The actors played into their animalistic nature with some
slapstick comedy. They would eat like animals even though they were in fancy
restaurants. Things like that were frequent throughout the film to make it feel
more like a narrator speaking about animals. This was a human relationship
presented as though they weren’t humans. And I enjoyed every minute of the
idea.
7. Santa’s Little Helper – Week 315
The year kicked off with a movie I had seen before and
enjoyed before. Mike Mizanin, also known as The Miz, starred as a corporate
jackass who got fired from his job. He ended up being selected by Santa as a
candidate for the Santa’s Little Helper position and had to go through a bunch
of trials to determine if he was still a good person at heart. It also featured
Paige, making it a double team of WWE stars.
I quite enjoy The Miz as a movie star. He has the charisma
for comedy and the presence for action. This one was no different. He hammed it
up enough as the character to make the family comedy enjoyable. He was able to
play the tough jackass at the beginning and then lighten up to become the
friendly family type guy at the end. The supporting cast were all pretty good
too. It’s just a nice little Christmas comedy that I’m sure only I would
consider a classic.
6. God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness – Week 319
I’ve written about this one a few times now. One was the
original post, and there were a couple times it was brought up in other posts.
This was my favourite God’s Not Dead movie. It changed things up and flipped
things on their heads. The first two placed the Christians in a victim role,
while trying to establish Christianity as the only right belief system. The
third installment ended up finding compromise. Christianity wasn’t going to go
away, by any means, but it was going to leave room for other people to believe
what they wanted. There was room for different belief systems. They could all
be a part of the world.
Putting David A.R. White up front and center for this
message was an inspired choice that worked. He was a good leading man for the
franchise’s third outing and helped to sell the message through forgiveness and
compromise. There’s something about his presence that, although he’s not the
best actor, he’s able to bring the audience in and keep them invested in what
he does. His supporting roles in the previous two films were the best parts of
those movies. Having him jump to being the lead was a good choice for the
franchise, moving forward.
5. Dudley Do-Right – Week 336
I like when a movie feels like a live action cartoon. The
situation feels like an animated children’s show. The actors play right into
the slapstick nature of it. The characters become animated in the way they act
and the way they talk, which works for a live-action version of animation. The
world doesn’t feel like the real world at all. It feels like a cartoon world,
brought to live with real people and places.
I enjoyed it in Baby’s Day Out and I enjoyed it in Dudley
Do-Right. To be clear, I know that this did get adapted from a cartoon that
was a part of the Rocky and Bullwinkle animated series. Brendan Fraser
was the perfect person to come in and play the character with the cartoonish
physicality and personality that was required. Alfred Molina was clearly having
a ball as Snidely Whiplash, the over-the-top villain. If you go in expecting a
serious comedy, you’ll be disappointed. If you go in wanting a live-action
cartoon, you’ll have a blast. That’s all there is to it.
4. Pottersville – Week 316
There have been a few movies, over the course of the seven
years, that I’ve watched twice while planning to write about them. This was one
of those movies, and that’s not including the time I had seen it a year or two
before. I watched it by myself the week I was going to write about it. Then I
told a friend that they should watch it. They then turned it on while I was at
their place and fell asleep. I was left watching it for the second time that
week by myself. That’s not too big a deal since I really enjoy the movie.
It has a surprisingly good cast for a movie about a friendly
shop owner finding out his wife is a furry, getting drunk and putting on a
gorilla suit, and being mistaken as bigfoot by the citizens of his small town.
It had the small-town sensibilities of classic Christmas flicks, while also
having one of the most absurd plots of a family Christmas comedy. Heartfelt and
gut-busting. I’d be happy to put this into my annual Christmas rotation.
Once in a while, an anniversary rewatch ends up being one of
my favourite movies that I watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Actually, that
usually happens. This is the fifth time. Five out of seven seems more like it
happens most of the time than once in a while.
Snow Dogs was a movie I saw many times when I was
about 13. Maybe nostalgia played into me liking it so much in year seven. There’s
something about a movie that you enjoy when you are young where you’ll keep
enjoying it, regardless of quality, as you get older. That could have played into
how much I liked Snow Dogs. But I think it was more than that.
There was a slapstick filled fish out of water story where a
Miami guy tried to learn to dogsled because he recently found out it was in his
blood. There were dogs messing with the guy because they didn’t respect his
city guy attitude. There was also a romantic relationship that I actually cared
about. The tone of the movie just works for me, okay? Let me have this one. I
like this movie.
2. Hard Ticket to Hawaii – Week 352
This was one of those movies where, as soon as I saw it, I
knew it was a classic bad movie. There are certain elements that go into the
action movies that didn’t quite make the mainstream in the 1980s and 1990s.
This was a movie that featured most of those elements.
Andy Sidaris had gotten a bunch of Playboy models together
to star in an action movie set on Moloka’i. One of the characters couldn’t
shoot a moving target unless he had a rocket launcher. He used the rocket
launcher to blow up a dangerous man on a skateboard holding a blow up doll and
a gun, then to blow up the blow up doll. People were getting naked for no other
reason than to get naked. They wanted to talk plans to take down a gang? They
did that topless in a hot tub. One guy killed another with a frisbee covered in
razor blades. There was an interview with football players that got racy. A
woman turned out to be a man that was spying on the other women. There were sex
scenes. Oh, and there was a giant, poisonous snake that got loose and started
killing people.
It was an insane movie. Everything was thrown at the walls
to see what stick. If it didn’t stick, Andy Sidaris was there to throw it again
and make sure that it eventually stuck. That wasn’t too big of a problem,
though. Most of it stuck anyway. It was the perfect kind of insane that made it
one of the most enjoyable flicks all year.
1. Tremors – Week 360
Tremors is one of those movies that has been in my life for
as long as I can remember. It’s part of the reason that I enjoy horror movies
as much as I do. Alongside some of the children’s horror shows that were big on
TV in the 1990s, Tremors brought the terror into my life in a way that wasn’t
overly scary. And there was good reason for my parents to introduce me to this
one at a young age.
It’s a good horror comedy B-movie. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward
were the perfect duo to guide audiences through an attack by giant worms that
were sensitive to sound and vibrations. Michael Gross and Reba McIntyre were
great as the doomsday prepper townies that provided the weapons to try and fight
the creatures off with. The rest of the cast was great, too. It was the
smallest of small desert towns. Every character felt important. Add one of the
greatest “Fuck you” moments in all of cinema and you have a great popcorn
flick.
The seventh year of the Sunday “Bad” Movies featured some of
my favourite movies to ever be featured. Sure, four of the top five were movies
that I had seen before adding them to the Sunday “Bad” Movies schedule. I had a
history with them. That doesn’t mean they can’t be among my favourite movies
that I’ve watched for the blog series. They still managed to stand out among
everything else based on their own merits. The way they spun the common bad
movie tropes, or subverted them, made them something special. There was a reason
they were included in the schedule.
When I started the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I never could have
expected that I would still be writing these posts more than seven years later.
I didn’t not expect it, but I didn’t expect it. It just kind of happened. Every
week, I write another post. They add up. Eventually I get to a year. I get to
two years. Soon enough, I’ll be at ten years. That’ll be something. And
throughout that entire ten years, there will have been some great bad movies
and some terrible bad movies. What will I have learned from it? Lots. I’ve
learned a bunch watching the ones I’ve already seen. And I’ll never stop
learning from them. I might eventually end this blog series, but I’ll never
stop learning from movies, both good and bad.
To those of you who have been reading this blog, thank you.
Whether you started reading when I started writing, or more recently, it means
something to me to have anybody reading any of this. I type out all these words
and throw them into the ether for others to see. Part of it is for myself.
Writing is a kind of therapy for me. It helps me get some of my thoughts onto a
page so that my mind isn’t stirring with an abundance of everything all the
time. But I like to think that other people get something out of it, too. That
would be nice. Thank you to anyone who takes anything away from this.
That brings the post to a close. I went over the seventh
year of the Sunday “Bad” Movies in some detail. I wrote about my ten favourite
movies I checked out from the blog over that year. I thanked the people that
read the blog. Now I must look forward to the eighth year. I’m already almost
half a year into it. There have been some solid movies. Check out the other
posts if you haven’t already. I’ve written a few good ones in there. And I’ll
see you soon with this week’s post.
