HORROR MOVIES 101

So Bad They're Good

Okay, I found the PERFECT movie for this discussion.  It is a 1961 (Netflix says 1961 but Spout says 1963) movie called Blood Feast.  I have never seen such bad makeup (especially on the"old" man - spray on gray hair and gray eyebrows), bad acting, bad gore scenes, cheesey clothes and props.  The lead actress is really beautiful but she couldn't act her way out of a paperbag (I kept thinking of the phrase casting couch for this girl).  I think the term for this movie is sexploitation although they really didn't show any nudity (sorry Doc) but it had a lot of beautiful young women being (badly) tortured and mutilated.  It is only a little over an hour but well worth watching.  Just soak up the badness and all the really bad fake blood and body parts.  Has anyone seen this movie? 

What are some other absolutely HORRIBLE movies that you watch and just say, oh my god, that was GREAT!

Re:So Bad They're Good

divinemsjunebug:

Okay, I found the PERFECT movie for this discussion.  It is a 1961 (Netflix says 1961 but Spout says 1963) movie called Blood Feast.  I have never seen such bad makeup (especially on the"old" man - spray on gray hair and gray eyebrows), bad acting, bad gore scenes, cheesey clothes and props.  The lead actress is really beautiful but she couldn't act her way out of a paperbag (I kept thinking of the phrase casting couch for this girl).  I think the term for this movie is sexploitation although they really didn't show any nudity (sorry Doc) but it had a lot of beautiful young women being (badly) tortured and mutilated.  It is only a little over an hour but well worth watching.  Just soak up the badness and all the really bad fake blood and body parts.  Has anyone seen this movie? 

What are some other absolutely HORRIBLE movies that you watch and just say, oh my god, that was GREAT!

   Welcome to the wonderful and wacky world of the movies of  H. G. Lewis...   Blood Feast  is often credited as the 'very first' Gore-Film...   that is debatable...   It is certainly a bad movie in every sense of the word...  The acting and dialogue are perhaps the very worst in the history of motion pictures!   If you watch carefully you can see many of the 'actors' are reading their lines from cue-cards.   In reality, all of these so called 'acting-scenes' were hastily and slopily filmed to serve the purpose of tying in the many gore scenes.   Thus the plot and storyline are practically nonexistent.  

      What H. G. Lewis accomplished right there was the introduction of the "Splatter-Film" ...   A film created for the sole purpose of showcasing the gore effects.   While these 'gore-fx' appear rather primitive to todays audience, at the time of this movie's release (1963) nobody had ever seen this type of human butchery on the screen before!   This was THE movie that opened the flood-gates for ALL of the 'gore' and 'splatter' movies to follow...   to this day!

   What an interesting choice for your first movie to talk about!   Out of about a dozen movies that Mr. Lewis made between 1960 and 1971, I would recomend all of them but especially  2000 Maniacs (1964)  and  The Wizard of Gore (1968)  ...

   However, Ms June, since you enjoyed  Blood Feast  so much,  I must recommend  Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat !    This is simply an AMAZING movie!   Nearly 40 years after  Blood Feast , H. G. Lewis decided to return to the scene of the original crime and make a sequel!   I must admit, I had no idea what to expect of this movie going in...   since the  'godfather of gore' was directing a sequel to his own ground-breaking classic, I had no Idea what to expect ...   What I WASN"T expecting was the same bad acting and inane dialouge and cheap 'stage-show' special effects!   It was ALL there in spades!    This was H. G. Lewis making fun of himself in a most glorious fashion!   This movie is absolutely great and I recomend this movie to everyone!   Whether you have seen the first one or not...   It doesn't matter.   Oh!   And yeah, Ms June, Lewis makes up for the lack of nudity in the first one and then some!   There is even some lesbian activity going on!   Great movie and VERY funny!   Look for an extended cameo by John Waters as a 'child molesting priest' ...

                                                                                      < GOR >

Re:So Bad They're Good

Dr_Gor:

   Welcome to the wonderful and wacky world of the movies of  H. G. Lewis...   Blood Feast  is often credited as the 'very first' Gore-Film...   that is debatable...

Well, anyone who calls Blood Feast the first gore film hasn't seen Fiend Without a Face, made in 1957(not '58, like Spout says) with some really great brain exploding action in a totally crazy final reel.

But, more on topic, a great bad movie is Hell of the Living Dead(AKA Night of the Zombies). This movie was actually called, in the booklet that accompanies the Anchor Bay DVD, the worst zombie movie ever made. That, also, is debatable. It certainly is horrid, but in a much more entertaining way than, say, Tombs of the Blind Dead or the last couple Zombi films.

Hell of the Living Dead is awesome, set in New Guinea, it has a pretty hot blond reporter who, in order to talk to some natives, just takes her shirt off so the primitives aren't freaked out by the weirdness of clothing. The heavily armed military men behind her will do that just fine. It also has the best fake-scare involving a cat ever. As the soldiers search a house, they see a fat old lady, dead, in a rocking chair. They walk towards her and she starts moving, so they freak out thinking it's a zombie. She stops moving, and they creep back towards her when suddenly a cat jumps out and scares them all. But here's the thing, the cat jumped out of her stomache!

Really, it's a shitty movie, but so much fun I may go watch it right now.

Re:So Bad They're Good

   Thank you for that, Aaron!   Fiend Without a Face  is truly a great 1950's sci-fier...   one of the best!   But I would not consider it to be a true gore film in the least.   The exploding brains of which you speak are actually 'alien' creatures and there is really no on screen human gore at all.   GREAT movie, though, and not mentioned enough!

   As for  Hell Of The Living Dead  being the worst zombie movie ever made I was sure I could top that one...   The first one that leapt to mind was one I saw several years ago called  The Child ...   I found this one in my collection and rewatched it and I quickly realized one thing...   this is not a bad movie at all!   Working with a bare minimum budget and amateur actors working with terrible dialogue from amateur writers, these guys obviously spent all of their money on the few effective gore effects!   Still, the overall effect is a rather creepy and suspensful zombie movie that was obviously heavily inspired by  NOTLD  with a little bit of  The Exorcist  and  The Bad Seed  thrown in for good measure.   Rosalie Norton is a very pretty and innocent looking young pre-teen girl who lives with her father and older brother in an isolated farmhouse in the northwestern woods.   Their house is next door to an old cemetery where Rosalie likes to hang out at night with her 'friends'.   It would appear that Rosalie, who has some very "Carrie-like" telekenesis powers, has summoned a hoard of flesh hungry zombies from the nearby graveyard to do her bidding!   A few VERY good gore effects such as shots of people with their faces ripped off and a few zombies getting their skulls crushed in with an ax make this one worth watching!   While watching this I couldn't help but get the feeling that with a slightly bigger budget his could have been an A-list, top of the line horror film!   Even with what they had to work with, the filmakers managed to pull of some genuinely creepy imagery and a few good, genuine frights!   Not bad at all!   AND they did it all with a straight face!   No 'camp' here at all!   A pretty darn good movie and recomended by me....

   Meanwhile, I think I HAVE found The Worst Zombie Movie Ever Made!   If not The Worst MOVIE Ever Made!   I have a copy right here in my collection and that movie is...   The Curse Of The Screaming Dead !   I could not find this one listed on SPOUT (no surprise) but here is the IMDb listing...   The Curse of the Screaming Dead (1982) ...   This thing is TERRIBLE!   A bunch of 6th graders with an old fashioned 8mm camera could have done a better job!    This IS the WORST movie I have ever seen!   And that is saying a lot!   I really can not expound much more than that...   I will leave it to the bravest among you to check this one out for yourselves...

                                                                         < GOR >

Re:So Bad They're Good

I just saw Hell of the Living Dead a couple of months ago and yes, it was another so bad it's good movie.  I did have to laugh when she took off her top and painted herself so she could "fit in" with the natives and you could totally tell a few times that she was just fake walking while the scenery moved behind her.  That was pretty classic.  They tried to make the little kid eating his parents scary but it just made me laugh...

I will have to check out a Fiend without a Face and The Child, I don't think I've ever seen either of those, or when I get them it will make me remember that I saw them.  IT seems like I did see Curse of the Screaming Dead a long time ago but can't remember much about it at all.   More movies to check out.  I'll be having a fun surgery in October so I need to stock up on lots of movies while I recuperate for 3 weeks, of course I will have so much pain killers that The Curse of the Screaming Dead might actually be fun to watch then...

Dr_Gor:

   Thank you for that, Aaron!   Fiend Without a Face  is truly a great 1950's sci-fier...   one of the best!   But I would not consider it to be a true gore film in the least.   The exploding brains of which you speak are actually 'alien' creatures and there is really no on screen human gore at all.   GREAT movie, though, and not mentioned enough!

   As for  Hell Of The Living Dead  being the worst zombie movie ever made I was sure I could top that one...   The first one that leapt to mind was one I saw several years ago called  The Child ...   I found this one in my collection and rewatched it and I quickly realized one thing...   this is not a bad movie at all!   Working with a bare minimum budget and amateur actors working with terrible dialogue from amateur writers, these guys obviously spent all of their money on the few effective gore effects!   Still, the overall effect is a rather creepy and suspensful zombie movie that was obviously heavily inspired by  NOTLD  with a little bit of  The Exorcist  and  The Bad Seed  thrown in for good measure.   Rosalie Norton is a very pretty and innocent looking young pre-teen girl who lives with her father and older brother in an isolated farmhouse in the northwestern woods.   Their house is next door to an old cemetery where Rosalie likes to hang out at night with her 'friends'.   It would appear that Rosalie, who has some very "Carrie-like" telekenesis powers, has summoned a hoard of flesh hungry zombies from the nearby graveyard to do her bidding!   A few VERY good gore effects such as shots of people with their faces ripped off and a few zombies getting their skulls crushed in with an ax make this one worth watching!   While watching this I couldn't help but get the feeling that with a slightly bigger budget his could have been an A-list, top of the line horror film!   Even with what they had to work with, the filmakers managed to pull of some genuinely creepy imagery and a few good, genuine frights!   Not bad at all!   AND they did it all with a straight face!   No 'camp' here at all!   A pretty darn good movie and recomended by me....

   Meanwhile, I think I HAVE found The Worst Zombie Movie Ever Made!   If not The Worst MOVIE Ever Made!   I have a copy right here in my collection and that movie is...   The Curse Of The Screaming Dead !   I could not find this one listed on SPOUT (no surprise) but here is the IMDb listing...   The Curse of the Screaming Dead (1982) ...   This thing is TERRIBLE!   A bunch of 6th graders with an old fashioned 8mm camera could have done a better job!    This IS the WORST movie I have ever seen!   And that is saying a lot!   I really can not expound much more than that...   I will leave it to the bravest among you to check this one out for yourselves...

                                                                         < GOR >

Re:So Bad They're Good

Ahhh the quasi-horror pics that are more laughable than scary.  These poor cult classics (two of the ones that you have listed or others that have responded, were referenced in the movie Juno) have several factors going against them that you have already mentioned: bad acting, budget, makeup, etc.  These are the beginnings of the sexploitation films or grindhouse films.  If I recall my history correctly, these types of films which have beautiful women or women who can hold their own and were killed for being so was done so as a response to the feminist movement.  But they can be fun films to laugh at at least for being so bad. 

divinemsjunebug:

Okay, I found the PERFECT movie for this discussion.  It is a 1961 (Netflix says 1961 but Spout says 1963) movie called Blood Feast.  I have never seen such bad makeup (especially on the"old" man - spray on gray hair and gray eyebrows), bad acting, bad gore scenes, cheesey clothes and props.  The lead actress is really beautiful but she couldn't act her way out of a paperbag (I kept thinking of the phrase casting couch for this girl).  I think the term for this movie is sexploitation although they really didn't show any nudity (sorry Doc) but it had a lot of beautiful young women being (badly) tortured and mutilated.  It is only a little over an hour but well worth watching.  Just soak up the badness and all the really bad fake blood and body parts.  Has anyone seen this movie? 

What are some other absolutely HORRIBLE movies that you watch and just say, oh my god, that was GREAT!

Re:So Bad They're Good

   Back on the subject of H.G. Lewis (sort of), there is one movie that I MUST mention here.   This movie is near and dear to me for the title alone...

   J.G. 'Pat' Patterson was a protege of Herschel Gordon Lewis and provided 'special effects' for several of his films in the 60's.   In 1972 Patterson wrote, directed and starred in his own little gore film called  Doctor Gore (aka The Body Shop).   Patterson alledgedly used over 15 gallons of fake blood in this ultra-low budget gore fest.   When famed plastic surgeon Dr. Don Brandon (Patterson) loses his pin-up model wife in a tragic accident, he vows to 'make' a perfect woman to replace her.   With the aid of his faithful hunchbacked assistant 'Gregory' (coincidence?) the homely looking doctor uses hypnosis to seduce and lure a succession of beautiful women in order to harvest their most attractive body parts.  He eventually succeeds in assembling 'the perfect woman' and brings her to life!   When he unwraps the tinfoil and duct tape from his creation, he is rewarded with a really hot looking babe with no memory of anything and no thoughts of her own... (every mans dream!) ...   He must teach her everything...   How to dress, how to eat, what she likes and doesn't like...    There is just one problem, she is also a complete nymphomaniac who can't keep her hands off of any man she sees! (including poor Gregory!) ...   Needless to say, this leads to all sorts of problems for the good doctor.   Played mostly for laughs, this movie benefits from the fact that it doesn't take itself too seriously.   A lot of fun and worth a watch for those who like this sort of thing.

                                                                      < Dr. Gor >

Re:So Bad They're Good

Now, I would say "Troll 2," but that's not so bad it's good. It's just straight up bad. The only thing enjoyable about is the jokes you make it its expense.

But I do still have a contender: "Quarantine" which came out a couple of weeks ago. I saw it in a crowded theater and had a total blast. The movie itself is pretty poor (no character development, goofy and gratuitous amounts of gore and violence) but it's pretty damn funny, and the buckets of blood that get sprayed in that movie are awesomely bad. All the jumpiness and nasty bits that I loved in "The Mist" without most of the human drama.

Re:So Bad They're Good

Well, I had to bring this topic up once again because I went to a little double feature film festival today...I had never heard of these movies before which is strange because I am a major Vincent Price fan and have most of his movies on DVD.  Anyway, has anyone seen the movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises again???  This must have been released around the same time Barbarella was released because it was really groovy and psychedelic.  Both of these movies were very interesting and had lots of strange and bizarre scenes.  Has anyone else seen these movies?  I loved the band playing mechanical life-size puppets, that was a little creepy for me for some reason.  I also loved the psychedelic bright pink organ that he played and his spirit guide that took human form...Yes, I think both of these movies can make this category.

Re:So Bad They're Good

divinemsjunebug:

Well, I had to bring this topic up once again because I went to a little double feature film festival today...I had never heard of these movies before which is strange because I am a major Vincent Price fan and have most of his movies on DVD.  Anyway, has anyone seen the movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises again???  This must have been released around the same time Barbarella was released because it was really groovy and psychedelic.  Both of these movies were very interesting and had lots of strange and bizarre scenes.  Has anyone else seen these movies?  I loved the band playing mechanical life-size puppets, that was a little creepy for me for some reason.  I also loved the psychedelic bright pink organ that he played and his spirit guide that took human form...Yes, I think both of these movies can make this category.

   It IS strange that you have never heard of the "Dr. Phibes" movies before now, Ms June!   Both of these movies received quite a wide and "mainstream" theatrical release in the early '70's.   That is where I first saw them.   But, yeah, like many great movies from that era, both of those would certainly qualify for the "so-bad-they're-good" catagory!

   I THOROUGHLY enjoyed  Barbarella  as well!   That one made me a lifelong Jane Fonda fan...

   I thought the "Phibes" movies were pretty cool with the creative murders (WAY before  SAW ) and Vincent Price at his creepiest best in a very "Phantom of the Opera" type role.   I also liked his hot chick assistant...

   You should also check out  Scream and Scream Again  and  Mark of the Devil ...

                                                                         < GOR >