Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Today's soundtrack: Apoptygma Berserk "Deep Red" ::
I like to watch movies. I really do. From black and white silent films to full colour musicals, from documentary to sci-fi fantasy spectacular, the movies rock my socks. I even enjoy me some B-movies, I do. To me, nothing is funnier than kicking back and making fun of a film which so rightfully deserves it. That being said, there are, however, some movies that are so incredibly mind numbingly awful, that no amount of mockery can rescue those one hundred plus minutes you just wasted. The movies that are just plain bad that they cause your brain matter to congeal into tapioca pudding and begin slowly leaking out your nose. Perhaps it is my sarcasm switch which allows me a higher threshold of tolerance to the bad film industry, but every once in a while, something truly terrible gets to me and I feel as though some of my brain cells actually died in the process of viewing it. So, as a public service, I am hereby blacklisting the following movies as irredeemable film filth, not to be further inflicted upon anyone.
The Last Days of Disco: Brought to you by person or persons responsible for smash hit television series Seinfeld. Yes, in Seinfeld they succeeded in maintaining a series "about nothing", but such an approach in film just does not work. They give us a bunch of characters and have them do "stuff," all of which you don't really know or care about because they fail to give us proper character introductions or any background whatsoever. I remember this one woman character gets carted away by ambulance and on other says "yeah it was her back again." What? Did she have a medical history we should have been clued in on? At another point another female gets an STD and is on antibiotics so when she goes out, she refuses alcohol. Her "friend" comments how she NEVER refuses alcohol so therefore must have the clap. A bit of, I don't know, characterization would have let us in on some of these characteristics, but all of that is foregone. The only thing I recall taking away from the film was what exactly a "railroad apartment" is. Other than that, I wish I could inflict vengeance upon it for wasting my life.
Charlie's Angles: Full Throttle: The sequel to the mildly amusing original Charlie's Angels, this film chucks what little credibility the first one had out the window in favour of more sexy outfits and the Angels striking fight poses. This movie is an insult to everyone who watches it. It insults black people, the Irish, women, men, and single celled organisms. Lucy Liu is pretty hot, and that's all this film has going for it, and even that is diminished due to her appearing blonde for some reason.
The Brothers Grimm: This film I utterly despise for making me anticipate it (a Terry Gilliam movie with spooky fairytale monsters?? Yes, please!) and then turning out to be so utterly poor. It was a bunch of good ideas which were just mish mashed haphazardly into movie length. It tried to be so much, but wound up being so little, and from a director whom I expected so much more, I was absolutely furious at it when it ended. I almost stopped the film two-thirds of the way through because it was so bad (and I NEVER do that) but decided to give it a chance to redeem itself in the last act. It didn't.
Van Helsing: Two words: Utter trash. Again, a film which held such promise, but turned out to be disastrous. A nonsensical plot and pointless action sequences in a movie which had such potential to be suspensefully thrilling and scary. As a devout fan of the classic Universal Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolf-Man, etc) I was appalled in the poor manner in which such respected characters were used. It COULD have been awesome to rekindle the fright these cinema icons once held over America as a whole, but instead we were focusing on people we didn't particularly like or care about with horrible continuity and questionable science that would rival that of Silver Age comic books. The only good thing about the existence of this movie is that they finally released ALL of the classic Universal films in a deluxe DVD release set which is wicked.
Batman & Robin: If ever there were a film that made me want to scoop out my own eyeballs so I could wash them with Comet and a scouring pad, THIS IS IT! Where to begin? Oh, I don't know, how about Arnold Schwarzenegger horrifically miscast as Mr. Freeze?! Or maybe the outright painful direction of Joel Schumacher? Nipples on costumes? Gotham City being redesigned as some gigantic homoerotic sculptural tribute to naked men? The list of crimes against humanity in this stinker is as long as my pant leg, and brother, have I got lengthy pant legs! The World Court shall be notified of these travesties!
Showgirls: There are guys out there who will say that any movie featuring naked breasts is a good movie. This is the movie that proves them all wrong. I can only assume director Paul Verhoeven set out to make the least sexy film imaginable about women taking their clothes off, because that is what this turned out to be. Yes our leading lady Elizabeth Berkley walks around over half of this movie without anything to cover her boobs in a desperate attempt to be deemed a "serious actress" and only succeeds in proving that bare breasts can actually turn a heterosexual male OFF and practically turn him gay in doing so. But then we get to witness Kyle MacLachlan simulate having orgasms more than once and the viewer is just plain disgusted with all of humanity. Shower all you want; it won't come off! Don't watch this movie if you ever plan on enjoying sex at any point in your life.
The above mentioned films are BAD. That's BAD-bad, not GOOD-bad. Good-bad movies have the potential to be made fun of and enjoyed in an ironic way. Bad-bad films are so horribly bad that you are reduced to a dumb stricken stupor as you watch them because you may or may not have had a stroke due to your brain trying to save itself from the torture. These movies ought to come with Surgeon General's warning on them as a caution, but since they don't you'll just have to spread my warnings out to the people. Be forewarned people of the world and don't watch Showgirls if want to continue to enjoy looking at naked girls. Don't watch Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle unless you want to feel as though you have been bitch slapped. If you're planning on viewing ANY of these films... DON'T!!! You have been warned.
William (hoping my brain cells will grow back)
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