Last weekend up to Halloween, the cable channel American Movie Classics
(AMC) broadcast a bunch of horror films, monster films, and (some) sf
films. There were some good ones, some classics, and some stinkers. But
some of those stinkers were on my Guilty Pleasures list. Those are the
movies whose plots make no sense, the dialogue is corny, the effects are
bad miniatures on bad blue screen, the direction is awol and the acting
doesn't exist. Yet I enjoyed many of them, mostly because I remembered
seeing them as a kid on our local "Chiller Theatre" tv program. Also,
they're so incredibly bad, they're a little good. Kinda like "Plan 9 from
Outer Space". Here are some from my list:
"The Tarantula": mad scientist (there's always a mad scientist) tries to
invent a growth hormone which he can use to grow giant foodstuffs in order
to feed our growing population. For some unstated reason, he decides to
experiment on humans. One of the human subjects goes into a rage and
injects the scientist with his own formula. The subject dies, but not
before he frees a tarantula (as he tries to trash the lab) that has been
injected with the hormone. The scientist also dies as a side effect of the
hormone. Once he dies, the plot shifts to the tarantula, who has grown to
enormous size, threatening a desert town. In the end, the air force
destroys the monster. This movie starts out as your basic mad scientist
warning movie (don't tamper with nature, don't play God, etc) and shifts
into a bad monster movie. Some of the dialogue is (unintentionally)
hilarious. At one point, the townspeople try to destroy the tarantula by
placing a cache of explosives in it's path, and detonating it when the
tarantula passes over it. The hero turns to the sheriff and asks if the
dynamite will stop the tarantula, the sheriff responds, "It might, and then
it might just blow a hole in the highway!" (well, you have to see it ;-)).
At the end, the state police captain tells an underling to contact the
local air force base and request planes to attack the monster. The air
force obliges. I wonder about that phone call, and the base commander who
just happened to have some spare planes ready to attack a giant tarantula.
"The Mantis": scientists (there go those pesky scientists again), set off
an atomic explosion in Antarctica. The narrator has already informed us
that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, so the
Antarctic explosion frees a giant prehistoric mantis trapped in the ice at
the North Pole. American military men at a radar base discover the mantis,
and a team of scientists are sent to the base. Since one of the scientists
is a woman, we are treated to a bizarre sub-plot in which every soldier
wants to either dance with her, flirt, or just stand next to her. The
mantis decides to take off for New York City and nests in one of the
tunnels under the Hudson River. The military comes up with some really
powerful DDT and destroys it.
That's just a few of them. Feel free to join in and post your own "SF
movies that are so bad, they're good".
adios amigos
john
