Guilty Pleasures/Bad Movies
quote:
Originally posted by FX:
[b](fx attempting to recover from snorting white wine back out her nose…) okay aleck, i have to stand firm on this; basket case has everything that makes a bad movie: cheesy sets (and I HATE what giuliani and his goons did to times square! not one sleazy sex shop to be found!), terrible acting, amateurish directing, and lines you could shout out with your popcorn before they happened (TAKE ME DUANE!) and a wig that is almost as scary as kai’s!…[/b]
I contend that all of that (except for maybe the acting, because what kind of actors can you get on a budget like that?) is intentional. Frank Henenlotter (writer/director/bon vivant) is an intelligent guy that knew exactly what conventions would be expected from the movie (and slyly sent up those conventions), what crowd would be watching the film, and self-conciously aimed it at that crowd: the 42nd Street grindhouse crowd. Much of the movie is intentionally funny, and I think it sports an incredibly (considering its market) witty script, some decent low-budget cinematography, and a charming first-time perf from Kevin Van Hentenryk as Duane. It’s tone is a middle ground between the first and second [i]Evil Dead[/i] films. It works fine as a horror film, and while humorous, doesn’t delve into outright spoofery like the second Dead film.
quote[quote][b]and yes, the plot is original, but so is mutant tomatoes terrorizing some town’s inhabitants![/b][/quote]
Oh, the mutant (insert animal/insect/vegetable here) terrorizing a town is nothing new. Just in flora, there’s [i]Day of the Triffids[/i], [i]Invasion of the Body Snatchers[/i], [i]From Hell it Came[/i], the giant pickle in Roger Corman’s [i]It Conquered the World[/i], and the original Howard Hawks version of [i]The Thing From Another World[/i]. So [i]Attack of the Killer Tomatoes[/i], despite having one of the best theme songs of all time, isn’t that original.
Oh, and you’re right. Ain’t Duane just yummy? Especially with his Brady-Bunch-esque hairdo?–Aleck