As the film section’s dedicated TerriBrill expert, the responsibility of reviewing this book could only fall to one person. Michael Adams’ one-year odyssey into the world of bad cinema is funny, worrying, and acts as one hell of a recommendation list for bad film fans.
Adams presents his book in a monthly format, each month giving an overview of the films he has consumed, and at the end of each experience, rating them on a number of criteria to establish the worst. After each month, he details the worst film and the guiltiest pleasure. By December, he has assembled a list of what he believes to be the worst films ever made, but of course, he hasn’t seen them all.
A more personal story runs alongside Adams’ quest. With a toddler daughter, a wife bust with her own journalism career, a job at Empire and, later, his big break as a TV film critic, the pressure of Adams’ growing obsession starts to get to him and to his family. Using a bingo system also, Adams has to watch all the films in a particular genre at once, eventually reaching disturbing levels when Adams admits he has watched too many exploitation films to continue without losing his sanity. Occasionally, Adams’ personal story feels like it is intruding too much into what the book is supposed to be about, and one of the book’s only real weaknesses is that films occasionally don’t get as much attention as the reader would like. But it shows Adams as just as relatable as other film obsessives.
Even if you don’t have a vested interest in the world of bad cinema, Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies is an entertaining read of misunderstood vision and pure self-belief. While some of the film-makers covered do have tragic back stories, for most, they are men and women who wanted to show the world what they had to offer, and Adams pays them as much respect as any Spielberg.