You know what I'm talking about! Those bizarre cinematic mutants that are produced in a maelstrom of awful writing, clumsy acting, poor production values and general incompetence and through unknown alchemy somehow emerge as a wicked good time. For today's contest, name at least one of your favorite So Bad It's Goods, add a few words if you feel like it -- and then, for comparison's sake, name one of the many, many Just Bad movies that don't have that special gutter magic.
I'm going to start things off here in the post instead of the comments, because as it happens I have a perfect example of each kind of flick in the Horrorthon vaults. These were both written during the beautiful bloodbath that was Horrorthon 2004, and I don't think anyone besides JPX and JSP has read them.
SO BAD IT'S GOOD
Sorority House Massacre II
1990 ***1/2
Laaaadies and Gentlemen! This is the one! This is the reason I’ve been grinding my teeth through all the prom nights and slumber parties. I’ve found it. The best knockoff pajama slasher movie yet! Other movies talk about having girls running around in their underwear, picked off one by one with tools and hooks, but this one actually does it.
What’s that you say? Tools and hooks, you’ve seen ‘em? No no, you misunderstand. I was talking about the underwear. My research of this subgenre has finally made it out the late 80’s! The call of Victoria’s Secret has been heard! No more gym shorts and sleeveless T-shirts, these girls spend the whole night in lingerie. All the drinking, ouija-boarding, sleeping-bagging, flashlight-holding, attic-looking-in and rusty-hook-hanging-on are done while decked out in the flimsiest of dainties.
Now, some of you might argue that the sorority sisters in question aren't really Victoria's Secret models, and I'd have to concede the point. But tell me you aren't satisfied seeing the girl with the lacy, semi-transparent bra and butt-revealing panties with her ankle in a bear claw trap. You can't, can you? I didn't think so.
While I'm on the subject, I may as well point out that we see all five players change into their underwear, too. So, unlike Slumber Party II, when you see the buxom group chatting away happily at the beginning, you know you're going to be five for five by the end. Or perhaps I should say ten for ten. Aaaaand there's a needless subplot that takes us to a strip club. Oh, there's also the decision to leave the house despite the rain and the fact that their clothes are upstairs. The leaving doesn't work out, of course, but they do stand there in the rain for a few minutes get wetter and wetter in the aforementioned underwear. This movie has everything!
Rather than build its story off the previous movie, SHM2 spins its own five-years-ago murder, which the creepy neighbor tells the girls while they're still dressed. Best part is, the flashback footage is taken from Slumber Party Massacre! They pretend it's a story of a guy killing his wife and daughters, and when the creepy neighbor's story is finished, he says "and it alll happened right here where we're standing." (Except that it alll looks completely different.)
This one's a winner, boys. Not Slumber Party. Not the first Sorority House movie. Sorority House Massacre II. Ask for it by name.
JUST BAAAAAAD
Slumber Party Massacre II
1987 *
Arrgh, this sucked! This one hurt, boys. Sigh, a bunch of girls and boys get together and most of them get whacked by an extremely loathsome rockabilly guy with a lot of eyeliner and a ridiculous guitar drill.
This was a ninety minute cringefest. Unluckily for us, the girls are in a band, so we get to watch them sing a few songs, sing along with the radio a couple of times, and basically do a lot of getting down, white girl style. Only one girl takes off her top for the raucous pillow fight, and it's not the girl you want to.
All throughout our Hero Girl is having flashes of the carnage to come, and my God! do they drive that to heretofore unexplored levels of boring. Seems like you can push back the killing action to the last half hour if you ply the audience with an hour's worth of dream sequences and hallucinations (perhaps intentionally ripping off American Werewolf). By the time the killer shows up, little Courtney can't even sustain a scene without thinking there's a hand in her burger, the bathtub's full of blood or her friend's zit has completely taken over her face (yeah, thanks a lot for that one). When the killer does finally appear, he might be a manifestation of her mind for all we know, but at least the blood is still on her when she goes screaming to her friends. They run around, don't look in the back seat, get killed, see friends' bodies and freak out, you know. Even when he kills the guy I hated, it's somehow unsatisfying. At the end, was it all a dream, or was it, and who cares?
JPX contends that American horror jumped the shark when Freddy put on his shades and parked in that beach chair, and the killer in this movie is stone-cold proof that he's right. One of his signature elements is the hidden smoke machine, scary! And we are made to suffer through a little dance number by him, too. This one is absolutely toxic.
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