So bad it's good is a real phenomenon. There are films out there that are so unspeakably terrible they somehow phase shift into entertainment. I was a material participant in one myself, 1998's Airboss (a movie so crappy that for the next few years it was used as the standard for bad at international film markets where buyers would often ask "this isn't as bad as Airboss, is it?") Yet the few Americans who saw it strangely loved it. One guy even told me it was his favorite film; he'd watched it twenty times. No, he didn't think it was good. He knew it was bad, but he loved it because it was bad.
Other than that horrible movie I co-wrote, co-produced, edited, sound-designed, and played the head of the CIA in, one of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is a very strange independent horror/thriller from the 1980s called Runaway Nightmare, the story of two worm farmers who are kidnapped by a strange cult of feminists who then torture them by being flirts. (There will be an entire column on this masterpiece in the future, so I won't spill to much today.)
Of more recent vintage is Tommy Wiseau's The Room, a film which has become legendary in the indie film world as perhaps the ultimate "so bad it's good" masterpiece of all time . I haven't seen The Room. It's not streaming anywhere (other than those Napster type sites which I refuse to frequent as you never know exactly what they're going to download onto your computer) and I don't feel like shelling out nine bucks plus shipping to buy a DVD copy off of Amazon. Fortunately, a lot of scenes from it are available on youtube so one can get a flavor of it without having to commit either time or resources.
And that flavor is the flavor of diaper doo. Badly acted, flatly shot, poorly written with one of the most mawkish scores in recent memory, The Room may be one of the worst films ever made. Yet, I couldn't stop from clapping with joy at its many cinematic sins. I couldn't help wanting more.
Like Airboss, the film is so bad it became good and, along the way, inspired numerous articles and analysis all over the Internet. One question remains, however. Did writer, producer, director and star Tommy Wiseau know he was making one of the worst films of all time? Was this some kind of strange experiment or piece of performance art? Did he make this intentionally bad on purpose knowing that it would flop commercially then somehow gather a cult following in the years after?
I have to say I doubt it. The film, with all it's histrionics, seems genuine. Which is important.
One way to find out is to have a look at Sharknado, which is streaming on Netflix and thus can be readily watched without shelling out any extra cash. (Unfortunately, the time lost watching the film will never be refunded.)
Sharknado is the product of a Los Angeles based company named, aptly, The Asylum. The Asylum specializes in "rip off films." When they get wind of a big, Hollywood blockbuster coming out, they quickly crank out an uber low-budget version of that movie with a title that's just-this-side-of-a-lawsuit close to the big movie's title, hoping, I suppose, that someone will rent it by mistake.
So Battle: Los Angeles becomes Battle of Los Angeles. (See how they did that? Replaced a colon with an "of?") Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter becomes Abraham Lincoln VS Zombies, The Davinci Code becomes The Davince Treasure. Robocop (the new one) becomes Android Cop and, my favorite, The Day the Earth Stood Still becomes The Day the Earth Stopped.
But they don't just do rip off movies, they also produce cheeky and cheesy original content. Their greatest success, if what I hear through the industry grapevine is true, is Sharknado, the story of waterspouts that pick up thousands of live sharks then dump them in the streets of Los Angeles where they wreak mayhem.
It's a bad movie. A very, very bad movie. The acting is atrocious, the dialogue is disastrous and the script is simply stupid.
None of the shots seem to be from the same movie. It's so jumbled, so all over the place and makes so little sense no one can even wonder if the filmmakers took it seriously or not. When a movie features the heroes diffusing shark-laden tornadoes by tossing tiny little bombs inside them to "interrupt the circulation pattern" or some other such bullshit, where the hero (armed with a chainsaw) sees a giant great white shark flying out of the sky at him then leaps into it's maw only to chop his way out from the inside, you know it's bullshit. Good-natured bullshit, but bullshit.
So without doubt they were trying to make a movie that was "so bad it's good." Did they succeed? Partially. I watched the whole thing, but I did so with a sense of betrayal. It felt forced, artificial, uninspired. It lacked that crucial element that truly "so bad its good movies" have in spades - the love. The passion. The undying belief on the part of the filmmaker that the picture he or she was making was amazing, important, and was going to change the world.
That is why Plan 9 is so riveting. That is why (according to the Amazon reviews) The Room is so life changing. That is why Runaway Nightmare is and will always be one of my favorite films. Because you watch these movies with a sense of what in hell were these crazy motherfuckers thinking? You're temporally transported into the world and belief system of someone who is just not right in the head. You're seeing their version of what they believe the ultimate expression of cinema to be, and it's fascinating.
What were the people who made Sharknado thinking? They were thinking this baby is going to make us a shitload of cash. They were right.
But their film is poorer for it.
And, as the audience, so are we.