There is something about getting together with friends to share something so bad that it’s good. It’s a unique bond, a brotherhood that ties you together using poor screenwriting, plot holes, and awful delivery. It’s not “misery loves company”. It’s more like Jeff Foxworthy saying, “Have you ever seen people so ugly that you had to get someone else to verify it?”
Back in my college days my favorite movie was Army of Darkness (NOT a bad movie). Every year on Ash Wednesday (and on other dates) I would host an “Ash” Wednesday party and watch Army of Darkness. I remember playing “Who Wants To Win A Bucket Of Evil Cookies?” prior to a viewing, in which players answered increasingly difficult questions about the movie, some of which I’d picked out watching the movie frame by frame. Every question was correctly answered.
One afternoon before an Ash Wednesday party, Chris came over to watch Evil Dead, a movie that I’d seen before and didn’t like because Ash was such a whiny baby until the very end. Watching it with a friend proved to be a completely different experience! We laughed about the overly amorous tree, the bad acting, and the utter lack of horror.
Five years later, I was truck driving over the road for Schneider. It was exhausting work, officially taking twelve to fourteen hours a day, but with paperwork and trip planning, often spilling over into sixteen to eighteen hour days. Any spare time was precious, and occasionally I even had enough time to watch a video. With so little entertainment, I was very easily entertained. I saw Taxi starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah and thought it was a comedic masterpiece. Every movie I watched was GREAT. Except for one.
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| The two prominent cyborgs on the cover are NOT in this movie. |
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Future War was quite possibly the best bad movie anyone has ever seen. Starring Daniel Bernhardt (a.k.a. Jean-Claude Van Dang), the story itself is so laughable one wonders how it ever became a movie. A runaway slave from the future (who was abducted from earth’s past) arrives in “present-day” California with obese cyborgs and velociraptor-sized T-Rexes chasing him down. He takes refuge in a halfway house and befriends a nun-in-training. Beyond this, people are trying to survive attacks from dinosaurs and cyborgs, but it’s impossible to make sense of why anybody does anything else in this movie.
The DVD was made in 2004. The movie was shot in 1994, and released in 1997 - though some sources say 1996. It looks like the film quality is from 1972, the actors are from 1989, and the wardrobe was provided by Mick Foley. They must have only had one video camera to use to film the movie, as the cameraman character in the movie had to settle for using a cardboard box with a camera taped to it.
Many of the movies I watched at this time were bad, but not this bad. I gave several DVDs away at white elephant gift exchanges after returning to Oshkosh, but I could not let go of Future War. I told people that I’d seen the worst movie ever made. Surprisingly, nobody wanted to watch it with me.
Finally, I found three people that were willing to try. I went with Andy and Eric to Ken’s house for “Bad Sci-Fi Movie Night”. On the marquee: Future War and Zardoz. Unfortunately, Netflix dropped the ball on Zardoz and we ended up watching Logan’s Run (NOT a bad movie). But Future War was shared, and a tradition was born.
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| Anonymous #2 displaying proper technique for surviving bad movie night. |
Future War inspired a bad movie night every few months, and even a bad movie club. A few months later we had Bad Star Wars Movie Night at Jason’s house. Apparently Ken was upset with me for making him watch Future War, because he had us watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, featuring elderly Wookiees watching soft porn, among other disturbing images. Ken was smart. He had “prior engagements” and didn’t show up until the movie was over. Had he been there for it, we may have encased him in carbonite.*
Several bad movie nights followed, but we started having most of them either at Ken’s new (brew) house, or at my place, where we preceded Bad Movie Night with wine "tasting". So it’s a bit of a blur, but over the last few years we managed to stomach Howard the Duck, Zardoz, Aliens vs. Avatars, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (from 2011, starring Tiffany and Deborah Gibson), The Room, and Titanic II.
Perhaps someone will hate themselves enough to carry on the tradition of bad movies in the Fox Valley. If not, I still have fond memories of eight to twelve people stuffed into a room, laughing and sharing something they (unfortunately) will never forget.
Please share your bad movie night memories below! DON’T pause the movie to do so.
*Just a note for those who would follow in my footsteps: Star Wars Holiday Special is NOT bad movie night fodder. It is more something you would have someone watch if you wanted to damage them psychologically, like if you wanted to re-enact Clockwork Orange.
For the record, I'd already seen the Star Wars Holiday Special twice. No person should have to sit through that thing three times. My 'prior engagement' was with a therapist to undo the damage it had done. I still have nightmares about holographic Jefferson Starship and Wookie cooking shows. Bad Movie night MUST live on!
ReplyDeleteFriday Fright Nights at the Time Community Theater often include some pretty awful movies. I will think of you when I go this spring/summer!
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