Board 8 > Board 8 Film Ranking Squad Presents: So Bad It's Good Movies - The Ranking!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Bitto posted...

Wow. Thats hilarious. Makes me feel even better having this as a top 10.

Its a real shame about the quality. I would love to watch it again with my partner but its so difficult to figure out whats going on.

Regarding Suburban Sasquatch, Rick the reporter is one of my least favorite protagonists of this list, which is a real accomplishment. Just a terrible character combined with terrible performance.

For the next one, I will guess Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.

Rick the reporter DOES suck, but he sucks in such a hilariously pathetic way. He gets talked down to by the fat editor, the fat cop, AND random, one scene adult baby businessman. Somehow you are on a LOWER tier in the social hierarchy than ALL of these characters. And it is STUNNING that this is an ACTOR. This is not the director trying to put himself in a position where the cute "native american" girl has to fall in love with him. This guy was CHOSEN to play this role, and this character was WRITTEN to be this way. The level of incompetence there is just...chef's kiss.

The Instructor was a very hard one for me to rank and honestly there was a point early on I was close to just quitting on it because it was borderline incomprehensible and I was grumpy I was watching this super weird VHS rip. I do think there is some fun stuff on the backend and it is at least a more watchale movie than some of the other ones on the list. The weird ninja school dropout Gollum was funny to me as was the final scene with the hero killing a guy that had nothing to do with the actual crime that took place. Like the last half of the movie or so was way better than the first half, even if it was a mess.

Inviso posted...

Rick the reporter DOES suck, but he sucks in such a hilariously pathetic way. He gets talked down to by the fat editor, the fat cop, AND random, one scene adult baby businessman. Somehow you are on a LOWER tier in the social hierarchy than ALL of these characters. And it is STUNNING that this is an ACTOR. This is not the director trying to put himself in a position where the cute "native american" girl has to fall in love with him. This guy was CHOSEN to play this role, and this character was WRITTEN to be this way. The level of incompetence there is just...chef's kiss.

I said it in my write up but there are multiple films on this list where I was like "ew gross this weird lumpy protagonist dude clearly made this movie so he could make out with this significantly more attractive female lead" and it is SHOCKING that isn't true here. The fact someone cast this schlub to be the lead is insane and him being an actual schlub in the movie makes it funnier. Almost everyone in the movie is like "wow you suck at this" at some point and he keeps proving them right!

I'm sad my number 30 and 26 are safe for now based on that last clue booooo. I'll go back to guessing Santa Claus vs The Martians as that still feels like the movie that makes the most sense as a "nobody hated this but nobody really liked it either" choice.

20. Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)
Directed by: Ed Wood
Score: 148

Forty: 4
Evillord: 11
Seginus: 14
Red: 17
Bitto: 18
Johnbobb: 18
Karo: 21
Suprak: 21
Inviso: 24

Forty:
Flying saucers on a string will always be awesome. Plan 9 honestly is a contender for number one although I cant personally place it there. Its pretty much the epitome of so bad its good, a cult classic that deserves respect for being one of the OGs of crappy campy cinema. It has all the hallmarks of a bad movie: horrible acting (although there are a couple of performances that somehow are decent), technical problems, and a nonsensical plot, but it does manage to be entertaining enough to hold ones interest. Thats the most important thing, because the worst thing a movie can do is be boring. Its kind of a shame that this is Bela Lugosis last appearance on film, but he still has a presence even if its weirdly placed archival footage. Vampira is always great too. I dont know too much about Ed Wood (havent seen the Depp movie but now I want to) but he seems like an interesting person, and I feel like his passion for his craft actually comes through in Plan 9. I imagine if he had bigger budgets and better actors he would be more highly regarded, but his existing legacy is cool too.

Evillord:
This one has a long history of being regarded as among the worst films ever, and is a major source of inspiration for the type of film culture that allowed a list like this to be made. I continue to feel like these older bad movies needed MST3K to talk over them, or preferably a group of inebriated friends, to really be entertainingly bad though. There's some amusement value in the horribly cheesy and out of place narration ("Perhaps, on your way home, someone will pass you in the dark, and you will never know it... FOR THEY WILL BE FROM OUTER SPACE!!!") the cheap and low effort special effects and set designs (much has been said of the airplane cockpit consisting of two chairs and a curtain), or the narrative Frankensteined together from elements Ed Wood saw in older genre films and pulp sci-fi novels, where a group of "aliens" who the filmmakers didn't even try to use makeup to make distinguishable from humans try to destroy the earth because they're afraid of humanity's violent nature but also reanimate a few corpses to walk around doing a vampire impression to try and scare our species straight. But mostly all the elements are so half baked and the narrative such a fat load of nothing that it's just kind of boring.

Seginus:
I didn't think this one was nearly as terrible as its reputation would imply. It starts off pretty weak, relying on excessive narration to get the plot moving, and the writing and acting are generally awful. But the final confrontation onboard the alien craft was halfway decent, not too far off from Star Trek in its messaging. It got to par for boilerplate cold war sci-fi there, with the aliens reprimanding us about atom bombs and such. What makes the whole thing goofy and memorable is that the aliens' strategy involves raising our own dead against us, so it's a zombie movie on top of an alien movie (featuring Vampira and Bela Lugosi, no less). The elevator pitch by itself is worthy of its spot in the geek pantheon.

Red:
Aliens try to defeat earth with a couple zombies or something. The plan never makes much sense logically, don't think about it. The movie is paced like a snail and while conceptually interesting just drags itself out and will take 20 minutes to explain the simplest of concepts. Nevermind the completely nonthreatening zombie people.

Bitto:
It's interesting that this was so often panned as "the worst film" for decades because it seems mostly fine. The infamous cockpit scene, for instance, the main issue to me was the shoddy setpiece. I didn't notice the boom mic shadow or the clipboard or any other thing. Then the more confusing aspects of the movie like everything regarding Bela Lugosi's portion (especially the intro where he's setting up flowers) are kinda interesting just on its own.

It is funny that the three zombies are Elvia before Elvira, a police chief that JUST died, and Dracula. And Dracula being such a non-threatening presence to Jeff's wife was silly too. Of course, the special effects aren't great. The random bits of narration during scenes might actually be the worst of all the "bad" effects. It's really jarring and made me realize how few movies have this omniscient narrator. Which makes sense. It's quite literally the opposite of show, don't tell.

The idea of aliens using Earth zombies to prove their technological superiority to Earth is a really cool idea that I'm surprised hasn't been used more often. When you read that Ed Wood loved Lugosi and just spliced footage of Lugosi into this film when he died during the middle of production, the Lugosi footage becomes more endearing than weird. And the confrontation between the aliens and the humans is pretty good, especially so in 1957. It's interesting how willing the aliens just...wanted a conversation and nothing hostile and all the discussion about nuclear weapons were very relevant then and now. It's funny that the aliens basically just yelled and scolded the humans for like 5 minutes, though.

Genuinely Good: As mentioned, the plot. The speech against nuclear weapons is pretty impressive. The Nobel Peace Prize went to Pauling for efforts to stop nuclear testing and that was 1962. It seems like public sentiment started to show signs of anti-nuclear around 1957, which makes this cutting-edge.

Johnbobb:
"It's hard to pinpoint what exactly is the dumbest thing about this movie. Is it the fact that the aliens are randomly bringing back zombies for no real reason? Is it the fact that Maila Nurmi's zombie character is just Vampira (and she's literally billed as such), and Bela Lugosi's zombie is clearly just Dracula, depsite them not being vampires? Is it Tor Johnson's ridiculous zombie face that he makes for most of the movie? Is it the extended sequence of looped battle footage against what are clearly toy UFOs? Is it the fact that the ""aliens"" are just regular people with lightning bolt shirts? No. It's the world's smallest mausoleum that everyone has to keep ducking under.

Favorite 5 star Letterboxd review:
A classic of anti-war cinema"

Karo:
This is an old 1950s martian attack film, complete with an overdramatic narrator who describes every scene like he is doing a dubbing for the visually impaired, in a sad yet ultimately futile attempt to get people to take the movie seriously.
Basically the galactic neighborhood is concerned about how the human invention of the atomic bomb could lead to the development of the 'solornite bomb', a device that could end the universe by detonating light particles. If you say that that sounds remarkably scientifically feasible for a movie of this dubious caliber, don't you worry, things will implode shortly in a catastrophic manner.
For in response, the aliens decide to execute the titular Plan 9, which involves raising the Earth's dead and creating an army of zombies (plus Bela Lugosi because lol). Why do they need a bunch of shambling corpses to subjugate Earth when they are an intergalactic spacefaring civilization? Who the fuck knows.
It honestly feels like a couple of secretaries collided with each other while carrying the pages of two different scripts and this was their attempt to try and put everything back together. The special effects are of course laughable, and sometimes the time of day even changes mid scene because lol.
Anyway the aliens lose because they spend most of their time trying to troll the earthlings rather than actually trying to win, and eventually just straight up just open the door of their flying saucer and let armed humans come onto it. It is just plain bad, and just utterly boring, and thankfully we are spared from hearing about any of the other 8 plans.

Suprak:
F

Im four movies in and Im spiraling into madness. I cant rank these things. I just spent an hour at my computer trying to figure out if Plan 9 From Outer Space was better or worse than this other incomprehensible movie and Ive lost the ability to determine what the hell I mean by better or worse. This movie is worse. So its better? But then this movie is better. So then that must be worse? The worse one of these movies are the better they get sometimes and sometimes something gets so dumb and awful that it becomes watchable again. Im not going to be able to rank anything here in any meaningful way. More than half of these movies are going to be Fs and Im going to have to determine what F is fun dumb and what F is not fun dumb and what that means.

Anyway, Plan 9 From Outer Space is the film that mightve finally broken me. It completely broken my brain from the start. From the beginning. Theres a guy that might be your drunk uncle yelling at you about the truth and how you need to hear it and you know hes about ten seconds away from demanding you listen to his theory about Pizzagate and Hillary Clinton. Then the movie starts and it shows a tombstone with a normal human name that is clearly the lead actor. The next name that appears on the tombstone is Vampira. Then it just moves on to more normal names like it didnt just drop a Vampira bomb in our lap. What the hell is a Vampira? I wondered to myself. And then that question is immediately answered because a woman shows up and she is the most Vampira looking woman I have ever seen in my life. Yeah, you know what? Vampira makes sense. Ethyl Wolcott wouldve been weird as hell for her so yeah lets just call her Vampira for some reason.

Ive lost track of how many times Ive brought this up now for these write-ups, but this is a movie that makes no sense. This is a movie that was put together with a Madlibs puzzle and a glass of NyQuil mixed with kerosine. The fundamental crux of this movie is this Plan 9 and I had to rewind it multiple times because I thought I had missed something. So, the plot, as far as I can tell, is that there are aliens. And these aliens want to warn humanity not to blow up the sun. But humanity keeps shooting at them and refusing to talk to them. So, to prove that theyre real, they decide to summon an army of undead zombies to march on the worlds capitals so people have to acknowledge their existence. Not the zombies existence mind you, but how the existence of that crazy thing proves the existence of a separate crazy thing (which is aliens). But then people are getting close to discovering their plans so they decide they need to kill them to keep them silent. Sothey want people to acknowledge their existence so they come up with a plan to alert people that theyre real but then people find out theyre real so in order to keep them silent from exposing that the aliens are real, they decide to kill them so they can silence them and move forward with their plan to get humans to acknowledge theyre real. Do you see the flaw in your plan there, aliens? Why are we killing the people who think youre real so they dont tell other humans youre real if your plan is to convince the humans youre real? Hell, just keep flying along the highway long enough and people will eventually figure things out. Stop being secretive and hiding in graveyards and maybe this whole thing will resolve itself.

Also, there are human characters in this movie and at no point did they do anything that wasnt the dumbest thing possible. These aliens are right. Humanity needs to be eradicated. Theres one part where the alien is like you humans cant have this technology youre too violent and stupid and the guy who I think is supposed to be the heroic lead of the movie responds by punching him in the face and wildly shooting at random pieces of equipment until everything is on fire. Call me violent will ya? That makes me so mad I COULD PUNCH YA! It isnt like the US government doesnt know what their intentions are. Theyre sending them messages and we have decoded them. The movie shows the army guys listen to the decoded messages. They are literally like hey please respond to our messages we know you can hear us and understand us and the whole universe is in grave danger please stop shooting at us and theyre just in the office rubbing their chin like hm I wonder what these idiot aliens are trying to tell us. They respond to their pleas by firing 2 solid minutes of stock footage of bombs at them. Am I supposed to be cheering for the humans at the end? Why? Why do I want these idiots to win?

No surprise with it being on this list, but this is also a really, really badly made movie. A lot of these movies feel cheep, but this feels like the cheapest of them all. This feels like it was made with a budget of help theyre repossessing my house and I actually have negative money. I could not tell what was going on with Bela Lugosi or Vampira in this movie but it looked like they had roughly 1 minute of footage of each that they were determined to stretch out into 10. I get the sense Vampira mightve gotten stuck in that bush she was hiding behind because I feel like that is the only framing we ever see of her. Bela Lugosi apparently died in 1956 and this movie came out in 1959 and honestly that makes sense based on what I just watched. It is equally likely they just used whatever footage they already had or they just dug up his grave to parade him around the set Weekend At Bernies style. Heres another thing: why are those two vampires? The cop is like a Frankenstein thing and those two are dressed up like straight up vampires. Was this initially a different movie? He was just a normal old man as far as I could tell so why did he come back as a vampire other than the fact he was known for being a vampire? And why is his wife so hot? Bela Lugosi looks like he is roughly dead years old, and she is like maybe 30. And theyre both vampires. Whywhy are the things the way they are in this movie?

I know special effects were hard in 1959, but some of these regular effects dont work either. The pilots are flying with what looks like half a paper plate and the most interesting part of the movie was the stewardess getting stuck in the curtain that she was desperately trying to keep closed so you couldnt see the nothing behind her. The sets in this movie look like they were made by elementary school children that were subsequently put down for how bad they were at art. There is that tomb that the old man Bela Lugosi is buried in and the fact that thing appeared in a real, actual movie is insane. Everything looks way too small. I laughed out loud when the pilot described the flying saucer as looking like a cigar because as far as I know that isnt what a cigar looks like. That isnt what a flying saucer is supposed to look like, either. Thats what maybe a doorknob looks like hanging from a string.

This is another film in this list where the acting isnt great. It isnt as bad as some of the other movies on this list, which almost makes it worse. This is boring bad acting instead of campy bad acting and there really isnt any role here that is so bad that it becomes fun. My favorite character was Vampira who made the very wise choice of never speaking and just leering at people behind bushes. My second favorite character is someone who I swear is time traveling Joe Lo Truglio, who is the cop who keeps repeatedly getting the shit kicked out of him by zombies and vampires. He is very good at standing there while someone beats him about the face and head. Other than that, the performances here are very wooden and they are being out acted by a guy who appears to have been dead for three years. But the problem is it feels like standard bad acting. It is bad acting in the way your local theater troupe is bad acting, and it is normal bad acting.

I do think at least this movie does get into the so bad it is funny territory from time to time. It isnt a good movie but it did make me laugh. I did get a good laugh at the end while the people are looking up at the spaceship and theyre like you have to admire them. They truly are more advanced to us and then there is a hard cut to the spaceship and it is literally on fire and the woman alien is shrieking and it EXPLODES over Hollywood. Thats a bonkers ending and that sort of unintentional comedy is the only thing really saving the movie at all. Ive described so many movies this way now, but the only entertainment value comes from getting drunk and mocking this with your friends. The sort of unintentional comedy a lot of these films manage to capture through sheer incompetence is funny, but I feel like it isnt as funny if you dont have someone to sit there and jeer at it with you. Why would you watch the dumbest movies ever made if you are just sitting there chuckling to yourself? I feel like thats what my watches of these movies are missing, honestly. Im watching Plan 9 From Outer Space and I am laughing some, but I would be laughing a lot more if I was watching this with people.

Like, taken at face value, this is an absolutely abysmal experience. It doesnt make sense and it is horrifically shot and nobody can act and it was put together for whatever money the director could find in his pocket. It isnt genuinely good. It is sometimes funny but not because it wants to be. Thats the nicest thing I have to say about half the movies on this list, honestly. Sometimes funny by mistake isnt necessarily something Im looking for in a movie. And, unfortunately, even though Plan 9 From Outer Space is sometimes funny by mistake, it isnt as funny as other movies on this list. I dont think it has that same charm or that same weirdness that Im looking for. I think the movies Im going to rank highest on this list have a sort of campy feel to them, or at least something genuinely good or fun or something, I dont know. This doesnt have any of this. This is a cult classic just because of how incompetent and insane the whole thing is, and that I think is going to get this towards the bottom of this list. Whatever the hell that might mean.

Inviso:
Even in my childhood, I can remember this movie being touted as one of the worst films ever made, but with campy adoration. Heck, the movie Ed Wood was ultimately based around the creation of this mess, because it was such a fascinating story in and of itself. But after watching itits just a little bit under the okay line for me. I havent watched a ton of 50s B-movies, but my general understanding is that they all follow a very similar formula with some alien or monstrous threat and a lot of dull, exposition scenes in between attacks of varying levels of competence. The exposition really stands out here, because those are the scenes where, for the most part, you dont get to experience the fun incompetence of the film-making; its just dry explanation of science or what have you. Its a bit hard to get through, in other words.

But there IS fun to be gleaned from this: from the choice to give a big, burly guy a speaking role (even though he absolutely should NOT have a speaking role), all because hes eventually going to become a lumbering brute character later in the film; to the utter hilarity of fighting Bela Legosis not-a-vampire, only for him to fall to the ground in defeatand his body is replaced by a pristine skeleton. The same pristine skeleton we see later on when the much MUCH bigger brute is similarly defeated. Throw in some cheap sets and general buffoonery, and I can at least understand why this became a cult classic, even if its not necessarily my speed.

Good, Bad Movie Grade: D
Best Bad Aspect: The general cheapness of the production.

Outlier Leaderboard:

Inviso - 102
Bitto - 87
Johnbobb - 82
Forty - 80
Evillord - 79
Seginus - 74
Karo - 72
Red - 71
Suprak - 68

And I'm the first person to break the three digit mark for outliers, even with a small outlier score on Plan 9. Everyone else shifted a little bit (with Forty making a big leap as the biggest outlier on this movie), but not a whole lot to discuss otherwise. Suprak takes back the bottom of the list though, with a near-perfect ranking.

Hint for #19: The other half of the tiebreaker is the first of four movies on this list from 1987 to appear.

Blaziken posted...

Hint for #19: The other half of the tiebreaker is the first of four movies on this list from 1987 to appear.

Ok THIS one is Cry Wilderness

I saw the whole movie on YouTube. I regret nothing.

I think I've watched five to ten RiffTrax movies at my theatre. This is the only one I could not sit through. I've tried multiple times on its own or with commentary, and I just cannot. I think it was the last thing I tried to watch for this project before turning back my full attention to Persona rankings & Album rankings.

Something I genuinely appreciated about the old movies is how short they were. Even when they were awful, you're only wasting like 60 minutes of your time. Very considerate of them to be bad on a condensed schedule.

Johnbobb posted...

Ok THIS one is Cry Wilderness

Nah this has to be a misdirect. Inviso KNOWS we'd all guess Cry Wilderness if they limited it to the four 1987 movies so clearly we cannot drink the Cry Wildnerness in front of us.

...unless they know that we would think that, making us not guess Cry Wilderness, so clearly it has to be Cry Wilderness, meaning we clearly cannot drink the Cry Wilderness in front of them.

Unless...

Anyway guess Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.

19. Cry Wilderness (1987)
Directed by: Jay Schlossberg-Cohen
Score: 148

Inviso: 7
Seginus: 11
Bitto: 13
Evillord: 13
Karo: 14
Red: 15
Suprak: 22
Forty: 26
Johnbobb: 27

Inviso:
If Im being honest, I think this movie more than any other was what inspired me to come up with this list in the first place. I was watching the MST3K reboot, and if Im being honest, the reboot doesnt really do it for me. I feel like the show is almost toothless. But Ive watched through it all the same. But the second episode of the reboot is Cry Wilderness, and I wasnt even paying attention to the riffing, because I was just baffled and laughing at how BAD the movie was in its own right. And watching it again without any sort of laugh track or background riffing really nailed down just how fucking insane this film is.

First off, this movie has NO IDEA what tone its going for. The opening sequence is set at a museum, where a boarding school group of boys is being corralled by their teacher, and one boy is missing. Thats our protagonist, Paul; hes daydreaming and has stopped at the missing link exhibit, and when his teacher comes to collect him, Paul informs him that he KNOWS the missing link. The missing link is Bigfoot, and Paul met Bigfoot over the summer while visiting his father at the national park where he works. And at first, the teacher treats this conversation like one would expect in a childrens filmbut then out of NOWHERE, the teacher gets super hostile and starts calling Paul a liar, and Paul gets super hostile and they start arguing. And this leads to the teacher effectively saying Paul is going to be expelled if he doesnt admit Bigfoot is fictional. Its such tonal whiplash that I cant help but laugh at it. This is especially true because the movie is BOOKENDED in this way, with Paul returning to school and the teacher suddenly displays childlike whimsy over the thought of Bigfoot, asking Paul if he can come to the forest to meet him. Its a perfect capper.

Beyond that though, the general plot is, per my TVs description: the ghost of Bigfoot warns Paul that his father is in grave danger from an escaped circus tiger thought to be Bigfoot. And thatssomewhat accurate. Paul gets this vision and immediately flees his school, hitches rides with truckers, and gets to the forest, where he conveniently finds his dad like RIGHT away. And then we get more tonal whiplash: Why are you here, Paul? Bigfoot told me you were gonna die if I didnt come! What the fuck? You are in so much trouble for this shit. And then the NEXT scene is just whimsical movie as Paul and his father frolic through the woods, until they meet Jim, who is Pauls fathers buddy and honestlythe only semi-competent actor in the film. And they LAUGH and laugh. Its the movie equivalent of cotton candy, and its SO hilariously dumb.

Pauls dad and Jim have been tasked with hunting down some beast thats been wreaking havoc in the forest, and since theyre not bloodthirsty enough, the mayor brings in a big game hunter to help out. And this guy is introduced to us in the sleaziest way possible: hes just gnawing on a rabbit carcass with a big-ass jug of ketchup next to him, and he acts like a scumbag from minute one hes on-screen. Oh, and the scene where hes introduced and is very CLEARLY meant to be our antagonist? Tonal whiplash again! Turns out Pauls dad found some raccoon kits and was keeping them in the cabin, and they got into the kitchen and made a mess. And they LAUGH and laugh. And to make matters better, this allegedly badass hunter is just eating his rabbit and one of the raccoons gets on the table like RIGHT next to him, and it takes the guy (Morgan) forever to notice. Its like the director didnt tell him to react naturally to the sight of a raccoon right there next to him, so he didnt respond until specifically told to.

Morgan is great for all the wrong reasons; his entire character is meant to be a sleazebag, but he comes across like a pedophile, even having moments where he and Paul acknowledge Bigfoot is real, and he insists they keep in their little secret. Morgans actor is bad, but at least hes bad in a hammy way. Pauls dad (Will)I feel like he must have been utterly terrible while shooting, because they somehow dubbed him over with a voice that cannot act or convey emotion in any way. They introduce Dr. Helen later in the film, and shes the same waycomplete deadpan and incapable of emotional response to ANYTHING. Meanwhile, Paul himself is tonal whiplash in acting form, trying to portray childlike whimsy right before violent outbursts over how no one is listening to him and his father is going to die. Its all fantastic.

Now, as mentioned to justify Morgans arrival, the hunt is on for a beast in the woods, which leads to a cave where Paul remembers having met Bigfoot in the past, and in an AMAZING bit of product placement, we see that Bigfoot drank a LOT of Coca-Cola thanks to Paul, and listened to rock and roll music on Pauls radio. The product placement is blatant, but more so because NONE of this matters. The Bigfoot subplot has almost NOTHING to do with the movie, other than giving Morgan an excuse to be a creep. Seriously, once the tiger is introduced (far earlier than youd THINK, given that Bigfoot is meant to be a red herring), Bigfoots presence in the movie becomes completely superfluous, yet the movie STILL fights to include him as though he makes ANY logical sense to the plot.

Long story short, Will gets caught in a cave-in and Bigfoot saves him, allowing Morgan to discover Bigfoot and go after him. At this point, Morgan comes across a whimsical forest gathering, where a mystical Native American man (who was allegedly dead, according to Jim) blinds him with an amulet, and then an eagle claws Morgans eyes out. In a movie that, up until that point, had been ANNOYINGLY G-rated. And this is horrificand ends with one final tonal whiplash, as we get a whimsical moment of Pauls raccoon kits going home to their mother. This movie is insane, and I love it for that.

Oh! I almost forgot the completely random and pointless scene where the hunters are tracking what they think is a howling animalbut its just three drunk bikers, and then the bikers talk a load of trash to the hunters, all VISIBLY carrying guns, yet they then decide to instigate a fight, at which point theyre halted when said visible guns are obviously wielded against them. And these guys are NOBODIES in the film. Two of them flee, leaving their buddy behindat which point hes yanked off-screen. Or at least I THINK hes yanked off-screenthe movie cuts to a different scene MID-YANK. God this movie is amazingly incompetent.

Good, Bad Movie Grade: A
Best Bad Aspect: The acting is bad, but I think the acting being bad benefits the bizarre inability to settle on a single tone for the entire film.

Seginus:
You know what, I love the outdoor locations in this so it gets points for that. There's not much bigfoot but there's a good dose of beautiful scenery and cinematography. There's also a good deal of animal acting and that's fun. "Jim" must be the wrangler, because there's a scene where they happen upon a bear but Jim puts his hands on his hips and is like "oh that's just Big Mike" and then he goes and hugs it out with the bear and they're clearly friends. That was cool. I can't hate on this too much. It's still not a good movie, I'm just saying it has positives. It's kind of endearing and it stays focused on good nature photography enough to work without bigfoot everywhere. I'll even give the obvious Coca-Cola product placement a pass for framing it as litter. I just like the chill outdoorsy vibe of this one.

Bitto:
This movie is fairly well-directed, but there are baffling decisions that really left me speechless. I really can't even describe the plot without a bunch of questions popping up. A prep school kid named Paul is scolded by his teacher for "making up lies" that he met Bigfoot. Bigfoot shows up at his school to say his dad is in danger. He visits his dad, a park ranger, who is very much not in danger. Then he meets a Rambo-style big game hunter named Morgan, who is there to help his dad secure a wild animal, later revealed to be a tiger. Paul decides it's a good idea to tell Morgan about Bigfoot for unknown reasons. He immediately regrets it, as Morgan wants to hunt Bigfoot and blackmails him in front of everyone. Meanwhile, the dad doesn't want Paul's help and instead has his indigenous partner who laughs at everything keep Paul secured. Bigfoot helps save the dad, but needs Paul and an older indigenous man's help to kill Morgan. Oh, and the teacher in the beginning actually believes in Bigfoot too, he was just mad at himself for not believing and took it out on the kid.

...There's a lot here. Everyone treats Paul as "too old" to be telling lies, but he's like...12. Most kids still believe in Santa Claus. Also, saying you met Bigfoot is a pretty innocuous lie. I don't know why everyone gets so upset about this. So he decides to keep Bigfoot a secret. Sometimes. But decides to tell Morgan, despite him immediately saying "I don't think I should trust you." Everything about the indigenous partner is wild too. One of the crazier segments is the partner watching over the son and then decides to fucking trap him in a net and let a cougar loose on him while he laughs at him. Dude, what! But it's okay, there's an older indigenous man who was thought to be dead that the partner clearly seems to revere...and that older man tells Paul to run away. And then the partner still continues to try to capture the kid and finds him a nuisance! Oh, and Paul really does nothing the entire film. Arguably, he makes things worse. I dunno why Bigfoot asked him to come.

It almost feels like an AI movie. Or, maybe more accurately, this was probably a documentary-style movie focusing on wild animals, as there's clearly a lot of footage of animals. The tiger that they try to capture is hilariously spliced from other footage, as no one is ever on-screen with the tiger. But I guess they wanted to make an actual movie here and just...didn't know what to do. Also, they really liked footage of the indigenous man laughing. He does it a lot.

Genuinely Good: I like the animal footage! It also doesn't seem like any of the animals get hurt.

Evillord:
Yeah, wooden acting, flat and awkward dialog, limp story... this is a bad movie alright. I wouldn't be the first to observe that most of the filmmakers' effort seems to have been spent on including as many trained animals as possible, but at least it is kind of cute watching them and gives the film a quality that stands out from the rest of the list. I would've actually liked it more if it had just been 90 minutes of raccoon footage tbh. What holds the narrative back in particular is the rather flimsy motive of the little kid character; he has a dream that bigfoot is telling him his dad is in "grave danger" and hangs around the entire time just for this. One feels a lot more for the adults who have to put up with his antics than for the kid himself because it's a lot more reasonable to discount this dream than to act around it. The payoff for this "foreshadowing" ultimately comes in the form of a contrived cave-in (or rather 3 rocks falling) from which Bigfoot has to bail the dad out. It is mostly a wad of nothing like so many others but is elevated by the racoon footage and a handful of gut-bustingly funny parts:

- When the dad's friend catches the kid with a net trap and then it cuts to the ranger lady's shack and the guy drags him in still inside the net
- Defeating the bad guy by having an aboriginal spirit summon an eagle to peck his eyes out
- The ending where the boy's necklace summons a bunch of animals to the school and there is a long shot of the goofy reaction faces he and the teacher make

Karo:
So there this kid in some private boarding school when suddenly a wild bigfoot appears and says daddy needs help so the boy runs away into the woods. I have so many questions right now but lets move on.
As things progress, it seems everyone is quite unconcerned with the welfare of this little boy. This truck driver just picks him of from the side of the road with no questions or concern that this small child is hitchhiking on a highway in the middle of the mountains. Likewise, his father is just like 'aw gee willikers son, watcha' doin here' like he caught him playing hooky at the fucking video arcade rather that discovering him wandering in the untamed wilderness.
Though I say untamed wilderness it is really just random animals sitting out there not reacting to the actors at all and the boy just picks up a wild bobcat like it is a kitten and what the hell is this movie.
So apparently everyone is searching for sasquatch and that's the whole story. Also there's a tiger in the California mountains. That escaped from the circus, apparently. That they neglected to mention when they were pondering what the strange creature in the woods might be.
It is just utterly bizarre. The characters talk bizarre, laugh bizarre and act bizarre, like where they discover a strange man sitting in their cabin eating dinner and just straight up ignore him so they can go and play with their pet raccoons. Because of course they have pet raccoons.
It's just an utter dumpster fire all around, highlighted by acting that sounds like a 4kids anime dub, lead by a stilted and unconvincing child character who is somehow the best performance in the film, and incompetent editing causing jarring scene transitions and sometimes characters literally teleporting or going backward in time. Like they don't even bother to change the camera angle, a guy is walking to the left and suddenly woosh he's back where he started.
Once amusement at the cheesiness wears off we are left with nothing but a dull pointless affair where nothing really happens, and after all the bullshit about the kid having to be there or his father dies, daddy just ends up saved by sasquatch anyway so what was even the point. Bigfoot himself could to a better job directing, even if said directing was doing nothing but smashing up all the equipment so it never could get made.

Red:
Coke is so good bigfoot can live off of it, apparently. Also bigfoot is magic and can either teleport or give visions, it never is really clear. This becomes a weird excuse to show off a bunch of wild animals, which would be kind of cool or cute until they clearly start abusing what appear to be very real raccoons. Just showing off a bunch of animals would have been fine, squeezing a raccoon uncomfortably, not even a little cool.

Suprak:
F

Okay, so here is my theory for how this movie got made. A couple was talking to their friend and they were like we really want you to help us murder our child and the guy was like what? Why would you come to me? Im only a filmmaker! And the couple was like please we really hate him. We gave him the stupidest haricut possible because of how much we hate him and at this point we just want him dead. But make it look like an accident because we dont want to go to jail. And then the filmmaker rubbed his chin for a while and was like well, I dunno. I guess I could cast him in the lead of this movie Im making. And then Ill put him in the immediate vicinity of wild, dangerous animals. And the parents were like Perfect! Like a horse or something? And the filmmaker was like No, no not a horse. Lets go big. There will be raccoons and wolves and a cougar and fucking tiger for some reason. One of them is bound to maul him to death! But then the kid somehow survived and the filmmaker was forced to release this absolute dumpster fire of a movie because if he didnt it would look suspicious.

Now, of course because the filmmaker wasnt actually crazy, a lot of the scenes here are nature shots completely independent of any of the actors. Roughly 30% of this movie is a completely unrelated nature documentary where they just show animals wandering around slightly out of focus. At multiple points we enter a scene that looks like it is a home movie from someones shitty zoo vacation with their kids. Peter spends approximately five minutes gawking at all the animals in cages at the forest veterinarians house and then we get lots of scenes of animals walking around, looking at the camera, or just doing general animal stuff with no one remotely in the same proximity of them. Sometimes it is just trees. There is a ton of this movie that is just random nature stuff which is even stranger considering the run time of this movie is like exactly 90 minutes. It is short and they still pad it with a ton of hey look animals are cool right? type of footage.

There seems to be this undertone of we must respect nature and animals are our friends which is insane because I would not be surprised at all if movie guidelines were changed because of this film. At one point Peters dad is like hey I have multiple raccoons in my house because Im sure putting a wild animal in the same place my child sleeps is a good idea. And then, immediately upon them entering their house, we see very real footage of both Peter and his dad getting bit by a raccoon. It takes all of two seconds for this to happen. The very next scene we get the best performance out of the movie by one of the raccoons that appears to be actively in distress because he is being choked by the big game hunter in the mesh tank top. You know those no animals were harmed in the making of this film disclaimer we see? I suspect Cry Wilderness played a role in that. The vet also has all of these animals in cages so small that the animals can barely turn around in and some of these animals appear to be aggressively in bad shape. I just watched the fattest cougar in the history of cougars in this movie. That cougar has diabetes. I dont know if cougars can get diabetes, but this one does. Im sure they used tame or older animals to make sure the actors werent in active danger, but it doesnt look good just from a visual perspective. You can also tell a lot of these animals were chained up during the scenes. Peter is walking to meet the dead/undead/possibly still alive old Indian guy and you see multiple wolves jumping and getting yanked back because they hit the end of their restraint. Those wolves wanted to eat the kid so bad and it is crazy to me how close the actors get to the animals. At one point, a guy just hugs a bear. He straight up hugs a bear for like a solid minute while everyone laughs. Thats the whole scene. How was that in the movie unless the actor lost a bet somewhere?

I havent even talked about the movie yet. Thats how crazy all this animal stuff was here. I have mentioned zero things about the film. Heres something fun: this is a bigfoot movie. This isnt the first bigfoot movie I watched for this list. It is, however, the first bigfoot movie I watched that doesnt really have bigfoot in it. This is a movie about bigfoot and the total amount of bigfoot we see is roughly 28 seconds. They couldve removed bigfoot here and changed almost nothing. An almost completely imperceivable amount of bigfoot is the most insane amount of bigfoot to have in your movie. Its bigfoot. Either your movie focuses on him or it doesnt, and him playing second fiddle to an escaped circus tiger was an absolutely crazy direction for the last half of the film to take. I dont even know the rules of bigfoot in this movie. Bigfoot can speak English? He drinks Coke and listens to cassette tapes in a cave? Are we 100% sure he just isnt a particularly hairy homeless man that Peter ran into last summer? The Venn diagram of distinct characteristics between bigfoot and crazy Steve, the homeless man terrorizing our national park system is just one completely overlapping circle and that circle is on several national watch lists. Alsocan bigfoot teleport? He shows up at the start of the movie to yell across the park at Peter and then again at the end of the movie seemingly out of nowhere, but he leaves tracks all over the place and his method to escape mesh shirt big game hunter appears to be just fleeing on foot. Im not sure what bigfoot is and what he can do, and that might have something to do with the fact hes basically a cameo in this movie.

Here's another thing Im uncertain of: what danger was Peters father in? Bigfoot yells this at the start of the movie and Peter keeps going youre going to kill my father youll die if I dont help you! but as far as I can tell he was never in any real danger. Sure, theres a tiger but Peters dad tranquilizes him on his own, without Peters help, without any real risk. The only thing that seems to put Peters father in any real danger is Peter himself, who spends the entirety of this movie acting like the dumbest kid in the history of dumb kids. Peter has the self preservation of a suicidal lemming and there are eight different points where someone is like stay here there are animals that will eat you if you go in that direction and Peter responds by running in that direction as fast as he can. They are flushing out the tiger and Peters dad tells him to stay there, which is a directive Peter appears to understand for all of five seconds before thinking hey you cant tell me when not to be tiger food! and running right at his dad so he can be eaten. The entirety of the danger to Peters dad at the end of the movie happens only because Peter wanders around an abandoned mine shaft by himself with no weapons and no sources of light and Peters dad gets himself trapped trying to find him.

Peter is awful, one of the most annoying kid actors in the history of annoying kid actors. He spends the entire movie being a brat and doing the dumbest thing in any possible situation. YOU DONT BELIEVE ME ABOUT BIGFOOT is a crazy thing to complain to someone about because theyre not supposed to believe you about bigfoot, you lunatic. He is a thing only you can see and is actively hiding from everyone. Gosh why dont any of these adults believe me about this mythical creature no one has seen but me Oh I dunno man, I wonder why. He just keep whining about everything. I think this culminates in one of the absolute dumbest scenes in the entire movie, where Peters dads friend (who I think is another forest ranger but may just be an Indian because of that sweet 80s racism) is like hey it is dangerous out there please watch this kid for five seconds and then the vet lady immediately is like ok kid I trust you lets go outside. They drive for apparently half a mile before she RUNS OUT OF GAS which means she had her tank on empty all the way in the middle of the forest. And then, within seconds, her truck is mauled by a tiger which is the one thing everyone had been warning them about for the past ten minutes. He causes almost every single problem in this movie by being a brat and I think we may have misheard bigfoot in the opening scene where he mustve been yelling IF YOU GO TO YOUR DAD HE WILL BE IN GRAVE DANGER! STAY HERE AND DONT MESS EVERYTHING UP YOU MORON!

To be fair to the kid though, I hate everyone in this movie. There isnt a single character I didnt feel seething hatred for. I think the casting process was some guy that was struggling with male pattern baldness yelling at his casting director to find him the 10 people with the worst haircuts in America. Everyone in this film was instructed to cut their own hair before they would be cast, I think. My favorite characters in the movie were the fat out of shape cougar and the raccoon that wouldnt stop biting the actors because that is what you should do when someone is doing such a bad job. No one in this movie exists within a frame of reference that makes sense to my brain. I dont understand the actions or motivations of anyone in this movie. Theyre barely human. At one point, the Indian friend meets some other old Indian and he says something to the affect of hey didnt you die and didnt we bury you and from the response it isnt clear if he is a ghost or if he just wasnt dead and they buried a living old person by mistake. Thats the sort of characterization were looking at in this movie. The villain is introduced by eating a try of meat like he is a wendigo halfway through transformation and then strangling a baby raccoon. That isnt even the grossest thing he does though because two scenes later he is wearing a mesh shirt and telling a ten-year-old boy not to tell anyone the secret theyre sharing.

I hate this movie, if that wasnt clear. I hate everything about this. I hate how this is the second film on the list that Ive seen with bigfoot and I found myself muttering under my breath wow that other movie really used bigfoot better in his role. I hate that this is the second film on this list where I couldnt tell if someone was being dubbed over or not. The dads voice doesnt seem to match what hes saying at times, but from everything I could tell from my quick search this was an American movie and he was an American actor, so the fact that he would be dubbed is the most crazy thing ever. And it is the second film on this list where I had to google this! I hate the way this is filmed and I hate the actors and I hate the fact that I found myself wondering if reporting someone to PETA had a statute of limitations due to this film. This is just so bad. This utterly bizarre mix of nonsensical and boring and annoying that at no point comes close to anything resembling entertainment. I hate how this isnt even fun bad. It uses too little bigfoot and too much recycled nature footage to get anywhere near that. It is really boring and really drawn out and somehow not crazy or interesting enough to be in that sweet spot of fun bad. This is a much better made movie than the next handful of movies I have on this list, but Im still ranking it below them because I didnt even get any ironic enjoyment out of this. It is wildly incompetent but it a completely boring way. And, what I really hate, is this isnt even close to the worst movie Ive watched doing this project. Invisowhat the hell have you done to us?

Forty:
So I hated this movie, even though I love bigfoot stuff, but I absolutely lost it at the ending. If you believe, truly believe, it doesnt matter how old you are. The pendant glows, Bowl Cut Junior and his teacher are bathed in warm red light as Bigfoot is revealed standing majestically as a gentle fog rolls by. A piano, lovely as a wilderness morning, fades in. Keep on climbin, though you may never reach the top. A glorious menagerie of wildlife stands in solidarity with Bigfoot. The faces of Bowl Cut Junior and his teacher are struck with wonder as they share what will surely be a magical life altering moment in time. You know what, I think thats all this write-up is going to be. I promise I did watch the whole thing but like I said, I hated this movie and instead of going over the 91 minutes that I loathed (you guys should thank me for not reminding you of what you watched!), Im just going to fondly remember the 2 minutes that brought me joy.

Johnbobb:
"I can crush a Coca-Cola can, but not like this. This Coca-Cola can is really crushed. Someone's been living here. Someone who likes Coca-Cola. That kid said Bigfoot likes Coca-Cola. Could this Coca-Cola-filled den be Bigfoot's? But Bigfoot isn't real, and if you think Bigfoot is real you're a fucking idiot, like that kid.

Favorite 5 star Letterboxd review:
Love the part where a kid gets detention because he believes in Bigfoot. This really says a lot about how people are discriminated against for their beliefs in todays society."""

Outlier Leaderboard:

Inviso - 114
Bitto - 93
Johnbobb - 90
Forty - 87
Evillord - 85
Seginus - 82
Karo - 77
Red - 75
Suprak - 71

As the biggest outlier on this one, I continue to push further and further ahead of the pack. However, I must say it's interesting that this is the first ranking of this list without ANY changes in placement. Everyone is in the exact same position they started.

Hint for #18: We eliminated Johnbobb's favorite movie ever in Ryan's Babe back in 26th place. But now it's time for the second 1st place ranking to fall, and just like Ryan's Babe, it's ALSO a 1st place that is balanced out by a 30th place ranking.

I can crush a Coca-Cola can, but not like this. This Coca-Cola can is really crushed. Someone's been living here. Someone who likes Coca-Cola.

Quick - someone find out what Mac's been up to!

Hint for #18: We eliminated Johnbobb's favorite movie ever in Ryan's Babe back in 26th place. But now it's time for the second 1st place ranking to fall, and just like Ryan's Babe, it's ALSO a 1st place that is balanced out by a 30th place ranking.

If one of you maniacs ranked my #1 the #30, I challenge you to a fight.

I won't guess because my number 30 is still in this. At the same time though, I'd be extremely interested to read the justification of someone putting it at number 1.

If my quick review is right, only 3 of us have lost our number 30 so far, which is crazy. So I'm guessing (hoping) this is neither my number 1 or my number 30 but I'm not positive what it could be.

I assume theres no coincidence Cry Wilderness came out the same year as Harry and the Hendersons.

Speaking of and not terribly related, but I find it fascinating how only four of the ten highest grossers domestically in 1987 came out in the summer.

Sorry for the double post but I didnt like the movie selection for Netflix MST3K either.

18. Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Directed by: Stephen King
Score: 147

Red: 1
Johnbobb: 9
Forty: 12
Inviso: 15
Karo: 16
Suprak: 16
Bitto: 24
Seginus: 24
Evillord: 30

Red:
If there is one thing I can say about this list, there is no good movie here. I expect us to have vastly different lists when all is said and done. I couldn't guess what anyone is going to put at number 1. I have this one at 1 and think it really was "so bad its good" in a way that entertained me in particular. The original premise of machines all gaining sentience and going on a murdering spree was honestly hilarious. The entire first bit of the movie with just ridiculous murder scenes could have just gone on for an hour and I'd have laughed it off and been entertained. We don't really keep that up, the movie eventually settles on a setting and a bunch of generic characters. But the concept never stops being funny, with vehicles becoming the primary villains and a temporary truce while they all line up for gas. The concept is dumb, its awful, but it is sometimes funny. Oh and we end with text saying a Russian Space Laser and nukes killed some aliens tagging along a comet so everything was fine a few days later. You cant replicate that kind of hilarious dumb. This is a one-time thing.

Johnbobb:
"I watched this movie years back as a teen, and was surprised to recently see it categorized as an exceedingly bad movie, because I recalled it being dumb fun. Watching it now, yeah it's pretty fuckin bad, but it still is dumb fun. Stephen King is a way worse director than he is an author, and as much as I enjoy his books I can't say I'm sad he never attempted it again after this. Still, he did show a kid getting steamrolled and enough nonsensical cuts that I felt legitimately a tiny bit crazy while watching so I guess it was somewhat effective. Plus it gave us Who Made Who, one of ACDCs best songs, out of one of the movie's stupidest lines. This would make for an excellent double feature with this year's Y2K though.

Favorite 5 star Letterboxd review:
This whole film is just Stephen King trying to make a black mirror episode using only gta 5 mods"

Forty:
Stephen King in his coked-out era: Hear me out. Earth gets trapped in the tail of a comet that causes machines to come violently to life and its all perpetrated by aliens trying to cleanse the earth of humanity. Also, the soundtrack is only AC/DC. Sounds awesome right? It is, up to a point, but theres a reason this is the only thing SK ever directed. It starts out promising enough with some fun machine carnage like a kid getting run over by steamroller and a soda machine dispensing cans with violent velocity. Then, unlike the big rigs that would become the focus of the movie, it pretty much comes to a screeching halt. Theres a bunch of forgettable characters led by Emilio Estevez whos as lame and bland as he is in every other movie (yes, even Mighty Ducks although I kind of hate saying that). Normally King is great at creating interesting characters even when there are a bunch of them in a story (see The Stand, Needful Things, Under the Dome). That doesnt translate here, as were stuck at this truck stop with nobody thats particularly memorable. It also doesnt help that I dont like AC/DC. I dont mind the idea of making the whole soundtrack one band, and they fit the vibe of the movie, but I dont care much for listening to them. The green goblin truck is cool looking and fairly iconic but it and the other vehicles arent that menacing. Im not even mad at Uncle Stevie for giving this a shot, and it has its moments of dumb fun, but luckily hes been wise enough to let others direct his work.

Inviso:
At the start of this movie, I genuinely thought it was going to place higher than it ultimately did. I think the initial concept is great, if a bit obvious. Stephen Kings coke-addled brain coming up with scenes involving kids getting pelted to death by soda cans, and then ANOTHER kid getting actively bowled over by a steamrollerthose were great. And hell, some of the dummy work of characters getting plowed into by trucks was pretty goofy and fun as well. Really, the film starts out feeling very much in line with a lot of Stephen Kings other works that I remember reading: namely The Stand and Under the Dome, or watching in The Mist. You introduce your cast of characters (albeit some are nameless fodder), and you get conflict and you get characters working together to figure out how to survive their horrible situation. Its all good, and the acting and the scenario are goofy and over-the-top enough that its enjoyable to watch.

Really, the ONE thing holding this film back is the last third. Right around the time the truck stop runs out of gas, thats when it almost feels like the movie itself runs out of gas. Suddenly, everything hits hyper speed, and the characters flee the truck stop as the trucks all harmlessly destroy the building. You get a few cathartic moments as Deke shoots up a fast food window, and the rest of the humans take out an ice cream truck that briefly menaced Deke earlier in the movie. But it all just feels rushed, and almost like theres not enough characterization of the individual trucks to make them feel dangerous. The only truck thats made to feel like a real threat is the demonic toy truck, and even that only effectively gets one kill, and it gets picked off via rocket launcher just like a bunch of nameless trucks earlier in the film. Sidenote: the introduction of the rocket launcher makes the rest of the film feelpointless? Likeit very clearly solves most of the problems, yet they only use it once or twice before the very end.

But yeah, the ending honestly reminds me a ton of the Dawn of the Dead remake, except less exciting. So yeah, I think Maximum Overdrive had a TON of potential to be a goofy horror movie, especially in the first halfbut then it just falls short when it comes to bringing it home in the ending.

Good, Bad Movie Grade: B
Best Bad Aspect: The goofy concept and goofy kills.

Karo:
In this prequel to the movie 'Cars', machines come to life and start attacking people, using their newfound agency to do little more to drive around in circles and go beep beep.
The story centers around a group of characters who are hiding out in a truck stop (all of whom are incredibly annoying), and the many unwise things they do when faced with this situation. Because by god, these are some of the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet. Evil trucks are not as threatening as everyone acts like they are, they accelerate poorly and don't have much maneuverability, an average human should be able to juke them with ease yet everyone just stands right there and becomes a pavement pancake like the imbeciles they are.
They easily blow away two of the trucks with a bazooka they find in the basement and then just... stop because why would you ever want to continue doing the thing that was fucking working you goddamn shit for brains lunatics.
It is poorly thought out and utterly nonsensical, almost feeling like some shitty trucks go vroom vroom thing made for little boys, if only not for the movie being incredibly inappropriate for young children.
We don't even get a real explanation other then a half-assed footnote of 'it's aliens, brah', because I can think of many many superior ways for an advanced extraterrestrial race to wipe out humanity other than making big rigs circle around going beep beep. Complete trash.

Suprak:
F+

This movie made me realize some things. The first is that Yeardley Smith is clearly just Haley Joel Osment wearing a wig. The second is it is a miracle Steven King got any good movies out of that coked out brain of his if everything had the potential to be this. This movie has no right being as boring as it is. Heres the stuff we get at the beginning: an ATM just starts calling some random asshole an asshole. Do you know how excited I was for this when I saw that part? I thought we were going to get some tasty bizarre weirdness. And for a while I guess we do. We have the bridge moving up and everyone falling into the river including a motorcyclist with the weirdest scream of all time. We have a soda machine launching Coca-Cola at lethal velocity at a group of little leaguers. Hell, we see a ten-year-old get run the fuck over by a steamroller. Thats amazing! What a bonkers way to start. Most movies are afraid to murder kids and this one straight up explodes one within the first five minutes. How do we go from that to convoy slowly circles a gas station for the better part of an hour?

I think thats the main problem with this movie Steven King somehow squanders the potential here. You see Billy or Goofus or whatever his name is driving his bike through a neighborhood and we see a blood covered lawnmower and a woman having choked herself to death with her hair dryer. The premise of this movie, because Steven King seems to have forgotten, is that all machinery is going haywire and causing chaos. All machinery. But we dont focus on that, for some reason. We only focus on big rigs for most of the movie and everything else is just sort of ignored. I do mean everything else, too. Even normal cars, for some reason, seem unaffected. Lisa Simpsons car drives her and her dumb husband across like four states without going evil. Why? Why is Lisas car not evil? Why doesnt it just drive them into a ditch? Theres so much room to do weird stupid fun stuff with weird electronics, but the movie just doesnt for most of the runtime. We get bits and pieces at the start and thats when I was sort of having fun (ironically, but still fun). Then the movie keeps going on and on and the longer it goes on the more boring it gets.

I thought I might die of boredom when there is around a five-minute montage of them filling up the evil trucks only for Emilio Estavez to go well were out of gas and then a tanker comes along and forces him to refill their gas so we can get more of the scene of them filing up the trucks with gas. Why? Why does any of this happen? What is the trucks plan? It seems to be to kill all humans but if that is the plan they are doing an absolutely terrible job of it. They spend 90% of the movie driving in circles and the only humans they kill are the ones who run outside and yell PLEASE KILL ME! The final survivor group here is like 26 people, and we know the names of like four of them. How bad are these murder machines that generic red shirts made it through until the end? That is supposed to be cannon fodder, and yet they somehow make it onto the escape boat.

You know what murder trucks should be able to do? Kill all humans. They should be able to drive right into that flimsy gas station and explode the whole thing in seconds like they do at the very end of the movie. Why are they being shy? Baseball kid rides through a neighborhood thats been utterly decimated and that looks like it wouldve been such a better movie than the one we got stuck with. JUST SMASH THROUGH THE GAS STATION, YOU DORKS. Do something! Your lack of action is forcing Steven King to cook up some sort of actual plot in there, and it sucks. Kill those meatbags before Steven King is forced to write again! Hes started talking about aliens for some reason. I think the cocaine mustve finally hit his bloodstream. You could stop all of this by just driving into the gas station since you are 42 enormous big rigs and they are a group of out of shape truckers, waitresses, and some guy doing his best Boss Hogg impression. Also, I checked Wikipedia and this movie was so bad that Steven King never directed another movie again. Good. Good for him to see this and be like holy shit I suck at this and focus on other things. Now, Im not sure his writing is much better after this either since this was apparently based on a short story of his, but at least this movie killed his desire to direct ever again, I guess.

It actually sort of makes sense that this was a short story because there is roughly 5 minutes of interesting movie in its entire 100 minute run time. There was a way to make this dumb and fun instead of dumb and boring, but they lost that chance when they decided to go oh wow big rigs are cool right? and stop focusing on anything else. It isnt close to the worst movie on this list because a lot of this is just bad instead of laughably incompetent. The actors are bad and the script is bad and the pacing is bad, but it at least feels like it is movie adjacent and not a guy running through a forest with his flip phone like some of the other nonsense here. It is only fleetingly fun though. There are a couple of goofy parts that made me laugh for the wrong reasons, but honestly there isnt enough of that for me to think this gets into that so bad its good territory. Theres too much boring stuff wedged in the middle here for me to care and after a fun opening I spent most of the movie just wishing it would end.

Bitto:
I'll be honest - I was pretty distracted while watching this movie, so I don't really remember much about this movie. It's funny, but mostly boring. Not really something I would expect from a movie made by Cocaine!Stephen King. There's evil cars and a bunch of random people try to figure out what to do. While cars tend to be the most evil, it seems technology in general is evil too. And we truly have a random ass cast. I would have never pegged a survivor group to consist of a "good guy" prisoner, a love interest who appears to just be wandering, a hillbilly newlywed couple, a kid, the main bad guy's right-hand-man, and some extras.

There are some good deaths on here. The soda vending machine death in the beginning is pretty brutal and they fucking show a kid getting crushed by a bulldozer on-screen. I also like the scene of the kid bicycling through a neighborhood and just seeing carnage of various technology killing people. I enjoy the waitress who occasionally shouts "WE OWN YOU" before getting shot at by the trucks with guns. I also enjoy the trucks threatening the main cast to fuel them up, which was a thought I had while watching the movie.

But really, there's just not much there. The cast, while interesting, isn't particularly enjoyable. Probably the most interesting characters are the two main bad guys - the shitty Bible salesman and the shitty gas store owner. The Bible salesman just chews the scene a lot and gets killed by the car twice. The gas store owner is just interesting in the sense that he owns a stockpile of guns and a rocket launcher and it's never explained? Is this normal?

Genuinely Good: I did like the hillbilly newlywed couple. They're probably the most interesting of the good guys and I like their dynamic with each other and the other characters.

Seginus:
Good lord this is truly awful. I haven't read Stephen King much but I know he can write better plot/characters/dialogue than this, he's just phoning it in here and its his directorial debut! I assume he's not allowed to direct movies anymore after this. It's just mindless schlock for the sake of it, aiming low and hitting lower. The earth passes through a comet's tail, causing all the machines to wake up and go crazy, which in this movie amounts to a bunch of big rigs rallying around a gas station. They're just circling, menacingly. It does have the one cool moment of the kid on the bike synced with the soundtrack as all the sprinklers are firing off behind him, and the opening sequence on the bridge is impressive. But other than that it's dreadfully boring and dumb. It's like it doesn't want to take itself seriously but it doesn't know how to have fun beyond queuing up some AC/DC. Respect to Emilio Estevez for trying his best to sell a dialogue with a truck.

Evillord:
If the movie is directed by Ed Wood I'll watch it happily. If it's Neil Breen, I'll come along with no complaints. If it's M. Night I'll be there with bells on. But if it's Stephen King, that is where I draw the line. Throw in a soundtrack entirely by AC/DC and you have a shining monument to 80s-era American mediocrity. Most of the runtime here is dedicated to some very America's Funniest Home Videos tier humor like a vending machine shooting pop cans into a man's balls or a guy farting for five minutes while someone else tries to have a conversation with him. Once in a while there is a little cheesy eye-rolling fun to be had when the over the top musical score that plays every time someone gets hurt repeats (you could definitely make a drinking game out of this one,) or the "romance" story trudges along with its hilariously awkward writing and wooden dialog, but I feel these moments are few and far between compared to the cringey attempts at comedy the film makes on purpose. A movie where a truck with a giant Green Goblin mask plastered to the front is the main antagonist *should* be fun, but in King's hands it's just limp, directionless, and most of all tacky.

Outlier Leaderboard:

Inviso - 117
Bitto - 99
Johnbobb - 99
Evillord - 97
Forty - 93
Red - 92
Seginus - 88
Karo - 79
Suprak - 73

Bitto and Johnbobb both ALMOST reach triple digits, yet continue to mock me by staying JUST under the limit. Meanwhile, Red makes a big leap as he loses his number one, yet he's still near the bottom end of the overall list. Suprak and I maintain our positions however, with a wider gap forming.

Hint for #17: It's been a while since we've gotten a spot-on ranking, but someone has their personal #17 fall.

I never would have guessed this one for a 1/30 combo. To me it just fits in that range of mediocrity that inspires neither love or hate.

My 17 was Ryan's Babe so I'll guess Dangerous Men because for the love of God why is it still standing

I'm also not sure what is more surprising - the fact Maximum Overdrive got a number 30 or that it got a number 1. I definitely thought the first 5-10 minutes was pretty fun but there's a whole lotta OMINOUS TRUCK CIRCLES in the back half of the movie. But it also isn't as boring as a good chunk of movies or as incompetent as a good chunk of movies.

My number 17 is still standing, so I'll guess that.

Favorite 5 star Letterboxd review:
This whole film is just Stephen King trying to make a black mirror episode using only gta 5 mods

This is extraordinary haha.

fortybelowsummer posted...

I never would have guessed this one for a 1/30 combo. To me it just fits in that range of mediocrity that inspires neither love or hate.

Your mistake is assuming that any movie on this list inspires love.

I saw the Kill Count recently.

I'm stunned Maximum Overdrive could muster a 1 ranking or a 30 ranking. Just a movie that really doesn't seem overwhelming in any particular emotion, not even boredom.

I'm even more stunned my #30 hasn't dropped yet, so I'll just guess that.

I can understand Maximum Overdrive getting a number 1. Objectively, it's one of the films that at least feels like there's a certain degree of competence behind the filmmaking aspect, even if one's tolerance for the plot is hit or miss. I'm more stunned that of ALL the movies on this list, Maximum Overdrive was what earned a number 30 spot.

red13n posted...

Your mistake is assuming that any movie on this list inspires love.

That's probably true. It's more like "which one did I hate the least", although my number 1 does come somewhat close to love territory.

17. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
Directed by: Lee Harry
Score: 143

Red: 5
Inviso: 9
Johnbobb: 12
Forty: 13
Suprak: 17
Evillord: 18
Karo: 18
Bitto: 22
Seginus: 29

Red:
Why work hard on a sequel to a movie when you can just fill most of your new movie with scenes from the old one? I definitely had to look up why we were watching a second part of a movie without context of the first and it very, very quickly made sense. This is honestly hilarious on its own, but it ends up a pretty standard slasher fic where we watch a guy go crazy and lean into being a crazy murderer.

Inviso:
A little backstory on this one: the original Silent Night, Deadly Night was a low-budget, Christmas-themed slasher movie that I have never personally seen. And in order to cash in on the moderate success (horror films tend to be the best return on investment you can make with movies), producers wanted to just take the original film and reedit it to create a new movie. The director was not okay with this, but production didnt exactly give him a large budget to shoot anything new, so he kinda had his hand forced. You can really see it, because the first thirty minutes of the film are just our killer retelling the story of the first film second hand (in a way that really doesnt make sense when you realize Billy never had a chance to tell Ricky all the murders he did).

But I will say, the new stuff is pretty damn good. Eric Freeman as Ricky is a goddamn STAR, and he single-handedly carries this movie to so bad its good levels. Every line he delivers just has this bizarre affect to it, where hes screaming while under and emphasizing words, seemingly at random. When the film switches over to new content, where his psychoses start to come out in violent fits of rageits cheesy, but fun. In a way a lot of the slasher films from the 80s horror list failed to be. Seriously, the first few kills are fun and innovative, but then he gets a gun and the campy acting goes over-the-top, including the famous GARBAGE DAY! line. And because the budget is so limited, the whole plot is basically told in a series of vignettes that allow for them to get right to the kills, without needing to bothering with setting a scene or pacing, or anything like that.

But I have to highlight the end as well, because we get the whole movie told from the perspective of Ricky talking to a psychiatrist, but as he tells his final story, we cut back to the mental hospital to see that hes murdered the doctor and escapes custody, all leading to the grand climax. Yes, both Billy and Ricky have a singular goal in mind: killing Mother Superiorthe ancient nun who warped their senses of morality. But by the time Ricky gets to her at the end of the second movie, shes crippled and in a wheelchair, which makes for a killer stalks his victim sequence that is WAY more unintentionally hilarious than it has any right to be. Somehow, a wheelchair-bound, elderly nun manages to hold her own against a super-strong murderer, complete with getting up after getting flung down a set of stairs. Its just goofyESPECIALLY since Ricky DOES get the kill, but takes the time to set Mother Superiors decapitated head back on her body, just to fuck with whoever comes looking for her.

Ultimately, this is very much a standard slasher film. Its nothing THAT special. But the EXCEPTIONALLY low budget, I think, makes it so they really spend the money in the right places. Solid kills, and a weird, campy actor make this film memorable, and even during the forty-minute flashback sequence, I found myself rivetted by the action on-screen. Its a solid film and its ALMOST in general good territorywhich would honestly make it less enjoyable, if that makes sense. As it stands, Rickys acting really elevates the whole to a whole new level of bad, and I appreciate that wholeheartedly.

Good, Bad Movie Grade: B+
Best Bad Aspect: Eric Freeman in general. Not only are his line reads hilarious, but its just fun to see a psycho killer whos weirdly jovial about the whole thing, even though hes clearly capable of the standard stoic mindset thats more of a horror mainstay.

Johnbobb:
"I tried to watch this movie, but accidentally watched the first instead, and was surprised that despite being very bizarre and pretty bad at times, it was pretty fun! And then this was legitimately just 50% replaying the first with terrible commentary? Once we finally got into the movie proper it was so more of the fun and sexual trauma I came to expect from the first film, although GARBAGE DAAAAAY aside, it never quite hit those same heights.

Favorite 5 star Letterboxd review:
shut up Ricky you were not even there"

Forty:
If theres one way to remind people of the fact that your sequel is way worse than the original, just make the first forty minutes of the movie a recap of the first one. Its so ridiculous that they did that, but hey at least you get 40 minutes of SNDN which is a passable cheesy 80s slasher film. SNDN2, not so much. I wish they would have leaned more into the killer Santa thing and had Ricky don the suit from the start. Instead, they have him as some sort of lame vigilante killing people in a very disappointing non-St. Nick manner. At least he finally puts on the suit towards the end in order to take out the mother superior and make Santaphobes out of a whole new generation of orphans. Way to go Ricky, and you are also the very definition of melodramatic acting. I will also admit that Garbage Day! gives this movie a boost of like three spots on my list. Its so iconic.

Suprak:
F+

This was the hardest one for me to rank. I want to rank it both lower and higher at the same time. On the one hand, this is some bullshit. I have not seen the first movie but I had the nagging sense at the twenty minute mark that something was wrong. I mean everything was obviously wrong, but that something was REALLY wrong. So I paused the movie (never a good sign) to go to Goolge and found out my suspicion was correct. The entire first half of this movie (not even an exaggeration) is a literal clip show of the first movie. They made a sequel and half of it is just scenes from the first movie shown again. You cant do that. Thats illegal. People have gone to jail for less than that. You know how clip shows are everyone least favorite episode of a tv series? What if we made that into a movie? Thats the design process here. They might as well started with a last time on Silent, Night Deadly Night then played the entire movie again.

Thats kind of the reason I wanted to rank this last. I hate that this list is so bad I cant do that. I hate that this list is so bad that this might end up in the top half. There are some truly abysmally lazy movies on this list, but this is the only one that is just the same movie again wearing a funny mustache and trying to pretend its someone else. Every other movie on this list was at least a new movie. Do you know how low of a bar that is? That Im looking at this and looking at the others and Im muttering to myself well at least they made a new movie this time I guess. I havent even seen the first movie and Im still mad. This was at least all new to me. If I had watched the entire first movie, then started this one and realized I was watching almost the entire same movie, again, I mightve done a murder. I dont know on who. I wouldve blacked out and come to and my hands would be covered in blood and Id just be angrily saying naughty! over and over again.

It doesnt help that the movie were flashing back to also looks awful. Like that movie alone might be bad enough to find its way on a list like this. Neither that movie nor this movie seem to know how to actually do horror. A guy walking around attacking random meatbags you dont care about isnt a good way to install fear or dread. Id call this a poor mans Friday the 13th, but this isnt even that. This is a broke mans Friday the 13th. Seeing him impale a woman on some deer antlers is like maybe kind of interesting but thats basically the high point. The other scary bits we get feel more goofy than anything else. Ricky does his scary voice the entire film and you sort of get the impression he mightve been doing it as a joke but I cant tell. You have a guy in a Santa suit going to shake some kids hands before a cop shows up and starts firing indiscriminately towards the guy and like fifteen kids, and that winds up being the scariest part of the movie because it is just too real. The next scene where the cop isnt even off duty and is just like JEEZ WILL YOU STOP WHINING I SAID I WAS SORRY I KILLED YOUR JANITOR feels like it could be social commentary on something if the movie wasnt so dumb that I dont think it is actively trying to do commentary on anything. So you have this really bad movie serving as clips for half of this somehow worse movie. Thats the sort of thing that should get this the 30 spot and Im heartbroken it is going to wind up nowhere near that spot.

The flashbacks do end at some point though and the rest of the movie isnt the worst. Well, I guess the flashbacks continue, but it is new flashbacks. You have first movie flashbacks and then brand new flashbacks that happen after the first movie but before the start of the second, but at least those flashbacks werent flashbacks to things we couldve theoretically already seen. I also think the movie picks up a bit at that point in general. Its really bad for a lot of reasons, but it at least has some occasional flashes which is more than I can say for a lot of other movies here. It feels like a movie and while it isnt what Id consider a well put together film, it at least looks and feels mostly professionally done. Thats why Im torn between ranking this higher and lower. Taking it at face value, this is just a really bad movie but not so bad that youre confused how and why it was made. It should theoretically be ahead of a couple of other movies Im ranking above it, but I couldnt bring myself to do it considering half of it is a rehash and the other half isnt even good. It is at least watchable but not necessarily for the best reasons. The framing device is still dumb, although I got a good laugh when the doctor is looking around the room only for Ricky to pop in from the side and do his stupid Ricky voice right in his ear.

Im legitimately confused what kind of movie the second half is even supposed to be. The first movie looks to be pretty much a straight up bad horror movie from what I can tell from all the clips, but when they get into Rickys story it seems different. There are no more horror scenes. In fact, a lot of what here looks like something that would be in something like Scary Movie. Theres the cut of the bully talking to his friend then looking right then talking to his friend then looking right and then coming back and Ricky looks like hes sitting on the other guys lap and then he attacks. You see nothing, but just like legs kicking up in the air and then hes just back and walking down the street with his girlfriend. Then we get that rampage scene of him walking around town, and some random guy is taking out the garbage, prompting Ricky to yell GARBAGE DAY! in a weird voice and shoot him through the trash can. I laughed harder at that than I had most comedy movies recently. It earns the third hardest laugh of this entire list, which should get this a higher placement than wherever it ultimately finishes. Ricky stabs some guy with an umbrella and then opens the umbrella. And almost all of the people hes killing (pre-rampage) are shown to be awful people. There just isnt a horror element to things.

Also a highlight, Im 95% sure we almost just watched someone die during that series of shootings evil little brother commits. Theres that one stunt where a car goes up on its side and then crashes and it looks like a very real stunt. Too real, almost. Because the stunt guy is just standing there and the car comes like an inch from killing him. He seems so unconcerned too, which is crazy. Like the car is barreling at him and he moves the same way I move when Im trying to get past an elderly person on the sidewalk. I almost expected him to sigh and say EXCUSE ME as the tire almost ripped his arm off. I appreciate the stunts here look real and not phoned in, but man I mightve appreciated it more if there wasnt a split second when I was worried someone might die on camera.

The ending is also insane, but not necessarily in a fun way. Well, kind of fun, I guess. The nun from the first movie is back and her face is half melted. Why is her face half melted? They said she had a stroke but Im afraid the person making this movie doesnt know what a stroke is. Like he had heard the term before and was too embarrassed to ask so hes just like make sure you get all those uh boils on one side of her face that all stroke victims have. She is an 87-year-old woman in a wheelchair and she puts up more of a fight than anyone else in the entire movie. Ricky has been shown to have the strength to shove an entire umbrella through a man, yet at this part he is being fought off by a woman ramming her wheelchair into the door. This scene goes on for like ten minutes for some reason. Why? Why are we watching this elderly woman struggle around a house for so long? It feels like an early cut of a life alert commercial. I would not have been surprised at all if we had a frame freeze and then a deep voice announcer came on and was like has this ever happened to you? Thats how the end the movie, too. Ricky gets his revenge, gets shot, and then the cops forget to go outside to make sure hes really dead. It is this very weird capstone to a very weird movie.

Im still not sure if this is the right spot on my list. I cant think about this any more though. Ive wasted too much time of my life comparing Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 to other movies I hated. This is the most egregiously lazy movie on the entire list and I have never ever even heard of another movie using more than like a minute of previous films for flashbacks. This movie does it for half of its runtime. That being said, the first movie wouldnt have been the worst movie on this list and the back half wouldnt have been the worst movie on this list, so I dont know what exactly to do with this. It is a terrible horror movie then a terrible not-horror-not-sure-what-its-supposed-to-be movie, but it was at the very least mostly watchable. I was able to sit through this and I was getting enjoyment on the so bad its good front, in terms of getting real laughs out of some of these insane scenes. Im just going to plop it here I guess and call it a day. My brain cant take any more.

Evillord:
Honestly this thing wouldn't have been last place for me if it had been on the 80s horror list (though I guess that doesn't mean much because I wouldn't put ANY of these fucking films below Evil Dead 2). It tells the stories of two killer brothers who are basically the same character, victims of both the murder of their parents and religious trauma through an upbringing by a cartoonishly awful mother superior. Like Basket Case or Sleepaway Camp, it ends up using these traumatized characters as a stereotyped "Other" that can be exploited as a villain for a sleazy slasher. I find myself wishing it had chosen to tell the story of these two kids trying to recover from a life of abuse instead of just devolving into a series of meaningless kills, but at least Eric Freeman's hammy fake psycho laughter is kind of funny and a few of the deaths are actually creative, which is why it's also an unironically better movie than that piece of shit Friday the 13th.

Karo:
This is the sequel to Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1, which was apparently so amazing that we have to spend half of the whole movie recapping the first film. By recapping I do not mean retelling the story, this literally just takes the fucking footage from the first movie and splices it right in mostly unmodified. This kind of audacity should be worth an automatic last place, but well... these are not very good movies.
The original was about a guy who murders people dressed as Santa, and this is kind of the same thing. But it's his brother this time! Who's also got a Saint Nick homicide fetish! Great.
But hey, at least we get the most incompetently overdramatic edgelord narration outside of Yu-Gi-Oh, so that's something isn't it?
This had no reason to exist other than corporate greed, and anyway listen, if you are gonna go with a Santa Claus slasher, at least make the real Santa the killer. Anything else seems like a half measure. This is not only a half measure, it's a half movie as well.

Bitto:
This movie is...a lot. I can see myself really loving this movie, but I just couldn't. A big part of it is that half the movie is footage from the first movie. Even though I haven't watched it, that's just really shitty and I can't support that. Secondly, this movie is so absurd in how bad it is that it revels in it. Most other movies on this movie don't really feel like that - there's an earnestness that they believe they're making a good movie. This movie knows it's filth and rolls around in it. You appreciate it, but it's also disgusting.

The plot in this movie is just so bad. A kid sees someone dressed as Santa kill his dad and rape his mom. Then later on, he goes to an orphanage run by an authoritarian nun that teaches him that Santa can be naughty or nice. Then this gets distilled down further to him just chanting NAUGHTY. as he kills people in a Santa outfit. Somehow, I'm offended. I genuinely think there's truth to a lot of this - people dressed as Santa are still people and can be horrifying. Upbringing can affect you significantly on top of that. But...him just chanting NAUGHTY. is just...ugh, I hate it so much. Like why would he even accept that worldview? It's an affront to everything he believed in. And then his brother basically accepting the exact same thing despite seeing all the consequences from beginning to end...ugh.

It's funny that Garbage Day is the thing that made this movie famous when it's so innocuous compared to all the other shit like the ex's electrocution death, the cop letting the gun be taken from him, or the car exploding from 2 gunshots. I think my favorite part is probably the movie date where this 30-year-old dude is acting like a 8-year-old by blowing raspberries at Ricky and catching the popcorn with his mouth. I love that the old couple extras are just sitting there normally and cannot react at all, too.

Genuinely Good: I enjoy Ricky! His eyebrows are SO expressive and he clearly knows he's in a shitty movie and chews the scenery so hard. I even like his performance on some levels, like when he's recounting his story to the therapist, especially about his brother dying.

Seginus:
So apparently it's a clip show of the first movie, exploring a cycle of santa-clad terror that turned one of the first movies victims into a christmas themed killer as well. This is lazy and boring, the main actor is simply obnoxious (the guy playing the adult version of the first movies kid), the horror isn't frightening or tense, there's no atmosphere or dread. The Christmas slasher juxtaposition isn't funny or interesting. This one never reaches the other side, it's just so bad through and through.

Outlier Leaderboard:

Inviso - 125
Bitto - 104
Johnbobb - 104
Red - 104
Seginus - 100
Evillord - 98
Forty - 97
Karo - 80
Suprak - 73

I remain well at the top of the list, but meanwhile, we now have a three-way tie for second place as Red makes a big leap to join Bitto and Johnbobb. Meanwhile, Seginus makes a big leap as well for a guy who was previously in contention for the bottom spot. And then, of course, Suprak scores a spot-on placement to stay at the bottom.

Hint for #16: We have a tiebreaker between 16 and 15, but 16 doesn't have a number 30 dragging it down, and therefore was lower when breaking the tie.

for the record, my writeup of SIlent Night, Deadly Night, because I thought that's what was getting ranked:

I was prepared for a movie about a killer Santa - the weird grandpa harrassed the young boy about Santa punishing the naughty, and I thought for sure "ok, this movie is gonna be an hour of an evil Santa attacking their house." NOPE! WhatI was not prepared for was a movie about sexual violence and repression with a legitimate start-to-finish plot about a young boy developing into a killer over time. 0/10 soundtrack. 10/10 ending.

Favorite 5 star Letterboxd review:
i'd let Billy punish me any day of the week

I really should've had Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 as high as 14 for the GARBAGE DAY! alone. It is such a bad movie but I did at least laugh at it multiple times. It is crazy the first movie could've been on this list, and then half of this movie is just flashbacks of that. The back half is at least more fun, but still a genuinely awful movie. I'm still not sure if it is supposed to be a comedy or not.

Where would Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 rank on this list, Johnbobb?

I'll guess Cats for the next one.

16. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Directed by: Nicholas Webster
Score: 137

Bitto: 5
Karo: 6
Johnbobb: 10
Red: 13
Forty: 16
Seginus: 16
Evillord: 20
Suprak: 23
Inviso: 28

Bitto:
This one's interesting. While there are elements of "so bad it's good," I'd argue it's a mostly good movie. The plot's fairly decent: Martians are upset that their kids are bored and have 0 interest in their studies or culture. They get happier upon seeing Christmas on Earth, so the Martians want to kidnap Santa Claus so that this issue never happens again. The Martians mostly divide into three major individuals - Kimar the Martian leader that is open to whatever is best for the kids, Voldar the Martian leader that finds this entire exercise pointless and wants to kill Santa, and Dropo a Martian assistant that largely gets into trouble. Kimar and Voldar are fine in their acting and performance. Dropo is kind of in an unfortunate "noble idiot" role but he's fine otherwise. You also have Santa Claus himself and 2 Earth kids that get kidnapped on accident. They largely serve as the protagonists.

The pacing's mostly solid, with the movie feeling substantial, but quick. Some of the jokes actually land for me, like the Martians being incredibly confused about the Santa impersonators, the Martian sage scene, and the TORG scene being stand-outs. Dropo becoming a Martian Santa Claus while returning Santa back to Earth is a pretty good ending. I dunno! It's very cheesy and the premise can be a bit much, but I think this is perfectly fine. I'd even argue it's pretty interesting and largely succeeds at mixing sci-fi and a family-friendly Christmas movie!

Genuinely Good: The plot is mostly serviceable, but I did really like that Voldar "loses" when he stages a coup on the spacecraft and is found out by the kids and thwarted. But it's not the end of Voldar's story as he plans another coup when Santa is more situated on Mars by sabotaging everything. I dunno, I feel like it would be easy to just toss away Voldar as the primary antagonist after his first shot and seeing him come back again was a nice surprise.

Karo:
So the Martians, (a group of people in green tights with TV antennas on their heads) kidnap the Sandy Claus in order to bring Christmas to all the little Martian boys and girls, who don't know how to be kids because they have all the knowledge of the adult world injected directly into their brains as infants and wait am I still watching the same movie here because this is starting to get kind of dark.
There are loads of bad costumes, inadequate sets and lots of untalented little kid actors spouting out fake-ass dialogue. But this might be the only film on the list that KNOWS its a bad movie and just runs with it. It is dumb in the manner of Adam West Batman and classic Lost in Space, though not even close to being as memorable.
It may be a movie made for kids, but it insults their intelligence immensely. We don't even need to get into scientifically inaccurate mars, the characters themselves are their own biggest flaw. See, despite the title, Santa Claus does NOT conquer the Martians, hell, he does not do a damn thing other than to go 'ho ho ho'. Characters suddenly like him for no reason, except for the one character who inexplicably loathes him in a similarly arbitrary fashion, it is just lazy and stupid. There are many old children's properties that are sappy and charming, but this is not one of them, it's just bad. I saw it as a kid and thought it was idiotic back then, and I still think it is idiotic now.

Johnbobb:
"Several times in this movie Santa Claus makes a bad joke and nobody laughs and he just gradually trails off and it cracked me up every single time. This is one of the rare ""so bad it's good"" movies that does actually seem like it's trying to be a comedy, but like a family holiday comedy, but it's failing at that and instead becoming an absurdist comedy as a result. Instead of going the route of the ugly plastic suits ala Mac and Me, they portray their aliens with barely green-colored paint and stupid Marvin the Martian-ass costumes. The main villain is so stupidly over-aggressive for no reason. I really enjoyed this one.

Favorite 5 star Letterboxd review:
Flawlessly accomplishes everything Godzilla Minus One could have ever hoped to do."

Red:
Aliens have ruined the concept of children and kidnap Santa Claus to try to restore their childhood, or something. The problem is their kids end up being just kids, and the whole premise ends up looking weird. But we get to have Santa Claus and a couple kids kidnapped from earth while an alien repeatedly tries to murder them. The movie is certainly unique, and at the very least, not long. It knows its boring and can only drag out the concept for so long.

Forty:
This title is very misleading. Santa doesnt conquer shit in this movie. Conquering implies that he traveled to Mars with an elf army or something and took control of the planet (which would have been way better). I guess you could say he conquered by overcoming some adversity, but even then he just sat there and laughed jollily while the one guy that was trying to take him out got pelted and incapacitated by children and toy robots. Anyway, this is bottom of the barrel B-movie sci-fi stuff, but it does fall squarely in so bad its good territory. Its dumb and crappy but thats what you know its going to be going in so its decently entertaining. I also watched this on Christmas Eve, so it probably gets a bit of a holiday spirit boost too. I have no desire to ever see it again, but it was fun enough.

Seginus:
This is a movie about Martians kidnapping Santa Claus to bring Christmas to Mars. For however droll the proceedings get, the central premise always keeps up a baseline entertainment level out of sheer ridiculousness. The Martian costumes are glorious, I love the gold head tube and sparkly green Amongus visor. Not a boring look, at least. The ancient Martian is a hoot. Let the children be children again! Look out for the guy in the polar bear costume! And Torg the robot sentinel! This movie has everything. "Look at me. Santa Claus, the great toymaker, pressing buttons. That's automation for ya" damn we even get social commentary in this. The villain is destroyed by the mirth and frivolity of children, you gotta love that.

Evillord:
Here is the first time I feel myself faced with what I feel will be the central dilemma of this ranking: do I place the films that are technically the least bad higher up, or the ones that are most funny for how bad they are? I think what I gleaned the most with this viewing is just how much the English language understanding of bad cult classic cinema was defined by Mystery Science Theatre 3000, with almost all the oldest films on this list essentially just being films they happened to talk over. In comparison to Plan 9 or Manos, this is honestly very mundane. It is just a low budget film that combines 60 Sci Fi B movie and Christmas film aesthetics. Technically, it is a big step up from the previous entries on the list in chronological order: most particularly, there is a coherent narrative with a comprehensible arc and themes. It is even using the fictional Martian society to examine Earthly social structures, as is sort of the purpose of sci-fi, in a limited and shallow way. The low budget special effects are goofy, I got a kick out of the film's rendition of a polar bear in particular, but most of what little comedic value this has comes from comic relief the scriptwriters included on purpose. I think this leaves it in a position where I would rather watch Plan 9 or Manos again, or put them on for some drunken friends, and this film is left without any reason to be revisited.

Suprak:
F

I am SICK and tired of being lied to by film titles on this list. Santa Claus conquers the Martians? That sounds amazing as hell. I thought Santa Claus was going to be kicking some Martian ass. I thought he was going to be firing off a machine gun from the back of his sleigh. I wouldve been onboard for Santa Claus conquering Martians. This isnt that movie though. This is Santa Claus Wont Stop Laughing And Its Creeping Me Out or Santa Claus Teaches Important Lessons To The Martians About The Danger Of Automation. Either title wouldve been more accurate than anything involving conquering.

I think the worst part of this is it is supposed to be a comedy. I think. I think this is a comedy. It seems to want to be a comedy sometimes. You have Blorpo blorpo-ing all over the place and you get the sense it is trying to be funny. But it isnt. It is painfully unfunny which is one of the worst things something can be. I think the funniest part of the film, and the only part I laughed at, is when the news announcer is like our fighter jets are in hot pursuit and then there is a hard cut and it just shows two planes in a mid-air refuel. Why? Why was that the stock footage you pulled? Was that the only thing you guys had? That was just a wild piece of stock footage to throw in and it wouldve been funny if it was intentional. Our planes are in hot pursuit! and then it is just some guy washing a plane and shrugging when he sees the camera on him.

There are moments like that, were the film gets to the cusp of comedy but the writers here didnt know what comedy actually was so you dont get the payoff scene. Like when the martians are coming to Earth and theyre looking for santa, theres that part where they find just some random charity dude ringing a bell and theyre like AHA ITS SANTA. I was excited for that scene. I was excited for a bunch of alien weirdos to accost some poor dude outside the mall and try to abduct him before his beard falls off and they realize they got the wrong guy. There is the potential for something funny there, but they just ignore it to go and yell at a couple of kids in the middle of a field instead. Thats why I say I think this is a comedy. There are scenes here that are set up like it is a comedy or approaching a comedy, but then time comes for a payoff and they just start babbling on about something else instead. Most of the actual comedy beats from this movie comes from someone going Blorpo you are an idiot and then they show Blorpo and hes gotten himself stuck in a vat of cotton candy. It itself seems confused as to what is supposed to be going on so you get this really sloppy attempt at humor that never really pays off.

Im not even sure what this movie is supposed to be going for at times. Theres one part where a wampa shows up and tries to eat a couple of kids. Or the time where the aliens have a robot that is clearly just Carl from the craft services table crammed in his kids Halloween costume. Theyre like this will capture Santa! but then the thing just breaks and youre like well what the hell was all that about then? Why spend time hyping up a robot, talking about the robot scheming about how to use the robot, and then the robot shows up and breaks right away for zero reason? You have a lot of that sort of stuff where Im not sure what the purpose of the scene was supposed to be. Look, I get that this is a dumb movie. I get all these are dumb movies. Me going what the hell was this part about it makes no sense describes almost every scene for every movie on this list. But Santa Claus Conquers The Martians is one where a lot of the movie just feels straight up pointless. We get these weird asides that dont really go anywhere and you could cut big chunks of this movie out and nothing would change.

Also, Santa was weird in this, right? Santa was suffering from early stages of dementia it looked like. Theres that one part where the kids are like hey this guy is the mean alien and Santa is like no thats not in the Christmas spirit, lets see what this would be murderer wants with us! And then the would be murderer tries to murder them. Howd you not see that coming, Santa? Hes the one alien with a mustache and hes been opening talking about violence and kidnapping and murder literally every single second that hes on the screen. Theres seeing the best in people and then theres handing the arsonist a can of gasoline and matches because he said please. The kids know hes bad. Isnt your whole thing telling naughty from nice? Howd you mess that up. Or the part where the leader alien says hes going to be staying there forever and he reacts by straight up turning into Jim from The Office and mugging at the camera with the worlds weirdest ho HO ho. Or his insane laughter. His bizarre almost terrifying uncanny valley style laughter. That end scene where hes laughing like a lunatic and there are all these cuts between screaming children and wide eyed alien kids? It felt like the tunnel scene in Willy Wonka. Like if blood had started dripping from the top of the screen and they replaced the backing music with the sounds of goats screaming, it wouldve made total and complete sense. Theres something just off about him.

I dont trust Santa in this movie. The aliens freeze his wife and he just sort of stares at her and is like wow this is the longest youve ever been quiet and I half expected him to mutter you cold bitch under his breath at the end of that. Hes making alien toys and he suddenly goes off on a tangent about automation that feels pointed for some reason I cant tell. The writer was going through something. His kid lost his job at the assembly line and he was like I need to warn people about how machines are all taking our jobs. The thing breaks because the evil guy sabotages it and Santas first reaction is to go we didnt have this problem when we made toys by hand! and youre like ok, jeez, I get it Santa. You hate automation. Can you shut up about it for three seconds? It doesnt even go anywhere! It is another part of the movie that exists for no reason. I thought he was going to teach the aliens how to make toys by hand like he did to imbue them with love or friendship or something. But that doesnt happen. Santa just lets everyone know hes a luddite because he has strong political opinions and is going to tell you about them whether you ask or not.

This is another one that is bad but more bad bad than so bad it is good. It is just kind of boring and it is a less fun movie to dunk on when it seems to be trying to joke around itself. I will give it a bit of credit and say that it is weird as hell. This doesnt follow any sort of standard movie logic and the premise about Santa Claus being kidnapped by Martians because their Martian kids are depressed is at least something unique. But for being so weird and for being so unique, it doesnt feel like it takes advantage of that premise at all. It is too weird and dumb to be a good movie but not really weird and dumb enough to be fun. I wasnt having fun watching this. I dont think it is even a good movie to make fun of with friends the MST3000 test as I call it (I checked and it does have episodes of all those kind of shows where they make fun of bad movies, but I stand by this one not being a great one to pick out). It is coherent, which is honestly almost to its detriment. It doesnt stand out as being something you would actually want to show to friends and it sort of fails that crucial so bad its good metric youre looking for here. So bad its boring or so bad it will put you to sleep are more accurate, which are a lot less fun categories to fall in.

Inviso:
When I was curating this list, the first four movies (chronologically) were locks just based on history and word of mouth. And yet, after watching Santa Claus Conquers the MartiansI dont know if it necessarily deserves its reputation. Im not saying its a GOOD movie; its definitely not. Im saying not BAD enough to loop back around to being ironically good. This movie just comes across as a kind of generic fluff more than anything. Its competently made ENOUGH for a low-budget movie (which is what it is more than a typical so-bad-its-good affair), but more than anything, it feels like an extended episode of a cheesy, 60s TV show. The concept is saccharine, to say the least; you have Martians that are aware of Earth television, and Martian children as bored and listless, so a plan is crafted to bring Santa to Mars, and then the rest of the movie is just the pitfalls and foibles of that, complete with your typical grumpy villain. Nothing about this is so over-the-top that it becomes amusing, is what Im sayingand its largely played straight and boring, except for the intentional (and therefore bad) attempts at humor. It was just a real dull movie so something so highly regarded in this particular genre.

Good, Bad Movie Grade: F
Best Bad Aspect: The plot? Its not a good sign when the most fun aspect of a bad movie is the bad concept.

Outlier Leaderboard:

Inviso - 137
Bitto - 115
Johnbobb - 110
Red - 107
Evillord - 102
Seginus - 100
Forty - 97
Karo - 90
Suprak - 80

Scores mostly stayed the same, except a spot-on from Seginus bumped him just below Evillord. Meanwhile, a similar spot-on keeps Forty out of the triple digits alongside Karo and Suprak at the bottom of the list. I, on the other hand, continue to extend my lead with the biggest outlier yet again.

Hint for #15: There are four thirtieth places left in the ranking, and this movie got two of them.

Blaziken posted...

16. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

again???

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Where would Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 1 rank on this list, Johnbobb?

top 10 for sure. probably like 8th?

Johnbobb posted...

again???

Goddammit. I went in and fixed the number and the director and somehow missed that I never updated the TITLE.

Blaziken posted...

Goddammit. I went in and fixed the number and the director and somehow missed that I never updated the TITLE.

lol I just briefly skimmed over the writeups without reading and as soon as I saw Santa Claus and Christmas mentioned I was just like "oh he just repasted the SNDN ones again

Johnbobb posted...

again???

Poor Santa Claus Conquers The Martians is so forgettable it doesn't even get its own spot.

30) ???
29) Fateful Findings (2013)
28) Ryan's Babe (2000)
27) Suburban Sasquatch (2004)
26) ???
25) Reefer Madness (1936)
24) Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)
23) Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
22) Cry Wilderness (1987)
21) Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)
20) Extra Terrestrial Visitors (1983)
19) The Instructor (1981)
18) ???
17) Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
16) Maximum Overdrive (1986)
15) Gotti (2018)
14) Battlefield Earth (2000)
13) ???
12) ???
11) ???
10) ???
9) Mac and Me (1988)
8) ???
7) ???
6) ???
5) ???
4) ???
3) ???
2) ???
1) ???

Doing pretty good, all things considered! My outlier is about to take a huge hit though because I'm pretty sure my number 30 is dropping down. Crazy this movie got 137 points and almost half (60) came from just two people!

1. ???
2. ???
3. The Instructor
4. ???
5. Suburban Sasquatch
6. ???
7. Cry Wilderness
8. ???
9. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2
10. Mac and Me
11. ???
12. Ryan's Babe
13. ???
14. Fateful Findings
15. Maximum Overdrive
16. ???
17. ???
18. Battlefield Earth
19. Extra Terrestrial Visitors
20. ???
21. ???
22. Birdemic: Shock and Terror
23. ???
24. Plan 9 From Outer Space
25. Reefer Madness
26. ???
27. ???
28. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
29. Gotti
30. ???

Not going well for me, since it took almost to the halfway point to take out the second film from my bottom 5.

30.
29. Fateful Findings
28.
27. Battlefield Earth
26. Cry Wilderness
25.
24. Birdemic: Shock and Terror
23. Gotti
22. Extra Terrestrial Visitors
21.
20. The Instructor
19. Suburban Sasquatch
18.
17. Ryan's Babe
16. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
15.
14. Reefer Madness
13. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2
12. Maximum Overdrive
11.
10. Mac and Me
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4. Plan 9 From Outer Space
3.
2.
1.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Doing pretty good, all things considered! My outlier is about to take a huge hit though because I'm pretty sure my number 30 is dropping down.

I feel the same about my 28. Still need to absorb some big gainz but feeling good about not being too outlier-y.

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???
6. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
7. ???
8. Mac and Me
9. Battlefield Earth
10. ???
11. ???
12. ???
13. ???
14. Cry Wilderness
15. ???
16. Maximum Overdrive
17. Fateful Findings
18. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2
19. ???
20. ???
21. Plan 9 From Outer Space
22. Extra Terrestrial Visitors
23. ???
24. Reefer Madness
25. Ryan's Babe
26. Gotti
27. ???
28. Birdemic: Shock and Terror
29. Suburban Sasquatch
30. The Instructor

Yeah, I wasn't sure about this one being "so bad it's good" but I thought it was at least a decent movie. Which makes it go pretty high up the ranks for that alone!
1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
6. The Instructor
7. ???
8. Birdemic: Shock and Terror
9. ???
10. Extra Terrestrial Visitors
11. Fateful Findings
12. ???
13. Cry Wilderness
14. ???
15. ???
16. Ryan's Babe
17. ???
18. Plan 9 from Outer Space
19. ???
20. Suburban Sasquatch
21. Battlefield Earth
22. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2
23. ???
24. Maximum Overdrive
25. Mac and Me
26. ???
27. ???
28. Reefer Madness
29. Gotti
30. ???

Pretty bad, but at least my top 5 is mostly in tact. My bottom 5 has not been doing great and I cannot believe my #30 hasn't been ranked yet, so I'll guess that again.