The fine art of the bad movie

This entry isn’t going to be an actual column as much as it’s an introduction to a theme I plan to explore over the next couple of months. Around the Lens household we’ve been having a discussion about what exactly makes a movie bad. So that’s what I’m going to be looking at.

In education we’re supposed to approach students with the assumption that there’s no such thing as a bad kid, just good kids who sometimes do bad things. That might be okay at school, but I’m not going to apply that logic to the cinema arts. Some movies are good, but others are bad. In the latter category, some are born bad while others start out with potential and yet go wrong along the way.

Bad movies can also be divided into good bad movies and bad bad movies. Good bad movies are by definition more fun to watch, so I’ll finish up with them

Bad bad movies can likewise be divided up. Some – the “born bad” variety – are deliberately created to be terrible. Many horror comedies fall into this sub-category. The film-makers assume – often correctly – that there’s a market out there for something that’s designed to be stupid and tasteless.

Further, some movies that would otherwise have been good are spoiled by the inclusion of something offensive. Glaring examples include Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, both of which are historically important but close to unwatchable because of the embarrassing racism that infects them. If tastes manage to continue to mature, many of the movies made today will seem intolerably sexist to future generations. Just a guess, or maybe a hope would be a better way to say it.

On the other hand, good bad movies are harder to define. For example, William Castle produced an impressive array of pictures with brain-numbing-bad plots, scripts and acting. Yet many of his productions are a pleasure to watch because they incorporate some sort of clever gimmick. Thus Castle is one of the ultimate “E for effort” film-makers, a master of the good bad movie.

That said, this whole thing is at least a little subjective. I love Castle, but I’m sure a lot of people don’t. And I have to respect their opinions. Castle’s movies are bad, after all.

There, that should provide us with enough to get started. Once we’ve considered some specific cases, perhaps at the end we’ll arrive at a better understanding of what bad cinema is really all about.