The Worst Films

by William Hill

Last week, I went to the RiffTrax Live screening of Tommy Wiseau's film The Room, one of the many candidates for "The Worst Film Ever Made". It wasn't my first time seeing the cinematic abomination, nor will it likely be my last. The Room is noteworthy not for being one of the most bland stories ever to be told, but for being filmed in such a way that viewers aren't exactly sure what they are watching. It's rife with questionable dialogue, awful performances, a complete lack of narrative cohesion, and gratuitous nudity that makes the viewer question whether or not they are watching late night cable television instead of an actual movie. And if you'd like to know if you should see the encore screening on May 12th, well, you should. The commentary from the RiffTrax crew is among their best work, and the film itself demands to be seen.

And yes, it's a film you should see, because it is so unbelievably bad.

I guess this deserves some explanation.

There are so many definitions to "bad movie" that it's become a terrible qualifier for how we describe movies. Twilight is indeed a very bad movie, but mostly because its a boring, nonsensical love story where neither of the leads are in any way likable. You can understand what is happening in the story, but the discerning moviegoer will probably not care. It's bad because it's not worth discussion. Manos: The Hands of Fate is a bad movie because there is barely a story, it drags endlessly through the same two sets and nothing really happens. It's forever going to be a notoriously bad film, rather than forgotten like a bad film of Twilight caliber. Both of these films have received the RiffTrax (MST3K for Manos) treatment, on and off of the big screen, and they are some of the groups most famous work.

But then you have films like A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth film in the classic action series starring Bruce Willis. This was a big budget sequel and suffered the hands of the critics. It was a poorly shot collection of action set pieces without the one-liners and likable John McClane seen in the first four films. Instead, we get drunken-fallen-back-off-the-wagon-while-reuniting-with-another-child-because-it-worked-in-the-fourth-one John McClane, and his irritating, whiny, I doubt he was actually a spy, son. It was a cheap cash in, and the film that took the spot for the worst movie I saw in 2013. Most people have already forgotten about it, and moved on.

Also in 2013, the internet was enraptured by news of a Syfy original movie called Sharknado, featuring such...erm...actors(?) as Tara Reid. It was touted one of the worst movies that people had ever seen. A sequel has followed, and both films will have received the RiffTrax Live treatment by the middle of this summer. Clearly there wasn't any attempt to make Sharknado  a good movie. That's not what Syfy does with their monster movies. But they promoted the fact that this was a bad movie, and it has become a legitimate hit for Syfy.

I watched Sharknado. I expected it to be bad in a way that would be hilarious. After all, I watched previous awful Syfy movies for that same kind of entertainment. It would be a chuckle or two about how bad it was, and I'd move on.

Sharknado failed to entertain. On every level.

Let's face it. Sharknado barely deserved to be discussed. You can talk about how bad it is until you're blue in the face, but no one was trying to make a good movie on that set. After all, they cast Tara Reid. It's a shameless piece of trash, and this is coming from the guy who told you to see The Room.

Where Sharknado shirks comparisons to films like Birdemic and The Room is that it was an attempt to make money on the fact that people love an entertaining bad film. The Room was Tommy Wiseau trying to make a serious drama. Between his awful script, lack of filmmaking knowledge, and a cast of mediocre actors at his command, we get a film that is hilarious because it constantly surprises the viewer with moment after absurd moment and dialogue that doesn't sound like it was written by a human being. Birdemic was a zero budget monster flick by all means, and it shows with its GIF bird attacks, and it looks like it was shot on someone's cellphone. Manos was a fertilizer salesman's attempt at getting in on the movie business. Twilight...was not a good book, but they were trying to capitalize on the tween readers who related to the cold heartless cardboard soul that was Bella Swan. All of these movies had the best (or financial) intentions in mind when they stomped their way into our minds.

A bad movie can not be made just for the sake of making a bad film. What comes of these films is mediocrity, and nothing else. This kind of bad is merely forgettable, and deservedly so.

So skip watching Sharknado 3, and watch Birdemic on Netflix, or hit Rifftrax for a download of their live presentation of Manos: The Hands of Fate. Knowing what makes a movie bad can make the best movies all the sweeter.