Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Guilty Pleasure Movies (2014 edition)

This is topic Guilty Pleasure Movies (2014 edition) in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-25-2014, 12:52 PM:

We haven't done this in a long time and it's always an interesting subject.

Name some movies that are your favorites, even though they were critical or commercial bombs. Movies that you know in your heart aren't really that great but dammit, you enjoy 'em and that's what counts. Movies you pull out once in a while just because YOU like 'em and the hell with what everyone else thinks.

One of mine (which I just watched last night) was "Gator" from 1976. This was when Burt Reynolds was in his prime "good ol' boy" moviemaking days.

The movie is a sequel to "White Lightning," which I've never seen but this one stands on its own. Burt Reynolds plays a moonshiner who is just out of prison and it coerced by the feds into working to gather evidence against an old friend of his who is running a racketeering operation. Laruen Hutton plays a TV reporter who becomes Burt's love interest, Jack Weston is a federal officer from New York who gets in trouble trying to "fit in" in Georgia, and Alice Ghostley is a crazy cat lady who has the "keys" to all the evidence needed.

The best part of the movie is the 'bad guy,' played by Jerry Reed who is one of the best movie villains ever. He is truly sinister. There is also a hilarious chase scene at the beginning of the movie featuring about 10 boats and a helicopter.

The sad thing about this is, it is a "Scope" movie but is only available as a 1.33:1 TV-styled cropped version. It looks like crap. But, it wasn't a huge hit and the critics hated it, so it'll probably never come out in its proper format (until Burt Reynolds dies, maybe).

This movie currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes but dad-gummit, I just really enjoy it. I would give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 02-25-2014, 01:34 PM:

Two Clint Eastwood movies which always seem to be off the radar but I think are great.
The Eiger Sanction 1975
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974

Devils Advocate 1997 mainly because I love Al Pacino's over the top performance and I just love the movie.

Murder By Death 1976
Great cast and plenty of funny stuff in it especially Peter Falk.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-25-2014, 04:07 PM:

You know a movie is a guilty pleasure if you're embarrassed or at least feel like you have to explain yourself if someone spots a particularly strange or bad movie on your shelf.

I mentioned these movies in the last thread:

Buckaroo Banzai
The Toxic Avenger
Team America: World Police
Mystery Men
Flash Gordon
Heavy Metal

Some others that came to mind, some of which I actually own on DVD or Blu-ray (or both):

Road House
Big Trouble In Little China
The Long Kiss Goodnight
The Ice Harvest (RIP Harold Ramis)
Wild Things
The Mummy
Commando

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension fits perfectly into this "guilty pleasures" list. It's one of the bigger cult movies of the 80's. On one level it's very odd and stupid. Watching it now, 30 years after its 1984 release only increases the level of odd and stupid intensity. Yet somehow the movie manages to work because all involved fearlessly embrace the concept, right down to the characters marching in Sepulveda Dam for the end credits (and its catchy, weird music). The movie did have a good, if odd, storyline and its effects were pretty good & unique especially for 1980's standards. Peter Weller was good in the lead role, but John Lithgow stole just about every scene he inhabited. Christopher Lloyd was "John Bigboote" before he become "Dr. Emmett Brown."

Mystery Men and Big Trouble In Little China worked on some of the odd levels as Buckaroo Banzai, although both were more conventional movies. The end title music for Big Trouble In Little China makes my skin crawl. The DVD has a music video of it, which would be a good method of torture on unsuspecting viewers.

Road House is one of those it's so bad it's good movies. Its dated, late 80's shit-kicker fashions makes it even more campy.

Team America: World Police has to be one of the most fearlessly, deliberately offensive movies ever made. Its "unrated" version went for broke in its love scene involving anatomically inert puppets.

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 02-25-2014, 05:45 PM:

"Facing The Giants" 2007. I'm running it in my theatre now.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 02-25-2014, 06:07 PM:

Tank Girl

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-25-2014, 06:37 PM:

Pretty much any of the anti-communist propaganda B-movies made during the early '50s by writers, directors, actors and technicians who were either trying to get themselves off the blacklist, or avoid getting on to it. Most of them are so low budget, made so quickly and half-heartedly and so stereotype-laden that I find them hilariously funny. I was a Communist for the FBI, Big Jim McLain (in which John Wayne literally kicks a commie spy's ass in a fight scene at the end) and The Red Menace are probably the classics of the genre. There are one or two that actually aren't that bad: The Woman on Pier 13 has some nice noir-ish photography, and Five Steps to Danger a halfway decent plot (although the basic premise is shamelessly ripped off from Detour). But most tick the "unintentionally funny" box with a great big magic marker.

The story is basically the same in all of them: a nice-but-dim hero is recruited by a glamorous commie blonde, is enticed and/or blackmailed into various un-American activities, sees the error of his ways, tries to get out and narrowly escapes a sticky end at the hand of the commie ringleader, who is usually overweight, has bad teeth, greasy hair and a vaguely European accent.

Cliche-laden aviation disaster movies from the '70s (the genre that Airplane parodied, much of which was made for TV), usually called something like Panic on Flight 123, can also be quite fun.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 02-25-2014, 06:45 PM:

To my earlier reply of the original 1967 Casino Royale, I’d have to add Mike Judge’s 2006 sci-fi comedy Idiocracy, which played only in a handful of theaters for a few weeks before being relegated to DVD and Comedy Central. For those who haven’t seen it, the premise is that an Army private and a hooker are involved in an experiment in suspended animation that suffers a budget cut right after it begins. After being forgotten by the Army they don’t wake up for another 500 years, into an America that is being run by a sports drink company, where Starbucks sells handjobs, Wal-Mart sells law degrees, the most popular TV show consists of one guy getting repeatedly kicked in the balls, and they are the smartest people alive. It’s about as low-brow as it sounds, but it's also pretty inventive and convulsively funny, and always good for a re-watch.

Posted by Donald Brown (Member # 5427) on 02-25-2014, 07:10 PM:

Mike:
My dad took me to see Gator at the old Hyannis Theater on Cape Cod. To this day, I recall being doubled over in my seat in tears of laughter every time some misfortune befell one of Burt's adversaries, a character named Bones! I never knew the actor's name, but he was the perfect hapless villain!
Don Brown

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-25-2014, 07:36 PM:

Yep, Bones was hilarious but scary! (Why do they call you Bones? "Cause I tell 'em to.")

His name was William Engesser.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 02-25-2014, 08:40 PM:

Hawk the Slayer

Krull

Time Bandits

Posted by Clint Koch (Member # 1179) on 02-25-2014, 10:01 PM:

The Burbs
Stargate
The Lost Boys
Raising Arizona
The Wrong Guys

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 02-26-2014, 05:05 AM:

FADE TO BLACK [thumbsup]

HOTRODS TO HELL [puke]

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 02-26-2014, 06:45 AM:

The Fountainhead
Infra-Man
Fire Sale

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 02-26-2014, 10:14 AM:

quote: Clint Koch
The Lost Boys

No, no, no. That can't be anybody's guilty pleasure. That's a damn eighties classic right there.

My ultimate guilty pleasure is "Sons of Provo", a Mormon-genre mockumentary about a boy band. If you know the culture, it's hilarious. And it has one of the more creative DVD menu structures, where the star stands among the buttons and, in character, explains what they do. The longer you sit there and don't make a choice, the more nervous he gets. In one of the sub-menus, he'll start bugging you to choose something because he has a really hot date at Arctic Circle to get to. Eventually, he walks out of the shot and the sequence repeats.

The DVD also has a "commentary on the commentary" feature, where the stars do a commentary over, and about, their own movie commentary. It's a joke that gets old fast and they bail about ten minutes in after pointing this out, but hey...why not.

It's just stupid, stupid funny. About the dumbest thing you will ever see.

Posted by Mike Peterson (Member # 4049) on 02-26-2014, 11:28 AM:

Cliffhanger
Demolition Man
Robin Hood - Men in Tights
The Princess Bride
The Rock

(Guess I have a thing for Sly and Carey Elwes)

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 02-26-2014, 11:47 AM:

The Princess Bride is a true classic; it's high on my personal list of the best movies I've ever seen.

I just thought of another great movie to add to this list, though: Army of Darkness. I love that one, too. "This is my BOOMSTICK!" [Big Grin]

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 02-26-2014, 03:04 PM:

> The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

I second that. I was one of the 3 people nationwide that paid to see Buckaroo theatrically when it was in first run. Been a favorite ever since.

There are so many bad movies that are actually a lot of fun, that it is hard to pick out only a few. Some off the top of my head:

Night Of The Lepus, giant killer bunny rabbits.

Black Sheep (2006 Version), killer man eating sheep.

Just Imagine (1930 Version), Was it a musical? Was it a comedy? Was it a science fiction film? Did it make any sense? What were they thinking.

Candy (1969), This film seem like it started out as another softcore porno about a young high school girl being lusted after by a bunch of dirty old men. However, somewhere between inception and filming, they managed to sign for the diry old men: Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Matthau, John Astin, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Ringo Starr. There is not more than a few seconds of nudity in the film, but watching all those big stars humiliate themselves is a riot.

Blindman, Tony Anthony plays a blind gunfighter in the old west, with his seeing eye horse.

Twister (1996), Little plot, over the top acting, but a lot of fun.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 02-26-2014, 04:13 PM:

quote: Mark Ogden
Idiocracy

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-27-2014, 10:02 AM:

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
Just Imagine (1930 Version), Was it a musical? Was it a comedy? Was it a science fiction film? Did it make any sense? What were they thinking.

You could almost say the same thing of Things to Come. To a large extent it was rescued by the visuals, special effects, music and some of the ideas in the script. But for acting and directing, it's almost into Ed Wood territory - surprising, given that Raymond Massey and Ralph Richardson weren't exactly amateur dramatic society calibre. It is said that William Cameron Menzies posted armed guards around the entrance to the studio to keep H.G. Wells out towards the end of the shooting, because he'd insist in screwing up the continuity of scenes that would otherwise have been OK by having a character make a long, rambling political speech to camera, which he would then refuse to allow to be edited down.

I remember once seeing it at a Sunday afternoon show at a campus theatre, and the classic dialogue line "Oh, darling, I really, really have to go" ... "Of course dear, because if you don't go now, you won't be able to go for another four years" (they meant going to Mars, but in British slang nowadays "to go" means using the toilet) earned howls of laughter and a round of applause.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-27-2014, 10:18 AM:

quote: Frank Cox
The Princess Bride is a true classic; it's high on my personal list of the best movies I've ever seen.

Agreed. The Princess Bride really isn't a "guilty pleasure" movie. It's just an all around great movie. There is nothing to feel guilty about with liking that movie. The only thing that should make anyone feel guilty is watching The Princess Bride and not enjoying it.

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 02-27-2014, 12:01 PM:

For a few years, while mom and dad worked in the snack bar/projection, our kids would be marooned in the office for hours. We took to sometimes picking up $3 DVD's when we were out buying groceries. So via them, here's a really guilty pleasure: Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore in "Music & Lyrics". Brad Garrett is hilarious as always but the whole overdone parody on early 80's pop music is pretty funny. Of course, I'm a guy who likes good movies and bad, there's just something about bad movies.

Posted by Jeff Kane (Member # 6372) on 02-27-2014, 12:10 PM:

The Black Hole - Saw it as a kid, loved Slim Pickens.
Hot Resort - Typical mid-80s Golan/Globus T&A movie and truly a guilty pleasure but damn funny
Moscow on the Hudson - I have a fascination with the cold war plus Robin Williams
Club Paradise - Peter O'Toole, Jimmy Cliff, Eugene Levy.. three people I NEVER expected to see in a movie together.
The Time Machine - Yeah yeah I know... but Orlando Jones steals it.

Posted by Mike Peterson (Member # 4049) on 02-27-2014, 02:24 PM:

Ok. The people have spoken and I will remove The Princess Bride as it isn't as guilty of a pleasure I initially thought.

It will replaced by Big Man on Campus (1989) starring Bob Maloogaloogaloogaloogalooga

Posted by Matthew McBride (Member # 6598) on 02-28-2014, 03:09 PM:

I would have to add

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
IT(the tv movie)

Not sure if the first turtles movie is a guilty pleasure, if it is, then it's one of mine.

Posted by Donald Brown (Member # 5427) on 02-28-2014, 05:21 PM:

Although I don't think that it would ever live up to my expectations today, for years I desperately wanted to see a movie called Invasion Of The Blood Farmers. It made the rounds at a few Boston area drive-ins and would often appear on the marquee at the Hyannis Theater on Cape Cod as a midnight show.
Invasion Of The Blood Farmers is one of those personal objectives that's so elusive that it could never really satisfy one's expectations!

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 02-28-2014, 06:16 PM:

Two Adventure movies!

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother. 1975

The Adventures Of Raggedy Ann And Andy. 1977

A zombie horror flick!

Shock Waves. 1977 Peter Cushing!