Best Horror Movies Part Two: The Bad

Recaps

By TheMiki | Wednesday, October 26, 2011 | 1:00 pm | 28 Comments
Tagged: , , , , , , ,
Posted in: Recaps

Hey hey, Gasmii.  Now that we’ve taken a stroll through the macabre, well-crafted, suspenseful films that make up “The Good” it’s time to take a little vacation on the low-rent side of cinema.  Today we’re going to be looking at movies that are GoodBad.  These movies are not scary.  Some are gory, most have ample amounts of nudity, and all are fun as hell to watch.  If the first list was Time Magazine then this list is Maxim.  Because sometimes you don’t want to think.  Sometimes you just want to see slutty girls get chased by guys with axes.  Hence I present to you, in no particular order,  TheMiki’s Halloween Horror Picks Part 2: The Bad.

Jennifer's Body

Jennifer’s Body

I don’t care how much shit I take for it, I love this movie.  I hate Megan Fox and whatever kind of ranting you want to do about how she’s a terrible actress and has no soul or whatever I fully support.  This movie is so awesome that even Megan Fox can’t suck the joy out of it.  Written by Diablo Cody, whom you know as the stripper-turned-screenwriter or Juno and United States of Tara, this movie never takes the full leap into being a comedy but it certainly never takes itself seriously.  Jennifer is an evil bitch. She meets some boys in a band, goes off with them in their van and then reappears vomiting tar and hungering for the flesh of her classmates.  This is one of my favorite cheesy flicks to throw in around Halloween and it will remain so no matter how much credibility I lose for saying so.

The Faculty

Admit it: You all like this movie too.  It’s basically Puppet Masters in a high school, a fact which is pointed out by the resident anti-social goth student played by Clea DuVall.  Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnet, Jordana Brewster, Salma Hayek, John Stewart, and plethora of other famous Hollywood types get together for this one, and the results are just so damn watchable.  Famke Jamsen (Jean Grey from X-Men) is awesome as a mousy teacher who turns into a super badass after alien possession, and watching her head run around the parking lot all by itself is just awesome horror movie fun.  The mystery of the movie (who is the alien host and how do we stop it from spreading) is not particularly hard to unravel, but who cares.  There are some genuinely scary scenes here, but more in the loud noises following sustained tension hooks sort of way and less in the get in your head and give you nightmares sense.

****

Freddy Vs Jason

When Wes Craven did New Nightmare he took the whole Freddy franchise and elevated it into genuinely well-done cinema.  While he was busy doing that, the creators of Friday the 13th were sending Jason to outer space, where his cryogenically frozen corpse came back to life and slaughtered the inexplicably hot crew of a spaceship in the future.  Since both sides had to find common ground to make Freddy Vs Jason, we wind up with something that’s brutal and gory and kinda cool, but which never strays far from its cheesy ass source material.  Set a generation after the original Freddy movies, this one ignores New Nightmare entirely and presumes that most of us weren’t really paying all that much attention in Freddy’s Dead either.  Continuity be damned! We’ve got horror villains to pit against each other!  Well, first they work together.  Freddy can’t kill anyone anymore because all his power comes from fear, and the adults in the town of WhereverthehellElmStreetisVille have gone to great lengths to make sure their kids never hear a word about his existence.  They also drug them with anti-dream meds so they’re unstalkable while asleep too.  So, Freddy pulls in Jason to kill a bunch of teenagers in their beds so that rumors about Freddy will start flying around again and he’ll regain enough strength to kill.  Only once he does, Jason doesn’t want to back off and just let him do his thing.  So they fight to the death for the right to kill some attractive teenagers.  Endlessly entertaining and full of the creative deaths we’ve all come to expect from both of these franchises.

The Devil’s Rejects

This one almost made the Good list, but in the end it wound up here for a number of reasons, the main one of which is that it’s just a cross-country killing spree movie with no real plot or substance.  It’s a damn good one of those, but it sure as hell didn’t give me nightmares.  Rob Zombie reminds us all that it doesn’t matter what you look like just so long as you have a record deal, by parading his way too hot for him wife across the screen for 90 minutes, and I don’t blame him.  I’d be showing off too.  I actually didn’t like House of 1,000 Corpses at all, so I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie.  If you want to watch a hot chick and some really not hot dudes torture and kill a bunch of people for no reason then this is the flick for you.  Watch for the scene where one of the killers is using the freshly carved off face of a woman’s husband as a fucking sock puppet while he talks to her.  And don’t feel too bad if you laugh during it because I sure as hell did.

Troll 2

Most of the Bad Good horror movies that I like are just sort of fun and kinda dumb.  Troll 2 is so bad that it loops back around to good, and then collapses in on itself and damn near rips a hole in the very fabric of existence through sheer mind-numbing awfulness.  There is not a single redeeming thing about this movie.  There aren’t even any fucking trolls in it!  Just goblins, who stalk a family who go to live on a farm for reasons that are never really made clear.  They’re trading houses with another family for a short time, but it’s written in a way that suggests that families trade houses all the time and you already know all about that and there’s no need to get into a bunch of wordy exposition to tell you why.  According to IMDB fun facts, the director is still furious over how poorly this film was received and can’t understand why people don’t like it.  Keep that in mind while you’re watching it, please.  This guy was Uwe Boll 20 years before Uwe Boll made movies.  The acting is unbelievably bad, the dialogue seems too ridiculous to be serious, and the soundtrack is just… weird.  This could very well be the worst movie ever made.

Scream 4

Did all of you give up on the Scream franchise after the cinematic abortion that was Scream 3?  I don’t blame you one bit if you did.  I had zero interest in watching this movie, but a friend brought it over along with a lot of wine and I figured no matter how bad it sucked we could drink and mock it.  This fourth installment is actually the best one since the first though.  Better characters, better action, and a way better ending.  Sure, it’s still part four in a series that never took itself very seriously anyway, but it is fully worth renting for an evening.  Pretty much every living member of the original cast reprises their role in this one, and one of those Culkin kids from the Culkin Lunch Ticket Farm run by Mr and Mrs Culkin does a great job as the disaffected movie obsessed friend for a new generation.

House on Haunted Hill

Remade from the Vincent Price classic, this is the story of a very wealthy man obsessed with scares.  His wife is cruel and horrible, and he’s not much better really.  For the wife’s birthday party invitations are sent out to five strangers offering them each a check for one million dollars if they stay in a spooky house overnight.  Only it turns out that the house used to be psychiatric hospital and it is haunted as fuck.  It also has an elaborate security system that locks everyone in and won’t let them leave.  Hating each other as much as they do, husband and wife both assume the lockdown is the other’s idea of a joke, but they are very very wrong.  If you’ve seen the original then you know that the concept of strangers staying overnight in a haunted house has been done to death, but this one does it really well.  Much better than the remake of The Haunting or that godawful Thirteen Ghosts, which had so much potential and then dissolved into cheesy crap (spoiler alert: The Thirteen Ghosts are defeated with LOVE. I’m not kidding. Love).  This movie does atmosphere and suspense really well.  The story is sorta thrown together feeling, but the creepiness more than makes up for it.

Trick R Treat

I watched this movie based on a Netflix recommendation last year and I’m still trying to figure out why no one (including myself) ever heard of the damn thing.  It’s far and away the best horror anthology to come out in the past fifteen years, and while it doesn’t hold up as well on the second viewing (some plot holes become obvious the second time around), it’s still a solid little entry in the mindless horror genre.  So why should you have heard of this?  Well, first of all it’s pretty obvious that this flick had a budget bigger than most direct to DVD rubbish you never hear about.  Second, the cast is full of actors you’ve heard of and seen in multiple respectable movies.  There’s nothing really new here, but there’s plenty that’s worth watching.  The story involving the schoolbus is especially cool.

The Wicker Man

Spoiler alert: The above trailer is not the real trailer. It’s all scenes from the real movie, but re-edited to look like a goofy comedy.  I found it on accident while looking for the real trailer and felt like it should really be included.  The real trailer is below if you wanna watch it.

Nick Cage in possibly the worst movie he’s ever made, and we’re talking about Nick Cage here.  That’s like saying, “Lindsay Lohan making the worst life decision she’s ever made” or “Britney Spears being especially classless.”  This movie is worth watching ONLY IF you’re really drunk, you’re expecting it to suck, or you’ve just finished watching Troll 2 and want something else almost that bad.  Nick Cage wears a bear suit for some inexplicable reason, there’s unwarranted singing and laugh-out-loud dialogue and nothing good to say about this movie at all.  While I’m a huge fan of straight to DVD low-budget crap that’s so bad it’s good, it’s even better when that unwatchable crap had a huge budget and starred actors who will be wishing they could Alan Smithee themselves out of the credits.

Sharktopus

I was trying really hard to avoid having an entire list of made for Sci-Fi Channel dreck and movies that can’t possibly have been serious, like Jack Frost or Gingerdead Man.  This one though… It just needs a shout-out.  Sharktopus tells the gripping story of a shark/octopus hybrid made by the military because the weapons program is constantly funneling money away from nuclear and stealth WMD’s to sew random animals together all Dr. Moreau style.  At the very beginning the sharktopus gets bumped into and his mind control collar falls off and he bails to go on a killing spree, leading us all to wonder why they didn’t attach that fucking thing just a little more securely.  The military guy is, of course, obsessed with bringing in his sharktopus alive and doesn’t care how many beach goers it eats before he can do so.  He calls in a loose cannon, because come on… When your barely legal genetic experiment escapes and starts eating tourists and you want it back in one piece, you call in some guy you have an unspoken complicated past with and who won’t respect your authority.  Oh and you put him on a boat with your nubile young daughter, plucked from a strip club and given some glasses so we’d all believe she’s a super smart science chick.  Only the actress playing her is CLEARLY not from America, but her character is, so enjoy 90 minutes of listening to her hack her way through faking an American accent.  For extra fun check out how many times the sharktopus drastically changes in size from scene to scene.  It’s a lot.

Okay kids, I’m gonna start in on part three so that you have all these lists in time for the holiday weekend.  Check out part one here and look out for the final installment coming soon. Part one is here: http://www.tvgasm.com/moviegasm/the-best-horror-movies-of-all-time-part-one-the-good/

troll-2-02

TheMiki
About

I enjoy mocking other people because it's the only thing I'm really good at, and I think we should all use the gifts God gave us.  My childhood was way more fucked up than yours, and yet I'm a fully productive member of society with no criminal record or bastard children.  As such, listening to coked-out hookers whine about their baby-daddies getting arrested and how they live this life cause their mama didn't breastfeed them makes me want to throw furniture at my TV.  When I'm not tearing down people on television I like to paint, write, drink coffee, hike, and make pathetic attempts to play the guitar, because chicks dig a lady with an instrument.

28 Comments

  1. 1
    sarcasatire sarcasatire
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 3:28 pm

    Thankskilling, anyone?

    A homicidal turkey with taglines like “you just got stuffed!” and silly scenes like him sitting at the kitchen table with the dad of a son he’s looking to kill. Go into it knowing it’s a joke and you won’t be disappointed..as much.

  2. 2
    Jessi
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 5:16 pm

    Piranha 3D! It knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and seeing it in theaters was the most fun I’ve had at the movies in years. It’s not remotely scary, but it is hilarious and gory.

  3. 3
    P-Baby Walker
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 5:52 pm

    The Faculty was my jam back when Josh Hartnett was hot. Then Papa P-Baby informed me that it was totally a scam off of The Thing and then he made me watch The Thing which didn’t have Josh Hartnett but was awesome nonetheless.

  4. 4
    congratsumeathead
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 6:07 pm

    Oh man yes! The Faculty! What a badgoodterribleawesome movie. My friends and I watch it at least once a year just so we can laugh at the part where Josh Hartnett flies over the lockers. Remember Josh Hartnett and his, um, amazing acting? Wonder what he is up to.
    Anyway, awesome list themiki!

  5. 5
    SexyPanda
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 7:46 pm

    Is that Thurman Murman in that Trick R Treat trailer??! SOLD.

  6. 6
    PlathAddict PlathAddict
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 9:31 pm

    @SexyPanda, yes. Yes it is.

  7. 7
    sarcasatire sarcasatire
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 10:09 pm

    Trick R Treat and The Faculty are added to my queue. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of The Faculty, where have I been?

  8. 8
    Hypnotoad Hypnotoad
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 10:41 pm

    Oh god, The Faculty. Rent “Teaching Mrs. Tingle” as well and have yourself a late-90s teenage crapfest.

    I hate Diablo Cody with a blinding passion, but I like “Jennifer’s Body” as well. Thanks to Amanda Seyfried and the cameo from the awesome Amy Sedaris as her mom.

    The original “Wicker Man” was this weird thriller/horror/musical movie. I didn’t love it, but you had to give it credit for being so out there. I haven’t seen the remake, because I heard it was so shitty.

    I watched “House of Wax” (the pointless remake) on cable once. (FYI — there are awesome free on demand crappy horror movies on most cable systems from the Fear Network.) It was so horribly offensive to the art of cinema. It wasn’t even worth it to see Paris Hilton violently killed. (Oh, spoiler — the bitch dies.)

  9. 9
    Liz
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 10:59 pm

    13 Ghosts is my go-to guilty pleasure horror movie. It’s so bad, but so much fun! Also, I’m never sure if I think they should go on the good or the bad lists, but I adore Jeepers Creepers 2 (yes 2, the bus one) and the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Love.

  10. 10
    TheMiki TheMiki
    Posted October 26, 2011 at 11:07 pm

    @Liz — Jeepers Creepers 2 is the most homoerotic movie ever made. Seriously, watch it again and try not to notice how the monster is only interesting in the CONSTANTLY shirtless teenage boys. He’s a creeper all right…

    @Hypnotoad — House of Wax was terrible. Like barely watchable terrible. And if you wanna watch Paris Hilton’s admittedly kinda okay death scene then just look it up on Youtube and save yourself the pain of the rest of the movie. And Teaching Mrs Tingle was too dumb to even be enjoyable in high school, but if you wanted something to accompany The Faculty I would go with Disturbing Behavior. It’s terrible, but it’d make for a good crapfest.

  11. 11
    LadyBaldy LadyBaldy
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 12:44 am

    Wow, you hit so many of my guilty pleasures! Freddy vs. Jason! The House on Haunted Hill! The Devil’s Rejects! All the terrible yet awesome Sci-Fi channel movies! The Wicker Man comedy trailer was fantastic, thanks for sharing.

    Remember when Kevin Williamson was hailed as this amazing genius thanks to Scream and Dawson’s Creek? What the hell happened to that guy? Looks like I need to take a walk over to IMDB. I’m going to check out Scream 4 based on your recommendation.

  12. 12
    JessiMae
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 3:46 am

    “The Faculty” and “Disturbing Behavior” were the BOMB during my teenage years. Josh Hartnett and Nick Stahl more than made up for the sub-par acting and plot lines.

    I love “13 Ghosts.” I don’t care how bad it is — The Jackal freaks me out.

  13. 13
    Classy Drunk classy drunk
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 5:56 am

    Leprechaun in the Hood is the worst, but it’s great because you have the stereotypical gangsters being killed off by a leprechaun. In Compton! But they actually let someone make a sequel which if at all possible was worse than the first.

    Basic cable likes to play crappy movies when they think no one is awake.

  14. 14
    themiki
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 6:12 am

    @Ladybaldy — When I was watching the real trailer after the comedy one I kept expecting the goofy music to start playing, but then I realized that I spent most of that actual movie waiting for some goofy music to start playing… I IMDB’d Kevin Williamson, and he’s responsible for Scream 4, The Faculty, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and currently The Vampire Diaries.

    @JessiMae, I think the fact that 13 Ghosts had so much potential is what pissed me off the most. They spend all this money and creative energy crafting this amazingly creepy house and super scary and effective ghost creatures, and then they pull that leap of faith love bullshit and just flush it all down the toilet.

    @Classy Drunk — I never made it to Leprechaun in da hood (their spelling, not mine) but I have seen Leprechaun in Space and it was just insane-o bad. I have never been a fan of the Leprechaun movies, except for it’s fun to watch Jennifer Aniston embarrass herself in the first one.

  15. 15
    Liz
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 6:43 am

    @themiki – LOL that actually makes complete sense. Then I guess it’s some sort of exploration of homophobia, no?

  16. 16
    Southern_Essence
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 8:26 am

    I love when a “horror” movie bombed so bad at the box office that the producers made the sequel to mock it, i.e. “The Evil Dead” (1981) and “The Return of the Living Dead” (1985). Bruce Campbell is one of the absolute WORST actors when he’s trying to be serious, but “Evil Dead II” and third part of the trilogy, “Army of Darkness”, were so campy and so much fun and he did a wonderful job making fun of the original! Same with “The Return of the Living Dead”….part 2 totally turned it around to poke fun at the original. I totally laughed my ass off on that one!

  17. 17
    c8h10n4o2
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 9:34 am

    I also somehow stumbled onto Trick’r Treat on Netflix Instant and loved it. The Faculty is pretty enjoyable, too. I might have to watch Jennifer’s Body soon, if only out of curiosity.

  18. 18
    themiki
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 9:39 am

    I know I could just google, but the chem nerd in me is refusing to allow that sort of thing.

    c8h10n4o2 = Caffeine?

    I’m almost positive that’s correct. I’ll google after I hit submit cause then it’s not really cheating.

  19. 19
    NikkiHughes
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 12:21 pm

    What about Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus ? ;)

  20. 20
    c8h10n4o2
    Posted October 27, 2011 at 2:15 pm

    themiki: Got it in one. My most persistent addiction deserved tribute.

  21. 21
    LAC LAC
    Posted October 28, 2011 at 6:17 am

    Great list! I am loving this post and all the comments. My husband and I have a disagreement about “the house on haunted hill”. I found it atmospheric, spooky, and the interaction between the husband and wife hilariously cruel. He saw Taye Diggs in the movie and wondered how I was able to focus. :)

    Another really bad one I kinda liked was the remake of “2001 maniacs”. Over the top acting and deaths, ridiculous storyline, and another good reason not to take shortcuts into small towns.

  22. 22
    Tmurda
    Posted October 28, 2011 at 2:43 pm

    YAY! Thanks for including Devils Rejects in one of these lists (any one woulda been fine, as long as it was mentioned). Like I said in the comments of your first list, it’s my fave movie of all time. And it totally mafe me laugh….”Chinese..Japanese…dirty knees…look at these!”….LOL. Classic.
    Great list, once again!

  23. 23
    PlathAddict PlathAddict
    Posted October 28, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    I still maintain that The Devil’s Rejects is a good horror movie. Maybe it’s because I hate all other Rob Zombie projects. Maybe it’s because it has Danny Trejo and Diamond Dallas Page in it as degenerate bounty hunters. It might even be because the stunt casting PJ Soles was the perfect throwback to the original Halloween. Most likely though, it’s because never have I ever seen a family more in need of a comeuppance than the Firefly family. Of course, having Priscilla Barnes did help a great deal. In other words, casting, and the fact that justice was served made this a tie for my second favorite horror movie of all time.
    My only real complaint about this one was that the Firefly family didn’t suffer enough for me.
    As for Trick R Treat, I totally agree. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Because it’s got multiple stories, it is a little disjointed, but still a perfect Halloween movie, if only because it takes the Halloween rituals so very seriously.

  24. 24
    KB
    Posted October 28, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    Is Troll 2 the one when they live in a city called Nilbog (Goblin backwards?) I saw that when I was really young! LOL Its my guilty pleasure movie ALSO Ghost Ship. I thought that one was cheesy, and I agree with others about Thirteen Ghosts.

  25. 25
    Dawn
    Posted October 28, 2011 at 8:21 pm

    Thanks for the link, TheMiki, it worked!

    I wouldn’t even know where to start, there are so many for this list, but Blackula always gets my vote. Then there’s Ice Cream Man with Clint Howard. Nail Gun Massacre. Don’t Go Ino the Woods. House of the Dead. S.I.C.K. (Serial Insane Clown Killer).

    Re: Thirteen Ghosts. The Tony Shaloub version is laughably awful. The original, from 1960, which is nothing like the remake, was pretty good :)

  26. 26
    JimbobJones Jimbob Jones
    Posted November 1, 2011 at 10:55 pm

    To the best of my knowledge, Trick r Treat was slated for theatrical release, then got delayed and delayed until it ended up straight to video. It’s a shame — it was a fairly awesome movie in the vein of Creepshow. (And how the hell didn’t Creepshow or Creepshow 2 make any of your lists?)

  27. 27
    SuburBint
    Posted November 9, 2011 at 4:06 pm

    Loved the spoof trailer of The Wickerman!

  28. 28
    Jen
    Posted March 20, 2012 at 10:53 pm

    trick r treat was amazing! The first viewing is definitely the best. I forgot where I heard about it but I found it because of Netflix too.

    The Wickerman was terrible.

    Jennifer’s Body is my guilty pleasure (I love Kyle Gallner, even though he’s not in it much). And I haven’t seen The Faculty in YEARS. Awesome list.

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