Wednesday, March 10, 2010

THE VERY BEST OF THE 35mm WORLD'S WANKING WORST



72 minutes of bad, brain damage
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We all should adhere to the doctrine that art is in the eye-or ear-of the beholder.
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But then again, so is sheit. Even if you can't smell it, it will still stick to yer shoes.
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Cases in point for today: two of the most sickly sticky and majorly malodorous moving pictures created in the history of the medium.
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The 1960s schlocker-horror-monster-chillers, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster are the
deux turds in question.
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Plan 9 may be more familiar to a wider audience due to Johnny Depp's virtuoso performance circa 1994's "Ed Wood," as the director of the infamous P9 bomb. (Wood, besides making trash films, also struggled with transvestism and fetishes.)
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Yet although Wood's mesterpeice is regularly cited in polls as the "worst" movie ever made,
Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster and Plan 9 are surely on par at, 1(a) and 1(b).
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Both were made for under $25,000 per piece as summer, drive-in, grindhouse fodder, and only Plan 9 had a recognizable "star," in Bella
Lugosi, who died from poor health and drug addiction before the film was completed. (Oh, all right; LA cult TV "personalty" Vampira was on board as well, and Wood actually thought of himself as an "auteur.")
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And both films have ridiculous plots/story lines that are not even worth
wasting another word on, but for the masochistic, the Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster DVD has nice little 16 page historical and reference booklet on the film and its making.
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And as noted in the booklet, the two rather shady characters who made Frankenstein/Space Monster went on to luck out into a million dollar pay-day for two, other pieces of celluloid crap, and the "screenwriters" of Frankenstein/Space Monsters, who received the grande total of 50 bucks for their script, went on to good careers in the arts and academia.
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Hard to say what my personal fave is between these two stinkers, but the creepy little, bald, elfen-eared player from Frankenstein/Space Monster is just as effective as the dopey space commander in Plan 9
who famously shouts "You, stupid, STUPID people," as the earthlings get
wise to what is going on and blow him up.
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But as terrible as these movies are-props to the DVD makers of Frankenstein/Space Monster, though, for formatting the video in 16:9 HD size-lets not forget that when Bay Boomers were first exposed to these flicks at ages between, say, 8-14 years, these things could be pretty
engrossing and yes, even SCARY!
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Especially if you were watching them alone, late at night, and no one was with you.
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At that time, these movies were serious, not just seriously bad.
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Here are some snippets/trailers from the films in question:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl8euHz-NHE
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-kCC8WUKYk

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