BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (27 OF 100)

"Bad Taste" (1987), Dir: Peter Jackson

$30,000 in Budget vs. $26,000 in Gross

I remember seeing Bad Taste at a friend's house. While watching it, we're overjoyed to see the role of Derek being played by the film's director Peter Jackson. Then we were even more overjoyed to see the role of the alien menace Robert also played by Peter Jackson. Laughing our asses off, we watched as Robert actually attacks Derek, knocking him off a cliff into a pile of jagged rocks. Having just recently finished The Lord of The Rings trilogy, my friend brought up a point, "This guy just won an Academy Award, folks."

For those of you who have followed the career of Peter Jackson Pre-Lord of The Rings, you know that there are two Peter Jackson's. There is the Peter Jackson who brought us the B-movie gems Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles, and Dead Alive, later to elevate to The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures. Then came the "New Peter Jackson" who made epic sagas like Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, King Kong, Lovely Bones, etc. And as much as I like to say that I am proud of the New Peter Jackson for rising through the ranks and showing guys like Lucas, Spielberg, and Cameron how it's done, I miss the Old Peter Jackson... but also realize that he can never go back to his old ways. That's why seeing movies like Bad Taste shows how far this director has come.

In Bad Taste, a small New Zealand Town gets taken over by aliens, who have disguised themselves in human form, leaving the audience only able to tell they are aliens because they all wear blue shirts. But as the character Derek describes, "It's like we got a visit from a planet of Charlie Mansons." However, we never witness the town being taken over by aliens or the carnage that ensued, so the film's beginning is kinda boring. We really could have used one really big massacre to get us going. But once the violence does get started, the movie becomes much more entertaining.

The human characters are from The Astro Investigation & Defense Services (or AIDS), which makes a habit of employing gun-toting metal heads and creepy psychos. At the time of the town's disappearance, AID's own Barry and Derek are on the scene and managed to capture one of the aliens (Robert, also played by Peter Jackson). When Barry is attacked by a group of aliens and forced to hide in an abandoned shed, Derek begins torturing Robert for information... Now, to the untrained eye, most probably wouldn't even realize that they are essentially watching Peter Jackson torturing Peter Jackson.

When hearing the strange cries of Robert, the blue-shirt aliens go after Derek with mallets and sledgehammers (the best weapons earth has to offer) while Derek breaks out the uzi. "I'm a Derek and Derek's don't run." Then all hell breaks loose in one of the goriest gun battles (pre-Hobo With a Shotgun), but results in Derek falling off the cliff and splattering all over jagged rocks. (This sequence does have a hilarious dummy prat-fall.) Meanwhile, a Bible Salesman stumbles into the abandoned town, only to find himself being hunted by Robert. The Salesman takes refuge in a nearby house, finding himself smack in the home-base of the alien invasion. Led by raspy Lord Crumb, he divulges to the salesmen that humans have become the new fast food sensation of the galaxy and that they are planning to harvest all of earth for their new chain.

As this is happens, back at the bluffs, Derek suddenly sits up, somehow alive. He notices several splattered (and incredibly fake-looking) dead seagulls where he landed, but also finds pieces of his brain on the ground. Soon enough, he comes to realize that his brain is falling out of the gaping wound in his head. Derek manages to use his belt and a top-hat to keep anymore brains from falling out. But now, literally losing his mind, Derek breaks out the chainsaw he's had waiting in the back of his van and begins his deranged quest for vengeance.

What does this movie have to offer? A lot of bad Hair Metal Soundtrack. Lots of falling, fumbling, or character's losing their guns. Elongated action sequences with predictable, unsurprising consequences. Characters constantly referring to each other by their names, even though they have apparently worked together for years. This movie definitely looks like something Peter Jackson made in his backyard with his friends. The only thing that really separates it from a student film is the Tom Savini-inspired gore and the spacecraft shaped like a house that takes off in the third act.

Now, what makes this worth seeing? All the revolting things Peter Jackson subjects himself to: (1) Eats brains with a spoon. (2) Vomits an excess of green goo into a bowl. (3) Replaces part of his missing brain with an aliens. (4) Dives down an alien's throat chainsaw first and comes out his asshole, and that's just the beginning... Need I say more or show more? 

For your viewing displeasure, Peter Jackson in his very own action sequence...

 

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (24 OF 100)

"The Happening" (2008), Dir: M. Night Shyamalan

$48,000,000 in Budget vs. $64,505,912 in Gross

You could say that most of M. Night Shyamalan's movies should be on this list. Signs had the worst acting and possibly the worst climax I've ever seen. The Last Airbender was just a monumental joke. However, I choose The Happening based on it being M. Night's supposed "comeback movie" and then sucking 100% ass in almost every regard. It sums up pretty much the constant disappointment that has become his career.

 
M. Night started out with a lot of promise. The Sixth Sense was pretty much M. Night's retelling of The Shining, but without the hotel. It had a twist that shocked the world unless you're Director Doug Brown, who had no idea until 2002 that Bruce Willis' character was a ghost. He just thought he was cold all the time. But I don't know if M. Night can really be credited with the success of The Sixth Sense. The cast was utterly superb. You had Bruce Willis in his only performance where he didn't use a gun; Haley Joel Osment earning that Oscar nod; and Donnie Wahlberg, who gets very little credit for his terrifying performance as an escaped lunatic. But movie after movie, M. Night's films went from hokey to bad, to absolutely horrible. Twelve years later, his name has become synonymous with several of the worst movies ever made. Yet, for some reason, he keeps getting budgets of $130,000,000 when filmmakers like me can't even get a f$%@ing handshake.

 
The Happening stars Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore, a high school teacher caught up (somehow) in a strange epidemic. For some reason, mass groups of people are committing suicide without reason or rational explanation. Not knowing how to handle this, the characters flea the city in a vain attempt to get away from... whatever this is. Shyamalan described his idea as being in the same vein as "The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Incorrect statement, sir. Those are actually good films. This is most definitely not. Even its star, Wahlberg himself claimed, "It was a really bad movie... F%$@ it. It is what it is. F&%$ing trees, man. The plants. F@#$ it. You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook." Well, there you have it, folks. Don't ever accuse Marky Mark of not standing by his director. But that being said, f%$@ing trees is right and we'll get back to that...

My biggest problem with The Happening is that a movie about mass suicide is a cheap shot in my mind. Suicide is something that generally rubs everybody wrong (I would hope). Exposing us to an hour and a half of it is kind of tasteless. It does lead to a handful of interesting sequences: There's the opening where construction workers throw themselves off a building, which is a pretty stark image. One sequence follows a gun that multiple people shoot themselves with. Kinda creative. But then there's the sequence where everyone is watching a video of a man who walks into a tiger cage and taunts the beast until it mauls him. To me, watching people watching a video on someone's phone is about as scary as seeing you're coworkers watching youtube videos of puppies at work.

The whole time I was watching this, I was thinking that none of these deaths are actually scary, just unsettling and not in a good way. If you were going to make a horror movie like The Birds or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, don't you think an epidemic of mass murder would make more sense? It would definitely raises the stakes. Characters would be forced to defend themselves rather than be airy, whimpering, passive, wussies. The threat would actually be a physical thing rather than just a looming conceptual one. Mass suicide for me just feels self-defeating, which is the nature of suicide I guess... and also in very poor taste... 

Typically, all M. Night movies end with a twist. That's pretty much his signature, one that has gradually become a joke over time. And as Wahlberg stated, it's f*%$ing trees. Yep. Turns out the root of all the outbreaks are trees in the end... I mean, really? Trees?! Trees were the cause of all this mass hysteria? Trees?! Trees are your twist?! That's the best you could do, M. Night?! Trees?!

Another reason I picked this film is that it's got M. Night's worst twist of all his films. In a lot of cases, the twist is the only reason for watching. In this one, it's the most disappointing part. I probably would have been happier with absolutely nothing rather than f&@$ing trees. Sorry if this is a spoiler for some, but I might have just saved you the biggest disappointment of your film-viewing life. 

For your viewing displeasure, Mark Wahlberg pulling an Emilio Estevez in Maximum Overdrive and talking to the tree in his office. If you wanna learn how to talk to trees, Mark, take lessons from Hugh Jackman.

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (14 OF 100)

"Tammy And The T-Rex" (1994), Dir: Stewart Raffill
 

$$ Something in Budget vs. Nothing in Gross $$

Most filmmakers walk into a project with an intention. They usually have an idea what kind of movie they are trying to make or at least what audience they are aiming towards. But with the sci-comedy-disaster Tammy And The T-Rex, I don't think Director Stewart Raffill could even answer those questions. Coming off his screaming success Mac And Me (that was sarcasm by the way), Raffill brings us a movie that embodies three very distinctively genres, but fails at achieving anyone of them.

Firstly, Tammy And The T-Rex is supposed to be a teen comedy. The majority of the cast are 90s teen actors with the lovely (but talentless) Denise Richards playing Tammy and Fast & Furious' own Paul Walker playing her goofy boyfriend Michael. Immediately we learn that Tammy fears for Michael's life when her psychotic ex-boyfriend Billy won't leave her alone. Michael tells Tammy that he is not afraid of Billy and confronts him. The two proceed to grab each other's balls in probably one of the funniest teen movie confrontations I've ever seen ("What we got here is one of them testicular stand-offs!").

But from there, Billy and his cronies kidnap Michael and drop him off at a zoo to be lion-lunch. And surely enough, Michael is mauled and killed by a lion... This is where the film takes a sudden turn, casually becoming a teen-comedy that also happens to be revenge-film...? Hmm. So Paul Walker dies (in a very funny hospital sequence), but his brain is left in tact, even if his body is not. Meanwhile, a mad scientist named Dr. Wachenstein (played by Weekend at Bernie's own Terry Kiser) has built a giant robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex... for whatever reason. All it needs to be functional is an unsullied brain, making Paul Walker's now useless brain the perfect suitor. And yes, this is all the same movie...

So the mad scientist steals Paul Walkers's brain (in a lab sequence that looks a lot like Simpsons Treehouse of Horror II) and transplants it into the robot dinosaur. And within a few seconds of becoming a robot dinosaur, Paul Walker sets out to exact revenge by viciously slaughtering Billy and his gang in some rather gory PG-13 moments. So essentially, at this point, this so-called teen-comedy that just recently became a revenge-film now also features sci-fi special effects of about the caliber your see in the picture below.

Ridiculous plot aside, the most off-putting thing about Tammy And The T-Rex is the blatant disregard for human life that the film tries to treat humorously. There's a sequence where Denise Richards and her super-gay friend Byron (Theo Forsett) go to the morgue and start picking through corpses to find Michael's potential replacement body. Leaning the bodies against the window so the giant robot dinosaur can see them, Tammy rejects one because apparently his c$%k is too big for her... Yup. She's not that kinda girl, but is the type that will desecrate a corpse.

Now I know this is an attempt at humor, but the popular brand of 90s dark humor (typically found in era classics such as Pulp Fiction) doesn't work here. Especially not when paralleled with some imitation 80s bubble gum schlock. They do try comedy with the dinosaur like having it trying to make a phone call, but this weird playfulness seems out of place when just moments ago the T-Rex ripped a guy's guts out and crushed him in front of an old lady.

As a director, I think Raffill deserves study. His career includes two films that attempt to tap the youth market of a particular time without having any idea what that market wants or why they even exist... Or maybe it's as simple as Raffill wanted to make a movie about a T-Rex (in light of Jurassic Park's success the previous year) and the name Tammy just happened to start with a "T." Wow! Marketing genius at its finest!

The only thing that makes Tammy And The T-Rex worth seeing is Denise Richards. Simply put, she's young and gorgeous. And I assume the striptease she performs for the camera at the end was the filmmakers half-assed way of apologizing for making the audience put up with whatever the hell this was, while also exploiting Denise Richards for being very attractive at the same time. Poor Denise... She may never have had much in the way of acting talent (even slightly), but the Charlie Sheen years really look as if they took a toll on her pretty face and that's a real shame.

Enjoy this movie for the few laughs it has (mostly among the human characters surprisingly) and to see Denise in a better place, even if that better place is a world where Paul Walker's brain can be kept in salad bowl so that he can enjoy a daily striptease from Tammy. 

And for your viewing displeasure, the off-putting violence I was speaking of, accompanied by some really, really bad special effects.