Awesomely Bad Movies

Last night, Andrea and I watched the movie Call Of The Wild: Foxfire. Andrea rented it because she wanted to watch a nice family movie. I just happened to be invited along to watch. So we settled in and began watching the movie.

Now I'm not a movie snob. In fact I'm sure there are quite a few lame movies I like, but I still enjoy them. This was not one of those movies. Have you ever watched a movie that was so bad that you still found yourself amused because of how cheesy, campy, unrealistic, or badly acted it was? Normally when I'm watching a movie that I don't enjoy I try to go to sleep. Every so often though, there is a movie that is so bad that I can't go to sleep because I want to see what ridiculousness will come next. Such was the case with this movie.

I read Jack London's Call Of The Wild when I was a kid, but I don't remember a lot about it. I do remember some of the main points. Buck was a dog that was taken away from his comfortable life, became a sled dog in Alaska, and eventually heeds the call to return to the wild. The only thing that this movie had in common with the book was that the dogs name was Buck and it took place in Alaska. About 45 minutes into the movie, I turned to Andrea and asked what the point was supposed to be. There was no plot development. We could not figure out what, if anything, the characters were trying to accomplish.

Talk about bad acting. I remember wondering to myself what kind of people speak that way. The dialogue rivaled that of a George Lucas script. I actually started laughing at one point because a character was supposed to be excited about his wife staying with him and all that came out was the monotone unfeeling line, "I'm so glad that you are staying". I guess there is a reason that I've never heard of any of the actors before or since.

The direction of the movie was equally awful. There were secondary character story lines that had nothing at all to do with overall plot of the movie. These characters interacted maybe once with the main characters through out the whole movie. Yet we were still forced to see what these characters were doing even though it didn't further the plot. I think the director may have just wanted to make sure that there was more footage so it could be more than a 70 minute movie. I also enjoyed the exact same scene shot from different angles and then shown at different times through the movie. It reminded me of the stock footage that would be shown in the early days of film. It seemed the producers wanted to save money and were hoping the audience wouldn't notice. I guess that's what I should expect from a straight to DVD release.

What are some of the awesomely bad movies that you have seen? Tell me so I can steer clear of them as well.