Everyone loves bad movies. At least everyone who matters. And bad horror movies are the best of this group. There is something about trying to instill fear into an audience that makes a movie go horribly, horribly wrong when it goes bad. I hope you have been given a chance to see it, but if not, help is on the way. Winter break can be long and boring for some people, and for others there are at least a few nights with nothing to do, so I make an open suggestion to see some of these movies. They come highly recommended as some of the worst movies I could find.
Evil Dead Trilogy
This list may not be in any order whatsoever, but this series deserves its place at the top. When many people think bad movies, they think of the Evil Dead trilogy (Evil Dead, Dead by Dawn, Army of Darkness). It has everything you could possibly ask for: Babylonian demons revived by archaeologists who can spot-translate from cuneiform “it will open a rift in time and space,” claymation death sequences, trees raping people, floods of blood that rival that of The Shining for the creature busting out of its man-suit and flapping its wings before the main characters run it down with their car several times.
It’s another definite must see for anyone. A movie that has a main character screaming in pain to the tune of “jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those peepers?” has to be good.
Uncle Sam
This one should be close to all our hearts, as the Uncle Sam character was born in Troy. When a marine is shot down by friendly fire over Iraq (the movie was made several years ago), his body is shipped to his hometown, where his nephew becomes obsessed with it. The casket is left in the family’s living room for days on end, prompting such time-honored quotes as “Jody, leave that coffin alone, it’s not a toy!”
The marine eventually wakes from the dead and escapes from his coffin, where he begins a killing spree against any and all who defame the nation. First among his victims is an Uncle Sam character on stilts who is going around peeping into bedroom windows. He kills the man and steals his costume, and then slays some kids who, being teenagers, are of course inexplicably defiling veterans’ graves.
The rest of the movie continues hilariously, with heads winding up inside barbecues, and the zombie plotting to burn a senator alive for taking a bribe. The movie, as bad as it is, managed to draw Isaac Hayes, the Isaac Hayes, and it is definitely funny to hear Chef from “South Park” plotting to kill a zombie with an old WWII cannon.
Jack Frost 1 & 2
“Oh god, that Michael Keaton movie? That was terrible,” you must be saying. But no, there is a worse movie by the same name, if you interpret worse to mean a serially killer who is genetically mutated into a snowman. Yep, you read that right. A serial killer is being transferred to another prison, facing death, when his van collides with a tanker carrying some sort of biohazardous material. The serial killer is melted and appears to have died, but his DNA binds with the snow on the side of the road and he becomes a killer snowman, straight out of Calvin and Hobbes. Perfectly legitimate. This movie continues what appears to be the bad movie trend of the strange villain raping a random character. In Evil Dead it was a tree, this time it’s a snowman who moves his carrot nose. The murder scenes in this movie are fantastic; you can tell in most of them, despite the “special effects,” that the snowman’s hand being moved in a stabbing motion (they don’t actually show much of the violence) is just a hand in a normal white glove.
Seeing as how these aren’t the types of movies that leave you in suspense until the very last minute, I don’t feel bad revealing the ingenious ending to the first: antifreeze. They lure him into a hot tub and then fill it with antifreeze. Hollywood was definitely working hard on that Oscar-winning climax.
The second one is every bit as good as the first, though it takes place in the Caribbean while the sheriff from the first is trying to recover from the trauma of seeing a snowman on a killing spree. Jack, after being held in a warm container, is frozen again, and goes to seek revenge. Yet again, it’s basically the same movie, but definitely worth watching.
The Dentist 1 and 2
I have only seen the second, but I’ve heard that the first is just as good. Everyone loves going to the dentist, right? Well, what happens when your dentist is insane and enjoys mangling your teeth while you’re under anesthesia? If you guessed that this is the kind of plot that could only turn out terribly (or you’ve been reading this article), you’re right.
In the second one, which I saw, the dentist escapes from a mental hospital and begins his life anew. At first, he seems to be fine, but his lethal obsessive compulsive disorder soon takes hold and plaque, tooth decay, and halitosis set him into a frenzied maiming spree. This movie is full of disgusting dental shots, with teeth popping for unexplained reasons releasing a white tooth juice. Definitely worth seeing for the bad movie enthusiast.
From Dusk Till Dawn
Quentin Tarantino is famous for directing Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, but few remember the days when he was making such classics as this. Two bank robbers making their way to Mexico to escape the police find a bar in the middle of the desert that is filled with vampires. All vampires love booze, right? Who doesn’t?
The movie is brilliantly done from the moment Tarantino’s character first kills a woman for fidgeting. That’s it. It’s supposed to show he’s insane or something, but it’s just bad. Whoever was in charge of splattering blood in the hotel room was really too enthusiastic.
The first half of the movie is almost deathly slow, and the second half is just deathly; the fight scenes go on and on. But they’re hilariously bad death scenes, with the protagonists just slaying vampires right and left. One has to wonder how the man who directed Pulp Fiction could have possibly come up with a movie as bad as this, and how he could have dragged George Clooney into it. The guy who plays the priest doubting his faith (a required role; he and his family were kidnapped at the bank) and the children who play his kids are annoying throughout the movie.
This movie is just loads and loads of stupid, and requires a good sense of humor to get through.
