The "U" in Enjoyment

It is a popular hyperbole in my generation and those following to label something as being "the worst ever."  In reality, we love this exaggeration.  Websites, movies, video games, television shows, books, and songs aren't safe from this over-amped embellishment.  Entire Websites, movies, video games, television shows, books and songs are, in fact, dedicated to finding and condemning these offenders of the senses.  But are they really the worst ever?  After all, we do talk about them.

Even I will admit to being guilty of being asked about any teen schlock-buster, rolling my eyes and saying, “Psh.  Hunger Games?  More like Boring Games.  Am I right?”  But the reality is Hunger Games wasn’t all that bad.  Certainly it had troubles in film-work and issues with characters and actors, but at least I remember it.

Let’s take example from a movie that absolutely everyone would agree is a terrible movie, Plan 9 from Outer Space.  In this movie, an alien race visits the Earth and finds that the human race is becoming too destructive.  They decide to enact the titular Plan 9 (although what happened to plans 1-8, I don’t know), in which they raise the dead from their graves to get the human race’s attention, resulting in chaos and eventually the aliens literally blowing themselves up in the skies over LA.  Sounds convoluted?  Absolutely.

Plan 9 is largely considered one of the worst films of all time.  The film plays almost as a check list of things poor movie-making.  Strings clearly visible on models?  Check.  Plot points introduced at the climax of the narrative?  Check.  A nonsensical mish-mash of both horror and science fiction tropes?  Check.   Boring and repetitive dialogue?  Check. 

Other examples of terrible films include Manos the Hands of Fate.  A movie which I’ve seen dozens of times now and still can’t recount the plot.  Yet I love that the film decides to play one repetitive piece of music whenever Torgo – the villain’s mysterious sidekick – decides to walk three steps.  Eegah was a vehicle for squirrel faced teen idol who – as far as I can tell – insisted that his character have a sweet dune buggy and a pretty girl friend and he can sing – but not actually so dub over his voice – and he’s strong and he’s smart and he can beat up a cave man (no really).  Even Troll 2.  A movie entirely devoid of trolls deserves mention.

Yet, we remember these movies.  They are legends in the field.  In fact, I would recommend doing yourself a favor; get some friends together with a couple of pizzas a few drinks and watch these movies late at night.  They are hilarious and you will not be disappointed.  Laugh as they Plan 9 tries to pass a short balding chubby guy off for the tall gaunt Bela Lugosi with a voluptuous head of hair and as actors bump into the very clearly cardboard tombstones.  Yell at the screen as the kid in Troll 2 finally – FINALLY – figures out half way through the movie that the town of “Nilbog” is Goblin backwards.

For every truly excellent film out there, there are many more countless bad movies.  I personally have seen many movies, both good and bad.  I can honestly say that I have an equal love for cheesy movies as I do for movies like Blade Runner, Casablanca, and The Third Man.  So what are really the worst films of all time?  In my own experience, they are the truly boring, banal, boiler plate movies.  I even have trouble finding examples to think of simply because no one (including myself) remembers them.  And that is the greatest offense a movie can make.

It's Update Time

I just realized that I had been rather quite, both on the blog as well as my Twitter account (aside from my disturbing plan to sell bumper stickers).  I wanted to let everyone know my gratitude for your continued visits to the site, as well as welcome any new comers.  There aren't many of you, but it's still more people than have seen any of my previous projects (and now I feel down).

The Third Season of The Amazing Adventures of Captain Farr Novarider and Wild Horses has been coming along much slower than anticipated for a number of reasons.  One being life, another being that the episodes are a bit longer in general, but I'm also putting much more work into them to make sure that they're better quality. I felt really good about the Second Season, and want to bring the same quality - if not better - to this season that I did that one.

At this point, Season Three is about eighty-percent complete.  I still have to do some sound effect and musical layering for two episodes, and do the final review to fix a few writing issues as well as make sure the general quality is good, as well as complete the artwork for the title cards.  Once that's done I'll have it here and on my blip page as soon as I can.

This will be the last full season of the series, as I do want to move on to other projects.  For those fans who have listened to the series since the beginning, I can't thank you enough.  You may be silent, but I know you're out there and I hope that you'll stick with me to the end of this endeavor and onto to future ones.  I already have plans in the works for my next few projects, and I'm really excited to face the new challenges that they bring me.