
What comes to mind when you think of the worst movies ever made? The films of Ed Wood certainly rank: there is “Bride of the Monster,” in which Bela Lugosi feeds his victims to an octopus puppet, or “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” where gravestones get easily knocked over and the flying saucers are UFOs on strings, or, my personal favorite, Wood’s bizarre pseudo-documentary on transvestitism, “Glen or Glenda.”
Herschell Gordon Lewis is a contender as well; his philosophy is that the audience just wants to see blood and gore – no matter how fake it looks – so it doesn’t matter if the actors are clearly reading their lines of the palm of their hand.
Then we have one of my personal favorites, Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls". Despite being epically bad, this movie is an enduring classic, and I will fight to the death anyone who says otherwise.
These days, the advent of the digital camera has opened the world of filmmaking to anyone who cares to participate. As a result, we have seen some truly amazing independent films (“Combat Shock” is available at Wild and Woolly – just saying), and we also get some really bad ones.
(Of course, mainstream movies can be really terrible, too...)
Baxter Avenue Theater presents a midnight showing of “The Room” tomorrow night. Tommy Wiseau is the man responsible – he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in this film about a man whose girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend. According to Wikipedia, some unnamed source has dubbed this movie “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad movies,” and it has appropriately gained a pretty intense cult following.
Words can only say so much, though – just watch the trailer below to see what I mean. You may not believe it after watching it, but I assure you that this is actually a real thing which was created to be taken seriously. Allegedly.
Baxter Avenue Theater is located at 1250 Bardstown Road. More information about the theater and ticket sales can be found at the theater’s website.
Image courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes.