The Pleasure of 'Terrible' Movies

Ed Wood Jr.

Peoples' idea of what makes a movie good or bad is completely subjective. I've always made a promise to not mock or belittle someone simply because their taste toward a specific film differs from that of my own.

Yet despite the subjective nature of peoples' taste, there are some films that possess an overall consensus which results in them being labelled as so bad that they're hugely entertaining in their own right.

The commonly-claimed atrocious acting, feeble directing, shambolic writing and overall lack of quality in these films inadvertently (unless the film was 'deliberately bad') helps to generate a cult of admirers who extract plentiful quantities of pleasure from these 'trashy' texts.

Ed Wood Jr. was was a director who's notorious for a whole body of work which was so bad that it was supposedly good.

For those who are unfamiliar, Ed Wood was a Hollywood filmmaker who lived between the years 1924 to 1978. His original intentions were aimed at making serious science fiction films for audiences. He truly believed that what he was making was a genuine Hollywood flick without any irony amongst his texts.  His obsessive admiration for the cinematic art form was truly remarkable. Sadly, this admiration was what inevitably became his major downfall during his lifetime.

Because you see, Wood was so meticulously obsessed with the visual aesthetics of how every single scene in his films were shot, that he ended up failing to pay attention to any of the other characteristics that were vital to make his features function properly in the narrative frame that he had chosen to work within.

The result of this single minded focus was remarkable. Props would get knocked over during scenes (without any effort to remove such clumsy cock-ups during post-production), dialogue was so poor that even a toddler could write it with their own feet, the scripts often made little coherent sense, and the acting was categorically appalling (at one point, in Plan 9 From Outer Space the producers ran out of money, so replaced one of the stars halfway through the story with a completely different actor; giving viewers zero indication of this sudden and seemingly nonsensical switch).

All of the above problems slipped by, completely unnoticed by Wood. His unswayed attention with the look and style of every shot meant that he approved all of this mess and released his films without being any the wiser.

The final result ended out to be nothing more than diabolical. His films are a complete and utter shambles from start to finish. In fact, the words shambolic and diabolical don't even do the films of Ed Wood justice. When you watch his work, the question which keeps continuously springing from the back of viewers' minds is "is this a joke?"

Because that is how they come across to anyone who possesses even a shred of cinema literacy (and considering the era that humans have been living in for over the past century, that would constitute as pretty much anyone who is over the age of two). Wood's work is so poor that it is hard to believe that anyone involved in these films really were that oblivious to the mess that they had signed up for.

But that really is the true tragedy of this story. Wood really did have no idea, so when his films were torn to shreds by the vocal opinions held by the viewing public, it took him genuinely by surprise.

Eventually, Wood had enough and took early retirement from Hollywood. He decided to dedicate the rest of his days to writing transgender erotica for a far smaller audience than that of the cinema going public (Wood himself was an out and open transvestite during his lifetime, which would explain such a sudden shift in creativity).

After his death, numerous individuals began to alter their opinion on his work. From out of the blue, cults stemmed from numerous corners of society. These viewing cults celebrated the life and work of this once disapproved director. These individuals were still very aware of the state of Wood's films; the only difference being that they had learned to extract pleasure from within these frequently-disliked texts.

Films such as Plan 9 From Out of Space are now commonly rated as "one of the greatest bad films of all time". It really is - in the minds of many - so bad, that it is good.

Not only are his films now loved by many for their bad design and nature, but Wood himself is also a figure who is adored. So much so, that in 1994, Tim Burton made the film Ed Wood; a biographical film which starred Johnny Depp and chronicled the life of this notorious man.

Burton's film celebrated Wood's love for cinema and was even visually executed in the same aesthetic layout as the films which the man was so famed for making.

The 1994 Ed Wood did not ridicule or belittle Wood in anyway, but portrayed him in an incredibly positive light, using him as a celebration for the love of cinema. The romanticized passion which Ed Wood possessed is shared by many directors - examples include acclaimed individuals such as Stanley Kubric, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton himself. The only difference was that such a passion affected his ability to make films, unlike the names of the filmmakers listed above, who all went on to reach much acclaim throughout their careers.

Ed Wood's story really is quite remarkable, as it provides us with a perfect example of how universally disliked movies can be simultaneously loved by the very same people who loathe them.

This contradiction of the film-so-good-that-it's-bad is not only exclusive to Wood's work. It is a phenomenon that haunts numerous filmmakers who are still alive and working to this very day.

Take Uwe Boll as an example. Uwe Boll was born on June 22nd 1965 and is known for directing appalling video game adaptations. Every characteristic of his films - from the immensely wooden acting, poorly produced scripts, nauseating special effects and the frustratingly high-volume heavy metal soundtracks that play throughout - are nothing short of a cinematic disaster.

But again, people just seem to be unable to help but watch these movies, and even more so, cannot resist watching Boll himself; mainly because he likes to upload videos of himself angrily challenging Michael Bay and film critics to boxing matches, in the hope that after beating them up, they will cease to mock him and his work (I'm not making this up, google the guy and see for yourself).

The only difference in Boll over Ed Wood is that people like to take the a more bullying attitude when it comes to Boll. He is not celebrated for his love of film, but more so because of his seemingly ill-educated approach to this art form. People love to laugh at Boll for being so hopelessly clueless and angry all the time. His persona gives off the idea that he hasn't got the foggiest for what he is doing, and forces people to constantly wonder why he even got into making films in the first place. Boll's involvement in cinema is about as baffling as say the Pope taking up a career in the adult entertainment industry.

Along side Boll and Wood is Tommy Wiseau; a man who's main claim to fame (if you can call it that, as this name hasn't really managed to bleed in to popular public awareness and probably never will) occurred after starring in, writing and directing an unbelievable piece of work called The Room.

I honestly do not know if Wiseau is either a comedy matermind, or just the world's most arrogant lifeform, but no matter which of the two it is, The Room really is one of the funniest pecies of work which you will ever see; simply because of how insanely awful it is.

This film contains a sex scene which lasts for more or less ten whole minutes of the text's narrative. Now that statement may sound as though the film slips into the pornographic realm, but it actually throws the narrative into the genre of utter comedy gold. After the first two minutes of this scene, the viewer begins to realize that there is quite clearly something bizarre with the pacing. After four minutes, the viewer suddenly becomes amazed at the fact that this scene is still going on. The following six minutes are easily the funniest six minutes of the viewer's life; growing in hilarity as every second on the clock ticks by.

There is probably a form of snobbery behind loving films that are declared as dreadful by popular consensus. Our species does love to sneer at what we like to assume is beneath us (the popularity of X-Factor auditions and the public's condemnation of Jeremy Kyle's contestants help to amplify this idea).

Yet regardless of whatever psychological motivations linger amongst this oxymoron of people loving movies that they simultaneously hate, it is most certainly an admiration which is shared by a number of viewers and filmmakers of today's world.

But then there are films that are consensually labelled as just plain crap. I mean look at Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I've ever met anyone who's ever claimed to have learned to love anything that stemmed from such a steaming turd of a text. But then maybe such people do exist out there. After all, taste is subjective and differs from person to person.