What Makes a Bad Movie?

At Plopcorn towers, after ever film we review, there’s a 10-15 minute discussion about what we’ve watched to get a sense of what we thought and how it should score.  We consider things like the plot or lack of, the terrible acting or the bad stunts, the soundtrack, wardrobe, special effects – you get the idea.

We don’t always agree.  Some films make some of us laugh, whether they were meant to be funny or not, while others get, well angry.  The Room” is a classic example, while a few of us loved  it for being so bad it angered Tinhead so much he felt compelled to produce 3000 word rant as a review.

However, we do end up on occasion with a more existential challenge that can cause some mass debate  – deciding if the film qualifies as Plopcorn material or not.

To this end Wensleydale will often pop up with interesting facts concerning the budget and lack of critical acclaim, using this as a benchmark to make the “plopcorn” call.  Haunted will wax-lyrically about comparing it to The Room or The Greasy Strangler; a true purveyor of Plopcorn (guess which side he was on in the great The Room Debate of 2017).

So what is it that defines a Plopcorn movie?  Let’s look at some of the more obvious choices.

Lack of budget / Poor production

Certainly this can make for some interesting moments but a lack of funding can also make people creative by making them think outside the box.  A lack of budget can also stop you finding quality actors to help get the film’s message across.  There’d be no cameos, no dramatic pauses and no pathos being portrayed by only a glance across the room (Ah!  Not that again!).

We’ve all seen the episodes of Doctor Who where there are wobbly sets, monsters wrapped in bubble wrap and the less said about the Bertie Bassett monster the better, but those were products of a time where money wasn’t been ploughed into the television production.

Films though have to secure their funding before production even begins so someone has to cost these things up.  Now we all know that things run over budget, but surely there’s no excuse for having a set of stairs that end in a wall?  Well, there usually is an excuse and that excuse is usually we didn’t realise you could tell.

Poor production often leads to poor editing just like fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering.

 

The occasional microphone boom in shot or reflection of the camera can be a real delight and highlights the lack of money and rush to get a film out.

The digital watch that sometimes appears on camera in films set in medieval times is another favourite and sometimes these tropes are highlighted in other movies like Black Dynamite (available on Netflix) to make fun at themselves.

Poor acting

 This goes hand in hand with lack of budget.  Where you have journeymen actors filling rolls that require a lead, you often find that actors/actresses just can’t step up to mark.  Often you find it’s the first acting job for some of these starlets and sometimes their last.

 

In The Room, Tommy Wiseau tries to convey the anger that he’s been accused of hitting Lisa, the love of his life and then in the next line, saying hello to his best mate.

Given a line, “I did not hit her! Oh hi Mark” where does he go with it?  He jumps directly from anger to being pally with his mate in record-breaking speed just to show the range of his acting chops…  It doesn’t work.

There are also those films where you heavily promote the star of the film only to find that he pops up in only 2 scenes, says 3 lines and leaves with a boat load of cash for the pleasure (I’m looking at you Erik Estrada!).

The other actors in these films tend to be ‘no-names’ or TV movie of the week types of actors; people who are semi well-known by never amounted to anything other than guest performers on Days of our lives or other such TV shows.

Terrible Story and Script

Sometimes however it’s not the actors fault.  Sometimes the stories are just too ‘out there’ to make any sense.  In the writers head there is often a plan of getting from A to C via B but when D and E come into it you end up with a script and story that bears no resemblance to the initial idea.

Take for example the film, Rubber (review to come).  In essence the story of a Tyre that gains sentience sounds like a really awesome Plopcorn type film.  What then follows is some David Lynch-esque film that sees the Tyre falling in love with a woman that it sees in a shower and when people get close to her, it uses its telekinetic powers to blow their brains out.  There’s also a scene at the beginning where the Tyre ‘enjoys’ rolling over a coke can, crushing it under it’s supposed weight, highlighting it’s psychotic tendencies.

All this, why a group of people watch on from a hill outside town with binoculars. And that doesn’t even cover the opening scene with the cop and car.  Bizarre!

Exposure

 One of the things that has to define whether a film is true Plopcorn material or not has to be the exposure it got.  Was the film heavily promoted?  Was it a straight-to-DVD kinda film?  Has it gained cult status after it was released?

There are a myriad number of films out there that gain cult status after release.  Tucker and Dale vs Evil is one that slipped under radar back in 2010.  It was released in only 30 theatres across America and grossed $52,843 at the box office from a budget of $5m.  International takings amounted to $4,525,678 which meant it almost made its money back.  Since then, it’s been picked up by Netflix in the UK and that will probably have pushed it over the line into breaking even.

This is all despite the film getting positive reviews and garnering a rotten tomatoes score of 6.9/10.  The acting is pretty good, it has a reasonably good story (whilst throwing some nice twists in), and it even starts Alan Tudyk (what more could you ask for?)

Back in the 80’s and 90’s (way before the internet was a big thing) the only way to hear about these films was to either be lucky enough to catch a late night creature feature on the TV or perhaps watching programs like Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Thankfully we have the internet now and websites like our own are crowing about the marvelous world of B movies giving these hidden gems a chance to finally see the light of day.

Back in the late 80s I remember watching Jonathan Ross hosting The Incredibly Strange Film Show and getting to see some of these wonderful films afterwards.  It was after this late one night that I first saw ‘A boy and his dog’, a post-apocalyptic film about a boy (Don Johnson) and his telepathic dog.

It was amazing!  A talking dog, end of the world type stuff and a hidden city looking for a saviour as their genetic stock was depleting.  What followed was a classic film that had a lovely twist at the end but totally off the grid as a film considering it was released in 1975.

Without that show however, I would never had known about it.

Cameos

Another thing to hope for when you see a Plopcorn movie is a good cameo.  We love a good cameo; especially where you get a famous actor that’s not worried about making a ton of money any more but wants to be in a film that seems like a lot of fun.  The Sharknado series is a good example of this.

You get people literally queuing up to be eaten by a shark for the fun of it.  I’d hate to call some of them stars, but people like Jedward, Jerry Springer and Gary Busey (God bless Gary Busey!) all have appeared in a Sharknado film without detriment to their acting CV.

Our favourite cameo has to be Walter Koenig (of Star Trek fame) who appears in Neil Stryker and the Tyrant of Time.  It was fantastic to see him in a film that was produced on a budget of allegedly only $100,000.

The pure joy of seeing a celebrity getting stuck into some really ham acting – and realising that it doesn’t get any better than what they are seeing must make them roll their eyes in their caravans/rooms at the end of a day.  Imagine knowing that you’ve signed up to a real turkey of a film and that you can’t get out of your contract… it’s enough to drive a star to drink… if they’re not already alcoholics

So there you have it, the things that make a bad film good.  Whether it be the poor acting, a terrible script or even a combination of all of the above these are all things that contribute to a true Plopcorn film.

Let us know below what you think makes a bad movie good?