Bad Movie Appreciation Society, #2: Birdemic

This film is amazing. No mere words can explain how brilliantly bad this movie is but I shall endeavour to try. Think of Ed Wood at his worst, multiply the badness by a 1000 and you're still a long way off.

Birdemic (or Birdemic: Shock and Terror to give its full title) is a homage to Alfred Hitchcocks The Birds with a heavy environmental message. It was made in 2010 and is directed by James Nguyen. 

Now I have to be fair to Nguyen here, Birdemic was made for next to nothing in film terms (about $10,000) and it does show in the special effects. Nguyen put a lot of effort into making it and promoted the film at the Cannes festival himself.

Bad special effects can be forgiven but there are other things to making a film less dependent on money. Does the story make sense? Does the dialogue flow? Is that really the best actor you could get? Do you even need this character? Or that scene?

At some point or other in the movie, Birdemic fails on all these things.

So, the story such that it is. For the first half hour or so, nothing of note happens. To go back to The Birds, Hitchcock uses the first part of the film to ratchet up the tension, Birdemic wastes it on banality.

We meet a dull software salesman called Rod who meets a girl he used to go to school with (Nathalie) who is now a Victoria's Secret model but still does all her photo shoots at the one-hour photo store.

Then he buys some solar panels for his house and we get a full explanation on what solar panels do (if there's anyone left in the world who doesn't know).

Rod's software company then makes a big money deal. Obviously this means all the employees will now leave that company and it will cease to trade (seriously, that is what happens). So Rod sets up his own solar panel business and makes big deals with his highly persuasive one-slide powerpoint presentations.

Rod, Nathalie and some friends go watch the movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Rod's friend, who was previously of the Jeremy Clarkson school of motoring announces he is now getting a hybrid (do you think there's some sort of theme emerging here?).

Rod and Nathalie then go to a Vietnamese restaurant and are then awkwardly dancing to a rather bizarre song.

Here are some of the lyrics:

A cool summer breeze, making me feel at ease
The barbeque is broilin’ and Uncle Phil is scorin’
Big Momma’s in the kitchen and everybody wishin’
That she’s fixin’ they favorite dish

Just hanging out, hanging out

Hanging out with my family, going to have a paaaaarty

Then out of nowhere, the birds attack. Until this moment you’d probably forgot the name of this movie was Birdemic, so few are the birds you’ve seen in this film.

From here on out you are treated to some of the worst CGI birds you’ve ever seen. Oh, and they make sounds like howlitzers and explode on impact. And spit acid, as birds do.

Our heroes fight off this avian menace with coathangers and go on a road trip to where I’m not exactly sure. Along the way they pick up a couple of children and become surrogate parents. They meet a guy who’s job seems to be to watch a pond and no invasion of killer birds is going to get in the way of that but he still has time to give a lecture on global warming.

They meet a guy who lives in the forest. He explains to them how global warming is raising the number of Spruce Bark Beetles that are killing all our trees (damn them!) and a forest fire spontaneously bursts out.

They end up on a beach where Rod discovers fishermen have been wasting their time for years using bait to catch fish, all you need is the rod. The evil birds then show up but this time are chased away by ‘good’ birds whose existence was hitherto not mentioned.

Rod, Nathalie and their new adopted kids then watch as the birds fly away out to sea. For a long time. A really long time.

Let’s get technical. The actors are abysmal, probably just dragged in off the street as Nguyen went along. The script is awful. Having an environmental message is all well and good but delivering it in such a ham-fisted manner with characters shoe-horned in to give overlong lectures is not the way to go about it.

Even going to basics such as camera angle and framing are done poorly. Background music is too loud, drowning out the character dialogue (though arguably that’s a good thing).

I want to give this balance, and point out something good about Birdemic but there isn’t anything. It’s just bad, bad, bad.

Reading it through you may be under the impression I don’t like Birdemic but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This level of ineptitude is a marvel to behold. It’s awesome in its awfulness.

And apparently, there’s a Birdemic 2…

Whatever happened to Alex Kidd?

Back in the late 80's, Mario ruled the video game world. He had replaced Pac-Man as the number one guy in video games, no magic cherry in the world was big enough to save the yellow pizza guy. But there were those who would challenge the Italian magic mushroom-eating plumbers dominance with varying degrees of success. One such person was Alex Kidd.

Kidd made his big debut in 1986 in Alex Kidd in Miracle World. He was a smash hit. People loved his look with his massive oversized head, Monkees-esque haircut and penchant for the game 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' to solve conflicts. He quickly followed this up with Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars solidifying his fan base. He wasn't Mario yet but Alex Kidd's star was rising.

Behind the scenes however, Kidd wasn't happy and he wanted to move himself in different artistic directions. In 1987, he revealed his passion for BMX riding in Alex Kidd BMX Trial. Then he launched his most daring project to date, Alex Kidd: High-Tech World.
It was a radical departure from his usual style. Rather than having Kidd battle birds and strange octopus men, High-Tech World centred around a map that had been mysteriously scattered around Kidd's home and his attempts to piece the puzzle together. It proved a catastrophe, perhaps being too avant-garde for Alex Kidd's more casual fan base.

In 1989, Kidd returned to his roots for Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle bringing all his rock, paper, scissors tricks with him. Though the reviews were decent the magic just wasn't there anymore.

The pressure was on for Kidd for his next game, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World. Rumours were circulating around Sega Studios that the once rising star was on his way out and might be replaced by an up and coming speedy blue hedgehog. Shinobi World was released in 1990 but the world just didn't care about Alex Kidd anymore. Kidd was soon after released by Sega.

Kidd fell into drug addiction and would challenge random strangers to a game of rock, paper, scissors for money to feed his habit. This situation would reach its zenith in 1994 when Kidd was arrested for indecent exposure after making his own addition to the rock,paper scissors world he called 'the rocket.' As he was being led away by police, witnesses heard Kidd screaming 'the paper wraps the rock but the rock bursts through the paper!'

Kidd would then spend the next two years in rehab. Since coming out he has worked steadily on the games convention circuit, regaling old fans with his stories of what it was like being a video game star.

By the mid-noughties, Kidd had patched up his differences with Sega and agreed to make cameo's in their games such as Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing.

Today, Kidd makes visits to schools in order to teach children about the risks of drug and rock, paper, scissors. Kidd is proud to say he hasn't challenged anyone to a game of rock, paper, scissors in 15 years.

Bad Movie Appreciation Society: Plan 9 from Outer Space (or how I learned to stop worrying and love shitty movies)

Bad Movie Appreciation Society: Plan 9 from Outer Space

Following on from the previous article about ‘so bad its good’ movies, a good place to start when looking at their history would be the most notorious one of all, referred to as the Citizen Kane of bad movies: Plan 9 from Outer Space.

So where to start with this monstrosity? Well, some background first.

Plan 9 was released in 1959, directed by Ed Wood. In 1980, two years after his death, Wood was given The Golden Turkey award for being ‘The Worst Director of All Time.’ Prior to Plan 9, Wood had made a few low budget films such as Glen or Glenda  (actually quite a bold movie, exploring transgender issues in what was a very conservative era. Or at least it would have been if weren’t so terribly executed) and Bride of the Monster (not to be confused with The Bride of Frankenstein). All his films were critically panned.

But what did Wood have to work with? 

In his Hollywood career, Wood had collected around him what probably in his mind were a rival to Orson Welle’s Mercury Theatre group. In reality, they were a strange, bizarre group of people.

Firstly, there was Tor Johnson, a Swedish former professional wrestler. Johnson plays Inspector Clay in Plan 9. Clay carries much of the dialogue in the first part of the movie, unfortunately Johnson is near incomprehensible.

Secondly, there is Crisswell who plays the narrator. Before making Plan 9, Crisswell was a TV psychic and he opens the movie with the line:

Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you

and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future

events such as these will affect you in the future.

And that basically sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

Then there is the impossibly thin-waisted Vampira (you have to see it to believe it), who as you may have guessed from her name dresses up like a vampire (think Morticia from The Addams Family). She had hosted a TV show in America that showed classic horror movies. She was a star name to have in the cast, unfortunately she didn’t want to speak any dialogue.

Wood did have one trump card up his sleeve though, Bela Lugosi. The Hungarian actor was the original screen Dracula in 1931 and to some still the definitive screen version of the character. He had kept a steady stream of work coming in during the 30’s working on Universal horror films often alongside his great rival, Boris Karloff. When Universal pulled the plug on its horror department however, Lugosi was left out on his ear. His European accent was a stumbling block to him getting any major film roles and he fell into heroin addiction. I don’t want to suggest Wood exploited Lugosi but it was evident he needed the money and he was cast in several Ed Wood productions. Sadly for one of cinema’s great screen icons, Plan 9 from Outer Space would be his last feature film as he died during film. As Bela Lugosi wanders off screen in the first few minutes of the film we hear screeching tyres. How appropriate for the rest of the film but sad for Lugosi that one of the first sequences of the film has a car crash.

But Lugosi’s death led to one of the most bizarre things in Plan 9. When trying to think what he could do to replace Lugosi in the film, Wood noticed his wife’s chiropractor bore a striking resemblance to Lugosi, as long as you only saw the top of his face. This led to Wood casting him in the film but he would walk with a cape covering the lower part of his face at all times.

So with a stellar cast like that, what could go wrong?

The plot of Plan 9 from Outer Space centres on an alien invasion of Earth. The aliens (who are human in appearance) want to stop mankind just as they are on the verge of making a discovery that could threaten the rest of the universe due to our hostile and warlike nature. Prior to going into films, Wood had served in the US military in World War Two, so at least on this point Wood could be claiming to speak from a voice of experience.

Rather than using a standard invasion strategy, the aliens activate Plan 9. This plan involves reanimation of the earth’s dead but only three of them. As far as great plans go, it’s pretty ineffective and to wipe out a planet of 6 billion people, the aliens are obviously playing the long game on this. Other than that there is little else to say, other that the humans win when they beat the alien general in a fist-fight that causes enough damage for their suspiciously square looking flying saucer to explode. Yeah, it’s pretty bad.

Production wise is where Wood really shows his expertise. Starting with the most unconvincing looking cockpit in screen history, we are then treated to an array of sparse and dodgy looking sets. Tombstones wobble, actors can be seen waiting for their cues and strings are clearly visible on alien spaceships. Day switches to night back to day between shots making it near impossible to tell how much time is supposed to have passed.

Yet all that could be forgiven if the story and dialogue were any good. Audiences are quite understanding that special effects might not be up to scratch, we are aware of the financial constraints film makers often find themselves under. But the script is the element the director does have control over and in Plan 9 from Outer Space the script is awful.

For all its failings, it’s hard not to love Plan 9 from Outer Space, Ed Wood’s magnum opus. As alluded to in my previous article, the best SBIG movies come from a place of love. An earnest belief by those involved that what they are making is a great movie however misguided that may be.

Plan 9 should be shown to film students and lovers of film everywhere, right alongside Citizen Kane. The latter as an example of how to make a great movie, the former to show how not to make a movie.

Plan 9 from Outer Space trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ukRYsYPmo

Some of the previously rejected plans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6iwpV3xPME

When Does a Bad Movie Become Good?

I recently watched the documentary, Best Worst Movie and frankly, it’s bizarre when you think about it.

The documentary centres around the 1992 film Troll 2, widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made. Twenty years on, the film has gained a massive cult following and is playing in packed out cinemas across America. And it’s spreading, Troll 2 is gaining a following across Europe as well.

The story is ridiculous, the actors are terrible, the dialogue is worse, direction is non-existent and there are no trolls to be seen. Yet people love it? Why? Why are people lapping up this rubbish?

It makes no sense. If you were asked to choose between watching a good movie and a bad movie, you’d choose the good movie wouldn’t you? Yet no, these people are choosing to watch Troll 2 instead. In the time it takes to watch Troll 2 you could have watched Citizen Kane, widely regarded as one of the best films ever made.*

The charm of Troll 2 seems to stem from the fact those involved didn’t seem aware they were making a bad film. It falls into that old cliché of being ‘so bad it’s good.’ But when does that occur exactly in the film making process? The Twilight films for example, will never have to worry about falling into this category.

To become ‘so bad its good’ a movie has to fail on every level. The run-of-the-mill bad movie will usually get at least some elements of the film right. The success of a film is built on lots of different facets such as the acting, casting, dialogue, direction, editing, sound, music, etc.  The SBIG movie will mess up on almost if not all of them.

But again for it to really succeed (or indeed, fail) it needs to appear that those involved don’t know the film is terrible. Ed Wood, director of Plan 9 from Outer Space, was said by those around him to be unaware how bad a director he was, so consumed was he in his ‘art’.

It’s tempting to think this comes down to an issue of budget as many films proclaimed as being SBIG are typically low budget. There may be some truth to this but on the flip side this argument ignores the many good films made on small budgets throughout cinema’s history. Kevin Smith’s first (and best) film Clerks was made for $30,000 (largely self-funded) with a cast of unknown local actors. This only equates to about an eighth of the budget given to Troll 2. It’s perhaps ironic that it was when Kevin Smith was given a budget to work with and able to cast well-known actors in his films it all started to go a bit pear-shaped (I’m looking at you Affleck).

There is a growing market for bad movies. When making Mystery Science Theatre 3000 in the 90’s, a TV programme based around the idea of making fun of bad movies, the producers would be inundated with requests from directors to show their films as they knew an appearance would increase their sales.

In modern times, Asylum pictures lead the way in bad movie releases with titles such as Megashark vs Giant Octopus and Sharknado. This trend is even shifting over to mainstream Hollywood with films built around ludicrous premises (Snakes on a Plane anyone?).

But where these films fall down for me is in that we’re supposed to think these films are bad, everything is played with a knowing wink and a smile. They are not true SBIG movies. The SBIG movie does not know how awful it is.

There is a theory that some film makers have deliberately tried to make their films as bad as possible to achieve SBIG status. A good analogy for this would be The Producer’s, where they deliberately try to make the worst musical ever but inadvertently become the biggest hit on Broadway.

Birdemic is a film often cited as an example of this. I don’t buy it. If you were to ever watch Birdemic (there are clips on youtube), you would realise that to have deliberately made a film as bad as this would have taken a lot of effort. And if you are going to put that much effort in then you might as well try and make a good movie.

I don’t believe anyone sets out to make a bad movie but through factors such as bad stories, bad actors and just sheer bloody incompetence they do it. And I, and many others, love them for it.

*you may have worked out, I spend a lot of time watching bad movies when I could be watching Citizen Kane. Yet I’ve never seen Troll 2.

Best Thing Ever, Part Two: Charles Dickens vs The Beano

Following on from the battle between iPad and spoon, the next clash takes a more cultural shift as the man regarded by many as the greatest author of all time, Charles Dickens, takes on the zany residents of Beanotown.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was one of the most influential writers of the Victorian era and wrote some of the most famous novels of all time such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. His novel A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859, is said to be the best-selling novel of all time (yes, even more than Shitelight).

Dickens first came to prominence for his writing on The Pickwick Papers, written under his pseudonym, Boz. The Pickwick Papers was written in a serial format that was to become Dickens modus operandi throughout his literary career.

Dickens would often use his writing to highlight social issues, such as conditions in workhouses and debter’s prisons, drawing on his own experiences of having spent time in such institutions. The middle classes were either unaware of these conditions or chose to ignore them. Charles Dickens became a great advocate for social change in Britain. 

But did Dickens ever write a story about a boy terrorising a town with a catapult and help from a small dog? No he didn’t but he could have.

Charles Dickens works have lasted over a 140 years since his death in 1870 and are still enjoyed by many today. His stories have successfully made the leap from print to screen, most notably A Christmas Carol which to date has had 4367 different versions made of it (but The Muppets one is still the best).

The Beano

The Beano started life in 1938 as a sister comic to The Dandy and has been published every week since then (barring a period during World War Two, when it alternated fortnightly with The Dandy due to paper shortages), entertaining generations of children and adults alike.

The Beano has produced many iconic characters in its pages such as Rodger the Dodger, The Bash Street Kids* and Minnie the Minx. But most well-known of all is the black and red hooded jumper wearing figure of Dennis the Menace.

By a weird coincidence in the same week Dennis first appeared in the Beano in 1951, a character of the same name also appeared in American comics for the first time. But that Dennis was rubbish so let’s not dwell on him.

Dennis was soon joined by his Abyssinian wire-tripe hound friend Gnasher and the pair have been inseparable ever since, wreaking havoc wherever they go. Not only in comics but also on their BBC television series.

The Beano is the last comic left standing from the Great Comic War that raged from the 60’s onwards. The Beezer, The Topper, Buster and Whizzer and Chips are just some of the comics that fell by the wayside amongst countless others (even the once-mighty Dandy has now closed its printing presses).

The Winner is: Well, I want to give it to Charles Dickens for all the iconic characters he created and his cultural influence. On the other hand, Gnasher does have a nasty bite so I’d better give this to….The Beano

*the names of all The Bash Street Kids: Danny, Plug, Spotty, Fatty, Sidney, Toots, Smiffy, ‘Erbert and Wilfred.