LIE # 42: No Guilt! (And “Bad Movies I Love”: Michael Bay’s “The Island” and “Army Medicine in Vietnam”)

Before we look at this week’s “Bad Movies I Love”—one of which happens to be almost a snuff flick, and the other being Michael Bay’s 2005 clone conspiracy sci-fi shoot-’em-up The Island (no relation to Michael Ritchie’s 1980 pirate gorefest)—let’s look at that very same phrase, and why it is preferable to “guilty pleasures.”

Today’s Bad Movie I Love: Clint Eastwood’s “Magnum Force”

A financial success that received a critical drubbing, Magnum Force (1973; Ted Post) just doesn’t get the .44-calibre love it deserves, even from Fans of Clint.

More “Bad Movies I Love”—with 2002’s “Scooby Doo” and 1967’s “Hurry, Sundown”

“I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?”

—Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) in Ghostbusters

“East, West…Mere points of the compass…”

—Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman) in Dr. No

You ask me, honey

What it was all about

Ya even asked me where the light went

When it went out

I'm B-A-D

I'm bad

Don't mess with me

—Bo Diddley, “I’m Bad”

LERNER INTERNATIONAL was lucky enough to be given the chance to contribute to the very popular, and highly recommended guest-blogger “Bad Movies I Love” series at the excellent film site Rupert Pupkin Speaks.

Of course, “Bad” in this sense means “What other people, blinded by their own lack of imagination, consider bad.”

At Rupert Pupkin Speaks, my list of “Bad Movies I Love” includes

Will Ferrell’s Land of the Lost (2009),

The Island (1980), directed by Michael Ritchie

Johnny Knoxville’s The Ringer (2005),

The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) directed by Robert Aldrich

John Waters’ A Dirty Shame (2004)

and

Zardoz (1974), directed by John Boorman—BTW, I forgot to mention in my commentary that Zardoz’s Big Stone Head and the Exterminator Masks (pictured above and below) were based on director Boorman’s own face! Groovy!

Meanwhile, in the wake of writing up my “Bad Movies I Love,” I kept coming up with more and more films that I was kicking myself really hard for forgetting to include—mainly because I never think of films I like as genuinely bad.

One film like this is Apollo 18 (already thoroughly commented about HERE), and two others are 2002’s Scooby Doo, and 1967’s Hurry, Sundown.

“Apollo 18,” and the Spiderz From the South Pole of the Moon, a “Bad Movie I Love”

Sometimes I think that maybe at some time or another, nearly every movie I love (or at least like a lot) has been HATED by some major critic—usually upon its initial release.

DVDs of Skidoo, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Todd Killings and gorehound-“found footage” pioneer Cannibal Holocaust all sit proudly on my shelf—and they were all treated poorly (by most “respectable” reviewers, if not all) when released, completely misinterpreted by their narrow-minded critics, but so unique in conception that audiences were unfamiliar with what they were facing and needed guidance—

But none was forthcoming…even to this day, some of those films are still ill-regarded.

Only time will tell if the critically-reviled Apollo 18 (2011; Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego) will end up on my shelf, but I just finished watching it again a few days ago, and dang! Even on a second viewing, it’s still a tense sci-fi/horror thriller-mystery, with plenty of effective—and well-earned—shocks, and some of the niftiest monsters I’ve seen in a while.