It's Remembrance Day and I am remembering my old pal, Frank, who was only old enough to serve in Korea but was refused when he volunteered because he had a bum ticker from childhood rheumatic fever. But he was a warrior in his own odd way: he loved war movies. But even odder: the worse the movie, the more he liked it. He cackled like mad at pieces of crap like The Green Berets with John Wayne but had no time for great films like Saving Private Ryan. He once said, "Movies are no fucking good if they try to be true. Truth is for books where the imagination offers something resembling the reality of the horror. With a film you can always say, 'It's only a film' and so something like Private Ryan with all its crazy pacing and violence can be accepted like any old slasher movie."
Because of this strange little philosophy Frank had a penchant for really shit movies. What was good, too, was that the video store near our apartment had a huge selection of great crap and we watched mountains of these things like they were eye and ear candy.
And what do you know...?!?!
So does Skeeter.
I was curled up with him on the La-Z-Boy as he was flipping around on the TV when he barked, "YAY! I've always wanted to see this!"
And there it was, in all it's wondrous, hideous beauty: The Exorcist II; Heretic! Oh! my friends, this was a joy for the lover of deliciously awful films and, suddenly, I liked Skeeter a whole lot more for within minutes we were both weeping with laughter. The film was "directed" by that guy who actually did the great Deliverance except when he made Heretic he must have been drunk. In fact everyone must have been drunk and you know, for a fact, the film's star was pissed out of his brains; I mean Richard Burton is like some zombie in a film that has nothing to do with zombies! But the cherry on the sundae is that there is this machine in the film that is supposed to be a real scientific discovery. The invention puts two people into a shared hypnotic state but it's basically a couple of Walmart belts strapped around the subjects' heads attached with string to some gadget that flashes light and makes weird noises. And here's the man who was considered to be the Great White Hope of British acting wearing a mind-meld boop boop machine! And then he tries to talk religion (as he plays a priest) with the machine's inventor (played with delightful retardation by Oscar winner Louise Fletcher) and what does she say? "Father, let's stick to science!" as the noise of the mind-meld boop boop machine still echos over the scene. Well that was it for Heretic as Skeet and I were just shrieking with merriment.
For the hour after the film was done Skeeter and I shared moments of "great" movie-making:
- all the films of Ed Wood, but especially Plan Nine From Outer Space (where Bela Lugosi dropped dead during the making of the film and was replaced by a guy who covered his face with his cape but who was a head taller than Lugosi)
- most of the Elvis oeuvre but especially that scene in Viva Las Vegas with Ann-Margret water-skiing in her nylons
- high camp musicals of the 70s and 80s but especially Xanadu
- Alexander (the film that proves bad movies are not necessarily low-budget): the gayest of gay films even before you get to the gay stuff
- Roger Corman films
What doesn't qualify:
- Films with Sandra Bullock, Adam Sandler or, especially, Rob Schneider because they're just bloody awful, not deliciously awful.
So Skeeter and I have found a game, a shared interest and peace and joy reigns in the land. Bless you, Linda Blair.
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