Awesomely Bad: An Introduction

It's well into awards season and a lot of fuss is being made about the top movies of the year. Every year, however, countless crappy movies get overlooked and ignored. Just because a movie makes you cringe at the thought of watching it doesn't mean it is unworthy of attention. Not all bad movies, however, are created equal. Some movies are just bad. There's really nothing spectacular about them. They don't rank amongst the worst, and there's really no good reason to watch it. These are the kinds of movies like Cobra, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, and Junior that were a staple of Sunday afternoon matinee movies you'd see on your local networks. The kinds of movies that were sadly better than most of the other crap on TV on a Sunday afternoon. The kinds of movies that, during your childhood, signified that the weekend was truly coming to an end and all the fun was now over.


The truly bad movies are a sort of rare art. It's hard to make a straight up, pure piece of shit of a movie. Not everyone can be a Uwe Boll or Ed Wood so it really takes an auteur of shit, a shiteur, to pull off some of the worst pieces of cinema to grace screens around the world like Catwoman, Postal, or Alexander. As such, I won't spend too much time on the truly bad, especially since just about anyone can spot a real shitter. The best and most fun kind of bad movies are the awesomely bad ones. They're movies that end up being unintentionally hilarious despite, or because of, how bad they are. They're movies with plot holes so glaring it's impossible to understand how they ever got greenlit, or acting so limp and unbelievable that it becomes comedic, or action and effects so cheap that they seem more like gags than explosions.

Starting on Monday, and continuing each Monday for the foreseeable future, I will review a choice pick of truly awesome awfulness. These movies will be cult classics, foreign gems, and low budget masterpieces that are suitable for group viewing with your own Mystery Science Theater treatment. Our first foray into the world of cheese will be the 1985 martial arts masterpiece Gymkata. Stay tuned...