Category Archives: IMDb Bottom 100

Reviews of current members and alumni of the IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Copper Mountain

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Copper Mountain

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“Copper Mountain” is barely a movie. The run time clocks in at 60 minutes on the dot, and that includes extended credits sequences and entire, unedited song performances. It is astoundingly inept.

The only reason this film has as much notoriety as it does is due to Jim Carrey’s presence, long before he became an A-list comedic acting icon. Much like with Adam Sandler’s early movie “Going Overboard” (also in the Bottom 100), “Copper Mountain” still consistently gets marketed due to the presence of a future A-lister in the cast. That said, I appreciate “Going Overboard” slightly more, if only because it acknowledges its failings out of the gate. “Copper Mountain” is arguably a worse movie (or at least of comparable quality), but everything is played absolutely straight.

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Jim Carrey’s role in the movie is basically a showcase of his ability to impersonate celebrities, making this a “Master of Disguise” years before Dana Carvey created that cinematic travesty. However, when he isn’t hamming up with his impressions, Carrey’s character is an absolute sad-sack, who spends most of his dialogue complaining that he can’t impress women with his frenetic antics. Interestingly enough, his arc concludes with him impressing women with a frenetic antic. Not a whole lot of progress is made.

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Outside of Carrey, “Copper Mountain” also features Alan Thicke, who plays an incredibly pretentious aspiring skier. His arc ends with him losing both of his skiing races, which is theoretically progress according to this movie.

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I mentioned that the movie relies heavily on live song performances. Amazingly, despite this fact, this movie has incredibly bad sound quality in all of the dialogue scenes. Background noise is constant, and most lines that are done indoors are nearly impossible to decipher.

Last but not least, I want to point out the original, official title to this movie: “Copper Mountain: A Club Med Experience”. Basically, this movie exists to promote a resort, making it essentially a tourism video at its core. And, to be honest, I think I have seen higher quality tourism videos.

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There are only two reasons I might recommend this movie: 1) It is incredibly short, so you wouldn’t be wasting much of your time, and 2) The CCR covers that kill time in the middle of this flick aren’t too bad (I think Lodi actually gets played twice…). Overall, “Copper Mountain” just isn’t very fun, so I can’t in good conscience recommend it. If you want to see a low-budget, bizarre bad movie featuring an A-list comedian, go with “Going Overboard”.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Popstar

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Popstar

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“Popstar” is one of the few movies in the IMDb Bottom 100 that I had never heard of before. I seem to recall Aaron Carter’s very brief celebrity status, but definitely don’t recollect his even briefer acting career.

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must have slept through it

“Popstar” is plagued with some of the same issues that sank “From Justin to Kelly”: namely, the primary acting role is thrust onto a celebrity who is in no way an actor. Carter clearly struggles with all of his lines, and sounds like he is uncomfortable with the pressure of acting (even though he is essentially playing himself). It made me curious as to how he wound up in this movie: was it an obligation, as was the case in “From Justin to Kelly” for Guarini and Clarkson? In any case, his performance is abysmal, and is a major weakness of the film.

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Aaron Carter is only bearable on screen when he is silently smiling, which he actually does a fair bit

I have to say though, I was impressed with the writing on this movie. I didn’t think a high school movie could be more detached from reality than “Bratz”, but “Popstar” manages to do it.

The lead character (Carter’s love interest) is one of the most perplexing piecemeal characters I have run into. She is a superfan of Carter’s whose room is covered in his image, but she is also an academic perfectionist who goes through an ugly duckling arc. She is said to have a perfect SAT score and pending full rides to a number of universities. So, there are a few issues with this: first off, there is just way too much going on with this character, and it is all way overboard. She isn’t just a fan, she’s a superfan. She isn’t just smart, she is supersmart. Also, there’s is the significant issue that most of these qualities are told to the audience instead of shown, so it comes off as even more extreme as it is bludgeoned into your face. Worse yet, her actions don’t actually support the things we are told about her, particularly in regard to her academics. For an example, here is the last shot of the movie:

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This is a story that she writes, that is supposedly a veiled parallel to the romance of the movie. She reveals the story’s existence to Carter in a flirtatious concluding scene, after which the shot fades into this image of the computer screen. Keep in mind, this was written by a character who we have been told has standing offers for full rides to Stanford and UC-Berkeley. Here is the transcript of her story:

“This is the story of a High School Princess and a Pop Star. It ends at magic hour at Westward beach, quite a romantic spot. This story has a happy ending. All stories should have a happy ending; but they don’t.

Anyways they will live happily ever after…Just like in the movies.
He wants her, she wants him…

…AND THEY KISSED!!!”

That’s it. That is the whole story. Again, it was established earlier in the movie that this character had perfect SAT scores, and is basically the most brilliant academic for miles. I just can’t even wrap my head around this. I mean, the existence of the story could have easily just been a veiled metaphor about their relationship for the sake of dialogue and a happy conclusion, but she actually typed this up according to the final shot. She clearly couldn’t have felt too strongly about this tale of love, because that isn’t even a decent plot or structural outline. For a character established as an extreme academic perfectionist, that is some shoddy work to say the least. Does this mean she doesn’t care about her relationship as much as her schoolwork (or even enough so to put forth an effort), or has she learned to sacrifice her perfectionism and just let things in her life be imperfect? Ok, maybe I’m getting it: this is her accepting the reality of a flawed world, and her imperfect place within it. Brilliant.

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I’m not sure what the opposite of explosive chemistry is, but this is it

Adding to the fantasy-world quality of “Popstar” is the central conflict of the plot. Carter has only come to the school and befriended the Super-Genius Girl in order to cheat off of her to pass his classes. When it comes time for the exams, he winds up getting caught. In reality, this result in a failing grade without any doubt. In “Popstar”, Carter is given a second chance due to the persuasive power of monologues, and because he apparently has testing anxiety. As I understand it, having testing anxiety is something that should be divulged to the teacher and consulted on with parents, and ultimately worked out in a way that can alleviate the student. It is not, however, an acceptable excuse for cheating on a test. Regardless, Carter is given his second chance, but this time he is allowed to take his test on a lit stage in the school auditorium, because reasons. Not only does he pass the test, he apparently does better on it that SuperGenius (She didn’t get a perfect score? That doesn’t seem consistent).

The last problem with this movie that I will mention (trust me, there are more) is the cast. Note that the problem here is the cast, not the acting (that is a different issue altogether). There are so many characters in this movie, and barely any of them are on screen enough to matter. I couldn’t keep up with the names or their relationships to the primary characters in the slightest. There were stepmothers, best friends, bullies, mothers, fathers, wise janitors, agents, nerds, and teachers who all just wandered in and out of the movie with minimal introductions and very little to do. This may be the worst job of character introductions I have seen outside of “They Saved Hitler’s Brain”, and there is absolutely no excuse for it.

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The director even cast himself as Carter’s manager, for reasons

Between the abysmal acting, vapid story, and weak writing, there isn’t actually much to enjoy in this movie.  It is certainly incompetently made and generally bad, but it doesn’t have a whole lot of charm to it. It isn’t nearly as contrived as “From Justin to Kelly”, but it is only a stone’s throw away from that level of exploitative garbage. It isn’t a movie I can recommend, but I will say that I had a good chuckle at that last shot of SuperGenius’s magnum opus.

…AND THEN THEY KISSED!!!

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

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The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

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Argh. This movie is atrocious, every little bit as much as I was led to believe it was. To start off, I consider Nostalgia Critic’s scathing review of this flick as mandatory viewing:

Honestly, there isn’t much to add to that. “Garbage Pail Kids” is so loosely structured and plotted that there isn’t much to talk about. I will get to review of this film as well soon, but there are a lot of similarities between this and “Blubberella”: they both rely on tired, crass humor, and they both depend far too heavily on improvisation for content. You will notice in clips that the Garbage Pail Kids are constantly just making noise in the background, or filling up their scenes with rambling noise. There is just no way that was all scripted: I can almost guarantee that the voice actors were told to just riff away in the recording booth, and the result is a jumbled mess. Which brings us to the voice acting…

To call the voice acting “bad” is beyond generous. It is a chorus of screeching, wailing, cackling cacophony. To be fair though, I imagine that the voice actors were doing exactly what they were told to do. The Garbage Pail Kids are supposed to be repulsive, which would justify them sounding so horrible. That said, it doesn’t make it any easier to listen to, and the fact that they are usually all making noises at once throughout their scenes makes the experience all the worse. The in-person actors are just genuinely bad in this movie, most notably the child protagonist and the band of (much older) bullies who torment him.

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they are almost certainly a decade older than him

I would be remiss to not mention the nightmarish puppets in this movie. Just take a good look at these:

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I think that is all I have to note about the horrific work on that front.

Last but not least, I have a serious issue with the message of this movie. It claims to be a “beauty is what is on the inside” tale, with the GPKs as an example of good people (creatures? aliens?) who look strange/ugly. The writing has all of the subtlety to take a subplot to break people out of the “State Home for the Ugly”, where apparently all of the greatest minds in the world are held because of physical imperfections. Back to the titular kids, though: there is nothing to indicate that they are, in fact, beautiful on the inside. One of them threatens to eat the child protagonist on more than one occasion, and another one brandishes a knife more than once with minimal provocation. They are just horrible beings, outside and inside.

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The alligator actually eats human body parts on screen

I would never recommend this movie to anyone. The meandering plot structure would make the movie boring even if all other elements were on target. As it is, there is nothing on par about this movie: everything is mediocre to abysmal. I am genuinely shocked that this is no longer in the IMDb Bottom 100, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it show up back on the list before long. In short, this movie is an assault on the senses in every possible way, as if it were an art project manufactured with the intention to cause cinematic displeasure.

 

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IMDb Bottom 100 in theaters!

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The good folks over at Rifftrax are going to be doing yet another live simulcast for the holidays! The former Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang are taking on an old favorite: IMDb Bottom 100 member and cult classic “Santa Claus”, a Mexican-made children’s movie in which St. Nick lives in a sky-castle with Merlin and battles demons for the souls of children.

You can check it out in select theaters around the US and Canada (maybe elsewhere?) on December 4th. To check where it is playing near you, go to the Fathom events page here, and throw in your local ZIP code. Or, if you happen to be in the Nashville, TN area, you can go to the in-person showing at the Belcourt Theater! I went to the live Rifftrax of “Godzilla (1998)” at the Belcourt this summer, and it was an absolute blast. I recommend making an evening of it if you can.

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Also, I highly recommend checking out the old MST3K episode on “Santa Claus”, which is among the best of the series. I’ll be covering the movie later in December here on the blog as well for the IMDb Bottom 100 reviews, so keep your eyes open for it!

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: The Wild World of Batwoman

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The Wild World of Batwoman

The Wild World of Bat Woman One Sheet

“The Wild World of Batwoman”, in case you couldn’t have guessed, has no relation to The Dark Knight or DC Comics. That said, the movie is a clear attempt to capitalize off of the popularity of the Adam West “Batman” television show (enough so to get sued): yet the hammy style and the bat aesthetic was about as far as the similarities went content-wise, however. The majority of the film consists of dancing sequences, clips from unrelated movies, and inexplicable vampirism (yeah, Batwoman is a vampire). Who needs crime-fighting and bat-related gadgets/shenanigans when you have vampires who occasionally dance?

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There are a lot of phone conversations too. Not even exciting ones.

The plot centers around a near-magical piece of spying equipment: a newly-developed listening device that can hear anything that is spoken (or something to that effect). A mysterious villain named Ratfink is dedicated to stealing the device, and through kidnapping and blackmail attempts to have Batwoman (an apparently famous vigilante leader) do the deed for him. It all gets needlessly complex and nonsensical from there, with a few shots of mole people pulled from a different movie, but ultimately Ratfink is defeated and unmasked. He then confesses that he only wanted the device because he is a voyeur, which means that the sinister plan and super-villainy was all way overboard.

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Ratfink is the one who is dressed like a villain.

The acting is “Batwoman”, if you can call it that, is very bad. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference considering the writing, but it is very clear throughout the movie that the majority of the cast was not there for their acting abilities. The villain characters, as you would expect from the time, are either buffoons, racist stereotypes, or mustache-twirlers. Again, no actor could have made the characters passable, but that doesn’t change the end result on the screen. Outside of Batwoman herself, there isn’t an adequate performance in the movie.

I can’t think of any reason to recommend this movie. There is a lot of dancing, the plot is old-school silly, but the pacing and editing is so abysmal that the movie is nearly unwatchable. You can check out the MST3k version of the film, because there are a few laughs to be had in there, but outside of that frame the movie is absolutely skippable.  The movie could  have actually been a fun “Batman” rip-off with better writing beneath it, but that just isn’t the case here. It reminded me a lot of “Horrors of Spider Island”: there is a large cast of non-actors who are essentially there to dance, and the writing is a step below amateurish. “Spider Island” at least had some effects in it though, whereas “Batwoman” doesn’t really go anywhere or do much of anything. This was a movie designed to make a trailer out of, and trick audiences into a theater.

Here are the MST3k highlights of “Batwoman”, which is going to be more worth your time to watch than sitting through the whole damned movie.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Aag

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Aag

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“Ram Gopal Varma’s Indian Flames” (also known as “Aag”) was the first Bollywood movie to make it into the IMDb Bottom 100, and helped start the growing international trend of the list. As you should expect, it isn’t a good movie. However, as is sometimes the case, there is more to the negative reputation of “Aag” than the poor quality of the movie on the screen.

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The poor quality of the movie is a big part of it too, though. A very big part of it.

“Aag” was initially planned as an official remake of the beloved Bollywood classic “Sholay” by Ramesh Sippy.  It was even titled “Ram Gopal Varma Ki Sholay” during development, until it was ruled to be in violation of Sippy’s copyright and trademark on the film (the character names were ordered to be changed as well). To make things worse in the court of public opinion, numerous members of the cast and crew of “Sholay” spoke openly against “Aag”, meaning no one was particularly excited about the movie even before it hit theaters. The best parallel I can think of is whenever someone has done a remake of Hitchcock: audiences and critics are not usually receptive to the idea of readdressing films regarded as timeless.

Unsurprisingly, the movie was a massive critical and box office failure. After all of the production shenanigans, I honestly think it may have failed regardless of the quality of the movie. But, as it so happens, “Aag” is no masterpiece.

To start with, the movie is far too long for what it is, and is not structured in such a way that the length is justified. The run-time is 164 minutes, but the structured made it feel even more inflated from there. There were numerous points throughout the second and third acts where I thought the movie was coming to a conclusion, only to have the conflict fizzle out and the pieces on the board reset. To say that this was frustrating doesn’t cover it in the least,  mostly because of the entirely uninteresting characters the audience is subjected to throughout.

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Except for that dude with the giant face on the right, he’s awesome.

While “Aag” has a fantastic villain character (Babban) played by Amitabh Bachchan, the rest of the cast is a stone’s throw from abysmal. Whenever Babban isn’t on-screen, the movie screeches to a halt underneath the shittiness of the acting and writing. The leading duo, who should carry the film, are two of the least interesting characters in the story. One of them primarily fills the role of comic relief (poorly) until the last act, whereas the other does less emoting than Keanu Reeves. There are love interests shoe-horned for both characters, most notably Gungroo, who might be the worst-played and worst-written character in the movie. She spends most of the movie either threatening violence on people or being harassed by one of the leads (named “Heero”, groaningly). She ultimately magically falls in love with “Heero” after a jarring musical number and a handful of shenanigans, because of course she would. There is one other decent character outside of Babban (Inspector Narsimha), but he is more passable than he is good, and he never owns a scene in the way Babban does.

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Gungroo is one of the worst woman characters I’ve seen in years, and that includes all of the Paris Hilton movies I have had to watch. She exists to be grating, and eventually to fall in love.

You can tell that there is the skeleton of a decent movie buried underneath the layers of dull sediment of this film, but that just makes the experience all the more disappointing. It feels like someone took the story beats and concepts from a classic story, and then locked a bunch of unpaid interns in a room and demanded that they recreate the movie before they could get fed. Rushed, amateurish, and without any regard for an audience: that pretty much nails the writing issues with “Aag”.

I do not recommend watching “Aag”. There isn’t a lot of entertainment to squeeze out of this, and you could do far better things with the time you would spend watching this movie. The performance of Amitabh Bachchan as Babban is pretty delightfully over the top, but not good enough to redeem the movie as a whole. I haven’t seen “Sholay”, but I am willing to wager that it is a much better time than “Aag”.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Breaking Wind

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Breaking Wind

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“Breaking Wind” is yet another “[Movie] Movie” (a term used for modern, lazy parody movies in the vein of “Scary Movie”) in the IMDb Bottom 100, joining “Miss Castaway”, “Epic Movie”, and “Disaster Movie”. I have basically exhausted everything I have to say about the inherent issues with this particularly abysmal genre, but “Breaking Wind” does at least have some specific issues all its own. First off, it is about farts.

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Also, fat werewolves

“Breaking Wind” is a parody of the “Twilight” movies, deriving the title from one of the sequels (“Breaking Dawn”). As you can gather from the title, a large quantity of the attempted jokes in the film center around farting. There is what I would describe as an aggravating number of fart-related gags throughout the film. The few attempts at humor that aren’t directly fart-related are at least crass and lazy, or are so dependent on knowledge of the “Twilight” franchise that casual moviegoers are not going to understand them. Check out the following clip, in which Danny Trejo cameos to fart a bunch, reference random things, and parody what I assume was a specific scene in one of the “Twilight” movies:

Wasn’t that nauseating? The whole movie is pretty much like that. I wonder if this was the low point of Danny Trejo’s acting career?

On top of the lazy humor, “Breaking Wind” also suffers from the fact that it isn’t even the only “Twilight”-centered parody movie. Friedberg and Seltzer, the typical “[Movie] Movie” duo who were behind “Epic Movie” and “Disaster Movie”, released their own “Twilight” parody (“Vampires Suck”) a good year and change before “Breaking Wind” hit theaters. And, unbelievably, “Breaking Wind” writer/director Craig Moss has a worse track record than the Seltzer/Friedberg duo when it comes to parody films. His only other credit at the time was the annoyingly-named parody “The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It”, which has a whopping 2.7 on IMDb: only marginally better than “Breaking Wind.”

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Not only is it lazy and second-rate, but “Breaking Wind” doesn’t seem to understand its audience either: for a movie that nearly requires knowledge of the “Twilight” franchise to follow, it is incredibly mean-spirited towards fans of the books and movies. The movie ends over clips pulled from YouTube of “Twilight” fans reacting ridiculously to “Twilight”-related events. It comes off as really uncomfortable and unnecessarily shitty to a group of people who could theoretically be buying tickets to the movie.

As with any of the modern generation of parody movies, there isn’t anything redeeming enough about “Breaking Wind” to justify recommending it. The humor is dated and crass when it does exist, which is not often. This one just needs to be chalked up and archived as yet another dumb parody movie, and never re-addressed again.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Track of the Moon Beast

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Track of the Moon Beast
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“Track of the Moon Beast” is yet another forgettable entry in the IMDb Bottom 100. Like a good number of the films featured on MST3k, this is one that feels like background noise. There are a few memorable moments, but definitely not many. I haven’t had as much trouble recounting a movie since “Zombie Nightmare”, and I think that one is a good deal more entertaining than “Track of the Moon Beast”.

One thing I can give this movie credit for is some kick-ass box art. That muscle-bound blue alien creature stretching its claws towards the moon is pretty bad-ass. Unfortunately, the monster in the movie actually looks like this:

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Not very impressive. And yes, the creature is shrouded in darkness almost the entire movie, probably an attempt to hide how crappy it looks. The only exception I can recall is the excessively colorful death scene, in which you still can’t make out much in the way of details:
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So, bad effects are definitely an issue that hampers this movie. I will say that the transformation effects aren’t too bad, especially in comparison with something like “Laserblast”, where they just painted the actor’s face green. There is even some alternate box art featuring the transformation makeup that doesn’t look too bad.

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some more box art that is way too good for this movie

However, there are a lot of issues with this movie beyond the mediocre effects work. For instance, the plot is just a wee bit ridiculous. The main character becomes the “moon beast” because a tiny meteorite lodges into his brain without him noticing. Weirdly enough, it is later stated that there is a local, native legend about an identical creature existing in the past. So, the story implies that more than one person in the history of this town has had an evil moon rock lodged into their skull that transformed the victim into a were-alien. Honestly, it sounds like they had two origins written down, and couldn’t make up their mind between the two of them.

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This monster looks better than the one that made it on screen

All of that said, you can make a good movie with a ridiculous plot. In fact, I like where they take the plot as it moves on. Unlike most werewolf features, doctors discover his ailment and try to fix it, and don’t hold him accountable for his crimes. Unfortunately, they ultimately can’t help him, and the main character decides to run away and attempt suicide so his moon beast form can’t hurt anyone else. He is eventually stopped from carrying out this plot, after which he to transform into the moon beast and is shot. The ending is kind of a bummer, really.

Honestly, there is some promise in this movie, but there’s not enough talent behind the film on any level to make it work. With better writing, better effects, better acting, and someone with a better eye for shooting in charge, this could have been a fun little sci-fi story. As it is, “Track of the Moon Beast” is a really boring movie to sit through, and it isn’t one I can recommend. I do, however, recommend the box art. That is, again, very bad-ass.

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IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: From Justin to Kelly

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From Justin to Kelly

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“From Justin to Kelly” is a somewhat unique member of the IMDb Bottom 100. It has been hovering at the bottom of the list for some time, and has held the top spot on a few occasions, but it isn’t quite what I typically expect from the list. The production values are good, it isn’t a parody movie, and Paris Hilton is nowhere to be seen. All of that said, this is a movie that deserves a slot in the Bottom 100, without any doubt.

As with many films, you can’t truly appreciate “From Justin to Kelly” without knowing a little bit of the story behind the scenes. In fact, this is a movie that doesn’t make any sense at all without context. Eponymous stars Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson were the finalists on the first season of the television singing competition “American Idol”. “From Justin To Kelly” was apparently an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the show in a different medium. Unfortunately, neither Justin nor Kelly had any meaningful acting experience, which should have sent a red flag up on the project from the start. The movie attempted to bank on their singing talents rather than their acting, and this relied on choreography and musical numbers to make up for the lack of a acting ability, sensible plot, or decent dialogue.  This tactic, as you might imagine, did not work well.

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A good number of movies on the IMDb Bottom 100 at least have a workable concept behind them, but are ultimately executed poorly. “From Justin to Kelly” has an inverse issue: the concept is unworkable (make a movie around two non-actors), and a lot of (more or less) competent people were brought in to try to make it work. So, the result is a movie that looks fine on the outside, but doesn’t have a foundation beneath it.

While the choreography and directing are done by veterans (though still pretty badly), the job of writing “From Justin to Kelly” was clearly not given the same amount of thought. All that was needed from the film was music and a serviceable trailer from a financial point of view, so why would anyone stress the script? It seems like everyone knew that they were dealing with non-actor leads anyway, so a good writing job would just be wasted on the flick. The writing was tasked to Kim Fuller, who has had a career in television, but is best known for penning another notable musical train wreck (and IMDb Bottom 100 alumnus), “Spice World.” That tells you all you need to know about how the horrendous writing of “From Justin to Kelly” came to be. The dialogue is stilted, the characters are entirely unbelievable, and the plot is a jumbled mess: all because no one particular cared to make it better.

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The guy in the middle gets an entire side-story about internet dating or something. Ugh.

“From Justin to Kelly” feels like the manufactured product that it is, which makes it an incredibly off-putting viewing experience. Most movies, including bad ones, are made in the honest attempt to create something good. “From Justin to Kelly” has more in common with Z-grade exploitation films than it does any of the other Bottom 100 features, because it was made without any desire for quality or artistic value. Even more so than the many contrived blockbusters out there, this is a soulless movie.  Blockbusters at least, on some level, aim to entertain an audience. “From Justin to Kelly” was not made to even entertain: it was made to profit. Luckily, it failed miserably in this regard, and is remembered as one of the most universally loathed movies of the decade.

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The one in the middle with the cowboy hat is the villainous mastermind of the movie. Really.

There isn’t a whole lot of entertainment value to extract from this film. The characters are so inconsistent, unbelievable, and unlikable that there is at least somewhat of an awe factor involved in watching their stories unfold, though. In particular, one of Kelly’s cohorts is almost certainly the most inexplicably conniving villain that I have ever seen in a movie. Still, the vapid plot and tortuous, twisting love story between Justin and Kelly is immensely tiring. Not only can they not act, but their characters are written to be dumb as rocks, and are constantly manipulated into fighting each other. Their ineptitude is amusing for a while, but it gets old very fast. The fashion is pretty laughable as well, particularly the skirt made of ties, but none of it is enough to make it worth sitting through the movie.

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tie skirt

So, I do not recommend watching “From Justin to Kelly.” Unless, of course, you want to watch a poorly-written, abysmally-acted,  inexplicably PG spring break movie with a bunch of early 2000s pop music threaded throughout. And, hopefully, no one does.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: The Beast of Yucca Flats

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The Beast of Yucca Flats

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What happens when you put “Red Zone Cuba” and “Plan 9 From Outer Space” into the blast zone of an atomic bomb? Ideally, both movies would be destroyed. Alternatively, they could synthesize into a mindless creature of a movie called “The Beast of Yucca Flats”.

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Starring the hulking Tor Johnson of “Plan 9 From Outer Space” infamy, and directed/written by “Red Zone Cuba” visionary Coleman Francis, “The Beast of Yucca Flats” is exactly the quality of movie you should expect: it is absolute garbage. The only saving grace of “Yucca Flats” is the curious charm that is occasionally the side effect of absolute incompetence.

Pictured: charm
Pictured: charm

First off, eponymous “Beast” (Tor Johnson) cannot act. He spent most of his career in the background of movies as a muscle-man, but he never really had the chops for acting. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) for him, in “The Beast of Yucca Flats”, he doesn’t really have to act. Due to some of the most baffling sound work in cinema history, all of the dialogue in the film is spoken from off-screen. This means that Tor’s lead role is more or less relegated to a silent beast (I don’t recall if he even got a line before his transformation). This mechanical issue also leads to some awkward off-screen conversations set against still images, and numerous disembodied voices with unclear sources moving the plot along. Clearly in an attempt to cover this horrific sound work, the movie also has narration throughout. Unfortunately, the narrator rarely speaks in complete sentences, and never quite makes any sense. Ultimately, all of the film’s problems mentioned here (and many more) boil down to the same fellow at the rotten core of this attempted film: Coleman Francis.

Coleman Francis is the writer who cooked up all of the horrendously stilted dialogue. Coleman Francis is the narrator who rambles incoherently throughout the movie. Coleman Francis is the director who allowed the astoundingly horrible sound and cinematography decisions to made. “The Beast of Yucca Flats” is entirely and unequivocally the fault of Coleman Francis.  Even the perplexing opening scene that has no connection to the rest of the film was reportedly inserted after-the-fact because Francis “liked nude scenes”.

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The kind-of touching final shot had nothing to do with Francis. The rabbit just showed up.

Yet, despite the countless issues with the film (or maybe because of them), “The Beast of Yucca Flats” is almost certainly the most entertaining and best remembered of the Coleman Francis movies. As mentioned before, there is a certain intangible charm that certain movies have that can only come from the honest incompetence of the filmmaker, and “The Beast of Yucca Flats” has it. The movie is rightfully considered to be one of the classic considerations for “worst film of all time”, right alongside “Manos: The Hands of Fate” and “Plan 9 From Outer Space”. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode on the movie is also considered to be one of their finest:

It is mind-boggling to compare “Beast of Yucca Flats” to Coleman Francis’s other IMDb Bottom 100 movie, “Red Zone Cuba”. Both movies are arguably of equal incompetence, but “Yucca Flats” is far and away more entertaining to watch. Watching them back-to-back illustrates the hazy boundary between an entertaining bad movie and an unwatchably bad movie, at least in my opinion. In any case, I can recommend checking out the MST3K of “The Beast of Yucca Flats”. but I certainly wouldn’t say the same about “Red Zone Cuba”.

However, “Yucca Flats” doesn’t have nearly as catchy of a theme song:

“The Beast of Yucca Flats” isn’t going to be as much fun for a casual group today as “The Room” or “Birdemic”, but it rightfully has a place among the classic bad movies of yesteryear. If you can enjoy “Plan 9”, “Manos”, and other bad flicks from back in the day, then you don’t want to overlook “Yucca Flats”.