Monday 19 July 2010

Let's talk turkeys......

Beach blanket bingo,
Beach blanket bingo,
Beach blanket bingo,
That's the name of the game.

One of my greatest bugbears is re-makes, Hollywood re-make good films and make them shitey - that's how they make money. They take good ideas and wonderful things and they wipe their greedy little bums with them. That's what they do. Simon Cowell does the same thing in the music industry - they're evil. But we know this.

But in the spirit of The Opposite of Hate I've decided to have a quick celebration of five films that I can almost guarantee (bar one, which has already been done) won't be being re-made. Ever. In the world.

Why? You ask - well it's because they're the greatest, cheapest, strangest turkeys known to the world. Crap movies I salute you.

Here's my top 5 (in dramatic reverse order):

5. The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.



If often find time in the day to celebrate the work of Randal Kleiser. Randall Kleiser directed Grease, Grease is a musical that celebrates girls who unashamedly smoke, drink and sleep around and tells nice girls that they should also smoke, drink and sleep around. Nowadays, of course, high school films tell you that you should be pure in thought, word and deed, until someone leaks a tape of you giving someone a blowy on the internet. Nice.

Kleiser started off, however, with this particularly incredible piece of cheap filmmaking.
Starring a young and confused looking John Travolta, as the kid who no one can touch, the Boy In the Plastic Bubble is entirely worth the 75p my friend Pauly spent buying me a copy, for the scene in which he goes to the beach in a portable plastic bubble. Chump doesn't begin to cover the facial expressions of the man who would one day sell the most perfect arse in musical cinema to a strange cult. JT's sickly gurn makes me want to live in a bubble of my own, but a concrete one, which I can't see him through. 

n.b this has already been remade as the amazing musical "Bubble Boy" - which fully utilises all gags inherent in the porta-bubble. Dang we need more of those.


4. When Dreams Come True

Okay, if I find anyone in the entire world (who isn't one of the actors in this astounding piece o' shit) who has seen this film and isn't me or Emily, then I will be thoroughly impressed.
I bought this movie for a pound in my local corner shop when I was the most hungover I have ever been. I watched it, I ate crisps, I threw up.

Somehow, When Dreams Come True ended up being a hangover special in an old house sharing set up, mostly down to it's frankly rubbish electro synth soundtrack (someone got a Casio for Christmas and got no further than the "dream" setting. Not even a bossa nova) and the very odd sub-plot involving gypsies who look a bit like Tom Seleck. Not to mention the starring role from the guy who lets the virus out in Twelve Monkeys.

It was written by William Bleich though - which sounds a bit like the noise I make when I'm hungover. Maybe he knew this.

You can read my rubbish review of it on the IMDB here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090313/
Although I wouldn't bother.

3. Beach Blanket Bingo.



Beach Blanket Bingo is the greatest film ever made (apart from the two movies above it in this particular countdown.) Not only does it star Frankie Avalon AND Annette Funicello (yes you heard it here kids, Frankie AND Annette - in a rare appearance together apart from the 200 other films a bit like this one and probably a long running tv series and some pretty ropey public appearances)  but it has a young Linda Evans and the best soundtrack a 60's beach movie has ever had.

Over the years BBB has come to become shorthand for "shit film" - being the film that the characters laughingly go and see in such lesser classics as The Outsiders and Good Morning Vietnam (both the poor man's Beach Blanket Bingo if you ask me. I've never seen Robin Williams realistically driving a fake car and C.Thomas Howell never retired from movies to launch his own range of delightful teddy bears - no siree).

But, as we all know, the world is full of idiots. One day this classic will be re-discovered and held up as the Citizen Kane of movies shot in cold places whilst all the characters, dressed in bikinis, are pretending to be warm. 

2. The Room.


Seldom does a film actually change my life, but The Room changed my life.
I don't think I need to say anything else.

Oh hi doggie.






1. Beyond Control - The Amy Fisher Story



For some reason me and my big sister spent and entire summer working our way through every movie that was stocked in the Felixstowe branch of Blockbuster. We had our minds veritably blown by the incredible shit on offer. But The Amy Fisher Story has always held the place closest to my heart.

I love Drew Barrymore, I always have, in her autobiography she states that making this film (straight after rehab number 1) was how she saved herself.

Thank fuck it saved someone. It's incredible in it's crapness, from it's Oddessy Home Videos special tinkly piano music soundtrack through its "creepy real life" plotline (teenage girl shags older man, shoots his wife) down to the fact that it stars a man who wears, what I now know as Paedophile trousers. The acting also gives A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 a run for its money.

It was directed by Andy Tennant, who now works as an actual director in Hollywood.
All of these things make me blissfully happy.

So there we go - re-make my arse Hollywood. I'm happy with your finest rejects and I suggest everyone go and celebrate each and every one of them.
xxxx

9 comments:

  1. You have Blockbuster in UK? also, it just looks like me, it is not really me giving a blowy on the interweb.

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  2. We had Blockbuster - I think it closed down after me and Ellie rented every movie that summer and then got a job / went back to school. They couldn't handle the loss of earnings.
    And it was you Kirby - stop pretending to be coy. xxxx

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  3. ah sugs!(pronounced as abbreviation to "sugar" not madness fella...think more Nancy Gribble from King of the Hill...maybe there´s an "h" in there..yup, "shugs") so,
    ah shugs! miss you emtx

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  4. Return of Sarah Palin's sense of decency20 July 2010 at 06:20

    1 - I'll certainly contribute to putting you into a bubble on the condition that it is soundproof.

    2 - Robin Williams calling another film shit in the middle of GMV - PROOF that Americans can do irony after all

    3 - I hope when you are saying the Room changed your life you are doing in the voice of the woman who used do the Slim-fast adverts. If you don't remember her desperate cries of "Slim-fast changed me life" you are lucky.

    4 - none of the above are as bad as anything directed by Wim Wenders. Not that I'd know as after 30s of his stuff I'm comatose but whatevs

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  5. Just so you know - I told Wim Wenders what you said - I've copied and pasted his reply here: "Tell Dyl hes a fucking slag and if he comes near me agen Ill fuckin nut im. Twat. Columbo sez hi lolz"

    So there you have it. The master has spoken.

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  6. Sarah Palin's sense of decency redux!20 July 2010 at 11:45

    Ha - Wim Wenders doesn't scare me. Tell Wenders from me he can shove it and learn to punctuate. And include some fucking plot. Or, better yet some sax and violence. Or jokes. Or anythign really.

    Also I'm watching Ladyhawke: quality shapeshifting Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeifer action that really ought to have made your list. Even has a young (but still rubbish) Matthew Broderick. Class!

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  7. Sarah Palin's sense of decency redux!20 July 2010 at 11:47

    Meant, of course, sex n violence. Sax n violence is just that bit in Lost Boys with the rubbish Sax player. Followed by some vampire-ish snacking.

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  8. I love the oily sax man. I also watched a bit of Ladyhawke once. Classic Michelle Pfipher (wow, i knew how to spell her name in the 80's) Not a patch on Grease 2 though..... i feel another list coming on.....

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  9. Sarah Palin's sense of decency redux!23 July 2010 at 05:57

    Don't forget that rubbish one where she is a former marine who goes to teach / inspire the inner city kids. Bleurgh. And she doesn't even do it by kicking the crap out of them which would have been loads more entertaining.

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