Broken wings: scene from WIngs of Desire
Bad movies - like viruses, and politicians - must mutate and change guises in order to survive. Once we knew them by their cornball dialogue, poverty-row budgets and amateur-night acting. Increasingly, it seems, they have become harder and harder to spot.
Writing in today's Guardian, Stewart Lee ponders the shifting nature of that elusive beast, the Truly Awful Movie. In addition to nominating his own all-time winner (the gung-ho SAS drama Who Dares Wins), Lee suggests that the classic ingredients of the B-movie have now infiltrated the A-list, and that such recent critical and commercial hits as Moulin Rouge and King Kong may just (whisper it) be bad movies in disguise. Put it down to what that noted scholar, bartender Mo in The Simpsons, refers to as "the swishifying effect" of modern culture.
Now, I'm not of the opinion that "B-movies" are necessarily worse movies than "A-movies" (and I'm not sure that Lee is either). But I am intrigued by his concept of bad movies that are generally held to be good movies, and am interested in why this might be so. Why, for instance, does everyone else look at Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire and see a masterpiece whereas I can only see interminable, pretentious twaddle? Why am I constantly being told that The Searchers is the greatest damn western ever made when it really, really isn't?
Anyhow, over to you - before the sheer befuddling injustice of it all makes me blow a gasket. Tell us your own all-time bad movies that everyone else loves. Or simply tell us your bad movies that are generally regarded to be bad movies. Or tell us what constitutes a bad movie. Or just tell us what you ate for breakfast. Culture Vulture is an open forum, after all, and the talking shop is open to everyone. Everyone except the insufferable Wim Wenders, that is.
