Riffing Up the Truth: What Bad Movies Teach Us

Wednesday I wrote a clickbait article of 9 MST3K/Rifftrax movies worse than Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space.  You might ask:  why watch bad movies?  Well besides that it's just fun to see how bad these are, they can also teach you, maybe even more than watching good movies.  I mean you can watch Citizen Kane or The Godfather, but what's the chance you could ever make anything that good?  Not very high.  It's easier to see the flaws in something with a hell of a lot of flaws.

Based on the last article what lessons can we learn from these terrible movies?

9. Ring of Terror
What have we learned?  It helps if you cast people within a decade or two or the age they're playing.  But more importantly, if you're going to have a horror movie, it should have something interesting happen.

8.  The Starfighters
What have we learned?  See above about something interesting happening.  Also, don't make 50% of your movie stock footage.  Plus your characters should have some kind of conflict going on.

7.  Fun in Balloonland
What have we learned?  Clowns are creepy.  Wait, we knew that already.  Don't let drunk women narrate your film? Parades are lame?  And I guess if something is supposed to be a movie it helps to have something like a plot and characters.

6.  Rocket Attack USA
What have we learned?  Don't end your movie on such a bummer.  I mean at least when Watchmen blew up New York it was part of a plan to save humanity and prevent a nuclear war.  A little less of a bummer than just blowing up New York and saying, "We can't let this be the end!"  The hell am I supposed to do with that?

5.  Rocket A-Go-Go
What have we learned?  Have a coherent ending.  M Night Shaymalan clearly missed that lesson.  Don't just say, "Well the bad guy isn't here.  Who was he?  Who knows!?"  Not very satisfying for the audience.

4.  Manos the Hands of Fate
What have we learned?  If you're a fertilizer salesman, don't self-finance a movie!  Besides a coherent ending, a coherent rest of the movie is also a good way to go.  David Lynch and Darren Arronofsky clearly missed that lesson.

3.  Roller Gator
What have we learned?  Don't make your main character so annoying I want to slice it to tiny pieces and feed it to a real gator.  George Lucas clearly missed that lesson when creating Jar-Jar Binks.

2.  Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny
What have we learned?  Don't make your story-within-the-story significantly longer than your main story.  That's kind of a distraction.  And again, a coherent plot is nice.

1.  Birdemic
What have we learned?  Hire competent actors?  Don't hire your 12-year-old nephew to design your computer effects?  Also, don't start your movie with twenty minutes of slow driving, followed by having significant periods of the movie dedicated to slow driving, pulling into traffic, and parking.  I don't think the Fast & Furious movies featured so much driving for so little point!  If you're a writer, don't dedicate so much time to boring, trivial bullshit unless you're James Joyce.

Bonus:  Guy From Harlem
This blaxploitation picture is about a private eye from Harlem...in Miami.  Makes sense!  He has to rescue a woman from the clutches of "Big Daddy" who is of course white.  The woman's father is a hilariously inept actor who seems to be manic-depressive, shouting half a line and then almost whispering the end of it.  His best line when the detective's secretary asks what his business is:  I got two reasons!  (And one answer.)  None of your business!

But what we learn is it's good to have your facts straight.  It's pretty hilarious when the father mentioned above tells the detective:  if you do this I'll have $20,000 air mailed to you.  To which one of the riffers says, "Air mailing something when you live in the same city is dumb."  Yeah, it is pretty dumb to use "air mail" when you live in the same city and obviously you know where the guy's office is.  Maybe a courier would be better.

In that same scene the father says no one knows what "Big Daddy" looks like...except we know he's a white guy about six feet tall with curly blond hair who works out a lot and has bands around his muscles.  So, um, you don't know anything about him, eh?

Slip-ups like that really make you look like a jackass to the viewer--or reader.

Bonus Bonus:  Samurai Cop:
For grammar Nazis, this lame early 90s buddy cop movie frequently uses the expression "son of a bitches."  That doesn't really make any sense because you have the singular A with the plural Bitches.  It's always good to proofread your story or double-check your dialog before you release the final product.

So see, watching bad movies can be educational!