Schlock Attack! - Appreciating the Greatness of Bad Movies

This is my lens in which I promote the high entertainment value of horrid, low-budget movies and televisions shows. You will be able to read about cold war science fiction, Japanese giant monsters, Gothic fangs, swords, and guns entertainment, horror madness in various forms, blaxploitation and bringing down the Man, and martial arts goodness from around the globe. I will be posting reviews, comments, suggestions, and various related trivia and other Easter eggs, as well as tips on grabbing some of this hard to find material as I find it.

What makes me the expert? Maybe nothing. Nothing other than having hosted what I called "Bad Movie Night" every other week at my home for over 19 years (partially providing stadium style seating in my living room, thanks to a great roommate!) and the experience of having worked in video rental stores or being a projectionist in theatres for over 22 years. I do not consider myself completely knowledgeable one though - that is part of the reason for this lens. I welcome reader's comments and suggestions (guestbook at the bottom of the lens,) so that we can all benefit from these postings and gain a fuller knowledge base and understanding of what is truly great about bad movies and television!

Here is a little tid bit that I am sure I share with most of you readers - I have been watching movies like this since I was a child. I remember my dad calling me into his bedroom on Saturday afternoons to watch Jet Jaguar team up with Godzilla to defeat Megalon or to see Gordon Liu learn "scaffolding-style" kung fu at the monastery to defeat the bad guys in town. What I suspect I don't share with many readers is holding a dream job that led me to start inviting my friends over to watch bad movies in the mid 1980s. I landed a job working for a video store as a reviewer or promotional tapes! All I did was take home a box of 30-40 video tapes per week, plough through them, and report to the store owner as to whether or not I felt the students at university near by may rent them or not. Wow! It was great! The first two films I pulled out of the box were Octaman, a Mexican horror flick about a half man, half octopus legend (see the trailer below,) and Raiders of Buddhist Kung Fu, the aforementioned Gordon Liu at his "worst" (or best depending on what you are looking for in a movie.)

I called three of my closet friends on the phone and said, "You bring the muffin mix and I will make some homemade ice cream. Get over here. Now! You won't believe your eyes!" They came over promptly and we baked and churned and watched rubber tentacles swat at dummies of Mexican workers and poorly done slapstick comedy mixed with poorly choreographed martial arts (not Gordon Liu, really, but his supporting cast wasn't very supportive, if you get what I mean.) We laughed until we had headaches and the ice cream was gone (orange chocolate chip, if I recall correctly.) The next week we watched more and three more people came; two weeks later ten people came and started bringing pot luck foods, et cetera. And that was that. Bad Movie night had begun.

This lasted until I had to move away from the South of the United States to pursue a master's degree in Ethnomusicology at University of Hawaii. Now I am moving again very soon, this time to London for more scholastic fun. This blog, in a way, is going to partially take the place of Bad Movie Night until I can get settled enough to start it up again. I hope you all enjoy this blog and the suggestions that I make and even more so, I encourage each of you to start your own Bad Movie Night and enjoy all the rotten, ridiculous, horrid films out there that have brought me so much "pleasure" over the years.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank some of the key people that made Bad Movie Night happen, if I may: Stacy Rumph and Jon Black for bringing the strawberry muffin mix that first night; Matt and Johanna (recently married! Congratulations!) that supplied untold numbers of rotten films for the watching; Kim Jones and Chad Boyd for letting me host this madness in our house for untold years; Michelle LeCompte and John Snead for not missing a BMN that I can recall, my new friend Paul Cunningham who is unbelievably knowledgeable concerning horrid, ill produced entertainment, and most especially, my late brother Sean Johnson, possibly the greatest connoisseur of bad movies known to man!

Thanks for reading and look for the first suggestion and review to appear this week!

Will Connor