Adams - Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies

I met Michael Adams when he came to interview me for a retrospective of my zombie films. We quickly bonded over our desire to drink our lunch and find somewhere we could smoke in peace. That turned out to be my hotel room, where, over more drinks, we talked about everything non-undead related, from the travesty of the Bush-Rumsfeld years to the declining state of the news media. And then, as the beer and spirits flowed and the air got thicker with smoke, he told me about the book he was writingthe same book you hold in your hands todaythat would recount his year of watching, from night to dawn to day, the worst goddamned movies he could get his grubby little paws on.

If I hadnt fully appreciated him before, I now gave him all the credit in the world for giving the time of day to obscure films that most disregarded but some, like me, thought of as seminal. Someone, maybe it was Pauline Kael, once wrote that we all love good movies but a true cinephile is someone who totally digs talking about the worst movies theyve seen. And on that note

Whats the worst movie youve ever seen? my new drinking buddy asked me.

Robot Monster , I shot back, describing that fantastic folly of an apocalypse epic whose lead villain is a man in a gorilla suit wearing a diving helmetin 3-D, no less.

Michael and I laughed long and loud at the shared recollection of this truly bizarre piece of sci-fi silliness. But what really surprised me was how much he knew about the film and the personalities behind it and what became of them. Its this humor and affection that makes Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies such a fun and informative piece of pop film criticism, as well as an engaging memoir of what its like to work a couple jobs, raise a kid, and devote every nook and cranny of your spare time to obsessive Z-grade movie watching and research.

While Im glad he watched them so we dont have to, the book is enough to make me want to head out to the video store, or jump onto Netflix, and track down Frankenstein Island or For Yur Height Only or Road House ormaybejust maybe The Black Gestapo .

After that first meeting, Michael and I stayed in touch and he even came to Toronto to be a zombie in my latest film. I thought his interpretation of a dead man was a pretty good one, snarly and steeped in tradition.

After a few takes my script supervisor leaned over and whispered in my ear, That guy, your Australian buddydont you think hes doinga bit too much?

No, I replied. Hes doing it just right. Justcheesy enough.

I look forward to the day that Michael and I are able to watch the flick together. When he sees himself, he might turn to me and say, Jesus, what I did there was really cheesy.

To which, I will say, Yes, it was. But isnt cheesiness what we are here to celebrate?

We met by chance. Weve become friends. Id rather spend an evening talking about cheesy cinema with this guy than just about anything else. And as you read this book, I hope you will form the same attachment to him that I did. Youre in good hands. Enjoy. Dont overanalyze. Just enjoy.

George A. Romero

BAD MOVIE BINGO

Its just about to hit midnight on New Years Eve and my pulse is pounding because the ball is about to drop. Im not in Times Square, watching the big orb descend, surrounded by a million screaming New Yorkers. Im in my living room in Sydney, cranking a toy bingo machine, while my better half, Clare, and a few close friends count down the last seconds of the year. Ten! Nine! Eight!

I catch their bemused glances. I know its ridiculous, being this excitedabout little white numbered spheres. Then again, the rattling cage of balls is going to decide how I spend the next twelve months. Its a common notionwhat you do on New Years Eve is whatll you do for the following yearbut for once its true. For the next 365 days Im going to watch one bad film a day to discover what is the worst movie ever madeand Ill view the schlock in the order dictated by the bingo machine. Seven! Six!

Ive joined in the countdown chant now, keenly aware that part of my challenge is to not let my newfound obsession take over my life and relationshipsat least, not completely. Five! Four! That said, a little balls in the scoop and is about to drop into the tray! My numbers nearly up. Three! Two!

Oneone month, thats how far I need to rewind to explain how this madness started.

It was December 1, a Friday, just after lunch at the Sydney office of Empire , the worlds leading movie magazine. In the line of duty as reviews editor, Id just watched Material Girls . For those whove not had the displeasure, its an egregious wannabe comedy starring pop-music moppets Hilary and Haylie Duff as cosmetic heiresses who fall on hard times and are forced to suffer hideous indignitieslike, you know, mingling with minorities and using public transport. Ninety-seven eye-gouging minutes later, I steamed back to my desk, ready to vent in my review.

But even fulmination needs fact-checkingyouve got to spell the names right when you sully themso I pulled up the Material Girls page on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the worlds most-visited film reference site. What I saw took the vim out of my venom. At that moment, with an average rating of 1.7 out of 10, the Duff sisters flick occupied the number 1 spot bottom ranking on the IMDbs user-voted chart of the one hundred worst movies ever made.

Dont get me wrong. Material Girls had been an affront to everything right and decent in our world. The script was originally a vehicle for the Olsen twinsand they turned it down. But seeing it at number 1 on this chart made it seem like an underdog. Was it bad? Sure! Terrible? You betcha! The worst movie ever ? Not a chance.

In my decades as a cinephile and years as a critic, Id risked retinal burnout on far more heinous crimes against cinema. Material Girls wasnt a patch on Hulk Hogans yuletide yawnfest Santa with Muscles . Or on Adam Sandlers beyond-moronic Going Overboard , Mariah Careys entirely without luster Glitter , or the all-thumbs video-game adaptations House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark from German director Uwe Boll.

Looking down the IMDbs Bottom 100 list, I knew it was unlikely that the Duffs far-from-right stuff could really be lamer than legendary crapfests Id never gotten around to seeing, cult atrocities like Manos: The Hands of Fate and The Beast of Yucca Flats , or more recent film flatulence, such as Leonard Part 6 and Its Pat . For that matter, where was Plan 9 from Outer Space on the chart? Ed Woods legendary howlerby default the worst movie ever made since pronounced such in Harry and Michael Medveds 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards wasnt in the Bottom 100 at all.

That nightwith Clare having a girls night out and our fourteen-month-old daughter, Ava, tucked up in her cribId planned to polish a sci-fi screenplay Id written. But rather than buff the pages thatd land me that elusive seven-figure sale, I sat with a few beers, unable to shake the question: What really is the worst movie ever made?

When it comes to great films theres no shortage of best announcements, from the annual critics top ten lists and the Golden Globes, Oscars, and BAFTAs that follow through to more permanent pantheons decreed by the American and British Film Institutes and publications like Sight & Sound, Film Comment , and Empire . But the other end of the cinematic scale doesnt get nearly as much attention.

It ought to, I thought, as I cracked open another brew. If only because truly, madly, and deeply bad movies are, in their own way, as rare as the works of genius bestowed on us by Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Renoir, Scorsese, and Spielberg. The more I pondered the question, the more it seemed possible that one poor fool, working methodically and passionately over a set time and using the same criteria, might be able to decide whether Evil Brain from Outer Space was more mindless than Baby Geniuses , whether Invasion of the Neptune Men was a scarier sigh-fi monstrosity than scientology-fi fest Battlefield Earth . Such a movie martyr might suffer to know definitively what deserved a lower mark out of not ten but one hundred, Plan 9 or Another 9 Weeks ? Eventually, enough compare and contrast might make it feasible for that cine-idiot to decide the worst movie ever made.