So-Good-It's-Bad isn't something to shoot for
I’m a big fan of Pumpkinhead the concept, not so much the movies.
The first film was awesome. It was well-acted (by the leads anyway), the setting was creepy, the story was plausible (in an old-witch-in-the-swamp sort of way) and most importantly, the monster was scary. Back when the first one came out, digital effects were scarce, so the filmmakers opted to make it completely natural and creepy by using on-scene effects. Conversely, it was genuinely frightening and a lot of fun. I recommend it to anyone looking for a horror film that’s a notch above its genre.
The sequels were, of course, better funded, amplified their special effects as CGI began to become more accessible, and were unarguably no match for the original in execution, charm or scare tactics. Every sequel to date - there have been three and I have watched them all - is a horror experience for the viewer, but for all the wrong reasons.
There is a type of person - essentially nerdy for the most part - that finds a certain joy in watching bad films. They understand that when they purchase a movie ticket or rent a DVD of some films (typically horror) that the film will not by any standard be “good.” They aren’t interested in watching a good film at that time. They want to laugh at something that was meant to scare them, elbow their buddies in the ribs over a bucket of popcorn at the rubber suit or the un-invisible wires or the overwrought CGI. I do not begrudge this weird clan their guilty pleasure. I have often found myself at a video rack, pawing at the schlocky covers and ridiculous titles: Leprechaun in the Hood, Man-Thing, The Mangler. I was, for a time, a lieutenant in that sordid army of cretins. “Hey guys,” I’d say, “roll back that part at the end of the movie when the Leprechaun raps in the nightclub. It’s awesome!”
I have since exorcised that feeble part of my personality. It’s not that I’m better than people who maintain the “Bad Movie For Fun” gene. I just have a hard time, as an artist, reveling in the waste of resources that a bad movie pisses away. As someone who struggles with their art on a daily basis, I just don’t have the patience I used to for art that’s “so-bad-it’s-good.” And work that seeks to commit these treacheries on purpose should have their originators tossed down a hill locked in a Port-O-John after a high school football game.
I get that the filmmakers of some of these films are attempting to be campy. I don’t appreciate it much of the time, but more importantly, these are only some of the nut-jobs I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of the guys who set out to make what they thought would be a good film despite all evidence to the contrary (like a readable script, enough money to make a decent film or even a title you can say out loud without hiding your face when you say it), especially when some of them aren’t so far off the mark that the film can’t be salvaged to the level of being genuinely watchable.
I have an example. It’s a film that should never have been made. This isn’t one that was oh-so close to being good but dropped the ball for no plausible reason whatsoever. This film’s script shouldn’t have ever received a dime toward completion. The director should have been shot on sight.
Mosquito Man is an irredeemable film. The title is stupid, the box cover is eye-gaugingly ridiculous and the movie? My god, the movie is deplorable even by horror movie standards.
Aside from Parker Lewis as a lead it has a practically no-name cast that largely consigned themselves to straight-to-video hell after this film. The script appears written on site. The premise is even more far-fetched than a frisbie thrown in deep space. To top off this pile of digital excrement, the creature effects bounce from a suit that’s still got the tire tracks on it from when someone pulled the rubber off of the director’s tires and milk-through-the-nose-bad CGI that makes South Park look like Akira. A convict gets blasted with some anti-West Nile virus juice and goes on a killing rampage...as a seven-foot mosquito (or “Mansquito” as it’s called in countries that were subjected to this maddening barrage of idiocy outside of the United States).
Now, I didn’t pick this up thinking, “oh, this might be good.” You don’t see this cover…
…and think, “potentially meritous.” I picked it up thinking, “I can get a decent essay out of this if I try hard enough.” Congratulat8ions, Woods, you've essentially killed your artists soul for a buck and a quarter and four more nights left to rent.
Watching all of the extras and the night shoots and the locations and the work that went into making an almost plausible laboratory within which to infect an escaped convict with an Ill-guarded cure for a major disease, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much effort had to go into this venture. Then I started thinking about how I could have done a hundred cool, notable things with half the budget of this film that NO ONE’S EVER HEARD OF.
And that last part made me really, really sad.
Even the cheapest horror film in the video store has a budget you could fuel some real movements with, that you could do something good with even in its genre. I know it’s a business and the horror business has made a name for itself by setting expectations so low out the gate that all expectations for horror movies of almost any stripe are that they’ll be laughable at best and that maybe, you know, if the crew has time, might make it something worth watching, you know, if they feel like it.
Mansquito isn’t a flick that’s shooting for camp. It’s trying to be horrific. In the process, it opened up a horrific vision regarding art in me, and I’m glad to have that off my chest.
The first film was awesome. It was well-acted (by the leads anyway), the setting was creepy, the story was plausible (in an old-witch-in-the-swamp sort of way) and most importantly, the monster was scary. Back when the first one came out, digital effects were scarce, so the filmmakers opted to make it completely natural and creepy by using on-scene effects. Conversely, it was genuinely frightening and a lot of fun. I recommend it to anyone looking for a horror film that’s a notch above its genre.
The sequels were, of course, better funded, amplified their special effects as CGI began to become more accessible, and were unarguably no match for the original in execution, charm or scare tactics. Every sequel to date - there have been three and I have watched them all - is a horror experience for the viewer, but for all the wrong reasons.
There is a type of person - essentially nerdy for the most part - that finds a certain joy in watching bad films. They understand that when they purchase a movie ticket or rent a DVD of some films (typically horror) that the film will not by any standard be “good.” They aren’t interested in watching a good film at that time. They want to laugh at something that was meant to scare them, elbow their buddies in the ribs over a bucket of popcorn at the rubber suit or the un-invisible wires or the overwrought CGI. I do not begrudge this weird clan their guilty pleasure. I have often found myself at a video rack, pawing at the schlocky covers and ridiculous titles: Leprechaun in the Hood, Man-Thing, The Mangler. I was, for a time, a lieutenant in that sordid army of cretins. “Hey guys,” I’d say, “roll back that part at the end of the movie when the Leprechaun raps in the nightclub. It’s awesome!”
I have since exorcised that feeble part of my personality. It’s not that I’m better than people who maintain the “Bad Movie For Fun” gene. I just have a hard time, as an artist, reveling in the waste of resources that a bad movie pisses away. As someone who struggles with their art on a daily basis, I just don’t have the patience I used to for art that’s “so-bad-it’s-good.” And work that seeks to commit these treacheries on purpose should have their originators tossed down a hill locked in a Port-O-John after a high school football game.
I get that the filmmakers of some of these films are attempting to be campy. I don’t appreciate it much of the time, but more importantly, these are only some of the nut-jobs I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of the guys who set out to make what they thought would be a good film despite all evidence to the contrary (like a readable script, enough money to make a decent film or even a title you can say out loud without hiding your face when you say it), especially when some of them aren’t so far off the mark that the film can’t be salvaged to the level of being genuinely watchable.
I have an example. It’s a film that should never have been made. This isn’t one that was oh-so close to being good but dropped the ball for no plausible reason whatsoever. This film’s script shouldn’t have ever received a dime toward completion. The director should have been shot on sight.
Mosquito Man is an irredeemable film. The title is stupid, the box cover is eye-gaugingly ridiculous and the movie? My god, the movie is deplorable even by horror movie standards.
Aside from Parker Lewis as a lead it has a practically no-name cast that largely consigned themselves to straight-to-video hell after this film. The script appears written on site. The premise is even more far-fetched than a frisbie thrown in deep space. To top off this pile of digital excrement, the creature effects bounce from a suit that’s still got the tire tracks on it from when someone pulled the rubber off of the director’s tires and milk-through-the-nose-bad CGI that makes South Park look like Akira. A convict gets blasted with some anti-West Nile virus juice and goes on a killing rampage...as a seven-foot mosquito (or “Mansquito” as it’s called in countries that were subjected to this maddening barrage of idiocy outside of the United States).
Now, I didn’t pick this up thinking, “oh, this might be good.” You don’t see this cover…
…and think, “potentially meritous.” I picked it up thinking, “I can get a decent essay out of this if I try hard enough.” Congratulat8ions, Woods, you've essentially killed your artists soul for a buck and a quarter and four more nights left to rent.
Watching all of the extras and the night shoots and the locations and the work that went into making an almost plausible laboratory within which to infect an escaped convict with an Ill-guarded cure for a major disease, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much effort had to go into this venture. Then I started thinking about how I could have done a hundred cool, notable things with half the budget of this film that NO ONE’S EVER HEARD OF.
And that last part made me really, really sad.
Even the cheapest horror film in the video store has a budget you could fuel some real movements with, that you could do something good with even in its genre. I know it’s a business and the horror business has made a name for itself by setting expectations so low out the gate that all expectations for horror movies of almost any stripe are that they’ll be laughable at best and that maybe, you know, if the crew has time, might make it something worth watching, you know, if they feel like it.
Mansquito isn’t a flick that’s shooting for camp. It’s trying to be horrific. In the process, it opened up a horrific vision regarding art in me, and I’m glad to have that off my chest.