Contradicting Popular Opinion
A.K.A.
An Enquiry Concerning The Bottom Hundred
IMDB.com is an entity unto itself. It is this massive resource of mostly useless information. Least essential and possibly most entertaining of all are the user comments/ reviews. Every movie on there seems to generate a tug of war between the “Mosets Awesomest evar!” and the “This movie is teh Suck1!” crowd. Most user’s entries proudly display their inane opinions like a freshly caught sea bass.
Then there are the utterly confused and the confusing statements. The former include statements which reveal that the basic premise of the film was misunderstood by the “reviewer.” The latter include thoughts which must be expressed by 7 year old non native speakers not familiar with such esoteric concepts as punctuation and capitalization.
Perhaps my favorite are the people that think any movie with martial arts is somehow ripping off The Matrix.
Of course, there are also the people that think that they are professional reviewers. They give a ten page summary inclusive of things like cast lists, MPAA ratings, camera speed, barometric pressure during the shoot, all while paraphrasing what Ebert had to say about the movie.
Anyways, I often stare at what IMDB users claim are the greatest 250 movies of all time. It tends to be a fairly frustrating list, as decent fan favorite movies (i.e. Star Wars, The Usual Suspects) outrank genuinely great movies (Citizen Kane, The Bicycle Thief). Maybe it is just upsetting to me to see Shrek right above Mystic River. How the f*ck does that happen?
At any rate, to keep from punching my computer in its hidden electronic clitoris, I decided to look at the bottom hundred. It’s a less upsetting thing to see bad movies in a jumbled order of badness.
You know, maybe the rabble’s opinions (not to be confused with IP’s Rabble) on which movies suck are better than their other ideas.
Anyway, the number 1 distinction goes to a film called Anus Magillicutty Sadly, I know nothing of this film. Actually, that isn’t sad at all.
What is sad, however, is the sheer number of the films on this list which I have seen, by virtue of rentals, waiting rooms, stolen cable, and MST3K.
I do see a couple of common themes with the bottom 100. The IMDB audience appears to have contempt for singers trying to act. We got From Justin to Kelly, Mariah Carey’s Glitter, Usher’s movie (which is still in theaters), Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Dolly Parton’s Rhinestone, Spears vehicle Crossroads, and Lucard’s favorite movie Spiceworld. Are these movies bad? I’ve seen most of them, and should say yes. But they aren’t the level of bad as something like number 14 on the list, the infamous ‘Manos’ The Hands of Fate. They might be bland or goofy or cheesy, or what have you, but none approaches the level of ineptness that is MANOS.
I would talk about Manos for a bit, but too much has already been devoted to the film, including a massive ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY article last year.
(I will talk more about Mariah Carey however! Rumor has it, at least according to one of my local Crap Rock radio stations, that a certain celebrity wants Mariah to perform at her Sweet Sixteen birthday party. This stuff is fairly commonplace nowadays. You shell out 50k or so, and Elvis Costello will do your Bat Mitzvah. Now, normally, I wouldn’t even mention such a thing, but in this instance you might here a slight turning sound from underground.
You see the girl in question, requesting Mariah, is one Frances Bean, daughter of Kurt Cobain.
That’s some crazy shit right there. Christ, should could probably get the Foo Fighters to play for her for free. Bitch wants Mariah Fuckin’ Carey. Maybe there are a bunch of canines in the neighborhood she is trying to drive out; I dunno.
Maybe this is her revenge for being named Bean. Which means APPLE paltrow will request Pol Pot and Stalin reanimated head to play at her Sweet Sixteen.)
Where was I? Ah yes the bottom 100. A bunch of these flicks were only seen by people virtue of MST3K. I can’t imagine people many people have seen Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, The Final Sacrifice or The Skydivers any other way.
I would gather that another batch of these movies were seen by virtue of having Hulk Hogan in them. Or perhaps having Hogan in your movie relegates it to the IMDB bottom 100. We got a bunch of “classic” Hogan movies here like Santa With Muscles, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega-Mountain, and Mr. Nanny. I’ve actually seen all of those for some reason. The Ninja one reaches a zenith in the world of stupidity when a young girl “hacks” into a roller-coaster with a laptop. Still, they were all more entertaining than Birth.
Shaq is also well represented, with such works as Kazam and Steel. C’mon a genie comes out of a magic boombox! What’s not to love?!
I’m often asked to do the opposite of my column, i.e. defend a movie many think is bad. I shall attempt to do this thing now, because there is a travesty on this list.
You see, trapped in the land of UWE BOLL movies and SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is a movie I actually like!
The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre does not deserve to be placed in such company. It is a terribly enjoyable black comedy written and directed by Kim Henkel, who wrote the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. People don’t seem to understand that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is in itself a black comedy, but that is a story for another time.
I had to browse through the user comments to see what people thought about the flick. It seems like a lot of people were expecting a Jason style flick, which this movie certainly isn’t, and were thus disappointed that they got a movie that is actually better than, well pretty much every Jason flick.
But the one thing that seemed to get the most 0/10 scores from the IMDB rats is the movie’s treatment of Leatherface. “They turned hem into a transavestite!1!” Granted, he is more womanly in this flick, but wasn’t he always a transvestite of sorts? Isn’t he called Leatherface because he wears a woman’s face on his own?
The more feminine Leatherface seems to cause 0 scores from two camps. Camp A: Macho homophobes who wanted to see a lot of people gutted, and who always talk about how much they hate faggots while their football coach is giving them the Rusty Trombone. Camp B: Friendless, frothing at the mouth, virgin types who seem to feel that cross dressing is undignified for a multiple murderer.
No seriously. They say Leatherface was not treated with enough dignity. There is something horribly disturbing to me about that whole concept. The American tendency to hero worship psychotic killers is something quite unsettling. Notoriety begets fame which begets importance. There is a masters thesis in there somewhere.
So at rough times like these, I have to turn to my personal lord and savior… JOE BOB BRIGGS. He is the go to guy for b-movies, and might just be the foremost authority on the TCM flicks.
What does Joe Bob think about this move?
Terrifying and brilliant, by far the best of the three sequels, written and directed by Kim Henkel, who also wrote the original 1974 classic…. Perhaps the best horror film of the nineties…[Four Stars]
Fuckin’ a right!
As for the rest of the list… Well, yeah, they are mostly bad. The nicest thing one can say about most of them is, “There are worse movies out there than Puma Man.
Pimping
Shorter Whitcomb: And this Beck album sucks because it contains samples!
Robtrain is still in line to suck off Spielberg.
Closs admits that I’m right about Kong, and makes a cowbell joke. That fella has got potential!
Mark B pimps me. I pimp him. Easy enough.
There is a bunch of wrestling stuff that’s good too. Has anybody started calling Smackdown’s Lashey as Black Lesnar yet? That seems obvious to me.
-Kennedy (And I’m only saying it once!)
