Favorite bad movies? (1 Viewer)

[Josh Steinberg]

Superman III. I have a quarter-century love affair with that movie that I can't entirely explain. Growing up in the eighties and nineties, I had to have watched my beat-up VHS recording off WPIX a hundred times. Despite its general terribleness, there are some genuinely great Superman moments tucked within.

Same here! Good old WPIX.

And I just got to see a midnight showing of a 35mm print of Superman III last weekend - half the time I'm watching it I'm wondering why on earth anyone thought any of this was a good idea but every now and then there'd be a genuinely wonderful moment.

 

[Mike Boone]

Superman III. I have a quarter-century love affair with that movie that I can't entirely explain. Growing up in the eighties and nineties, I had to have watched my beat-up VHS recording off WPIX a hundred times. Despite its general terribleness, there are some genuinely great Superman moments tucked within.

It's strange, Adam, but Superman III seems to have occupied some small corner of my memory for the last 32 years. I only saw the film once when I took my 8 year old daughter to see it when it was released in 1983. But a line in the movie that is spoken by a wealthy character, played by Robert Vaughn, (previously famed for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series, as well as for The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt) has remained as fresh in my mind as if I had heard it spoken last week. That line, which I think I recall pretty much word for word, is Vaughn as the wealthy character saying: "I'm so rich that I've never worn the same pair of socks twice." That line happened to strike me as being pretty damned funny back in 1983, so it has always stuck with me. Otherwise, I thought the movie pretty much missed the mark, with the scenes that included Richard Pryor being particularly weak, and a waste of that great comedian's talent. However, I really thought that Annette O'Toole was quite appealing in her role, especially since I'm not usually crazy about redheads. (Sure love Julianne Moore, though. And what a naturalistic actress, and a great talent, that woman is!)

 

[Will Krupp]

Growing up in the eighties and nineties, I had to have watched my beat-up VHS recording off WPIX a hundred times.

Same here! Good old WPIX.

So glad to see the love for New York's Channel 11, my absolute FAVORITE local (in my case, cable) channel of my youth! I always felt that, for some reason, movies and programs broadcast over Channel 11 looked SO much BETTER than material broadcast anywhere else, and WHAT a lineup they had.


Who among us can forget:

"PIX!"...


"PIX!"...


"PIX!!!!!"

 

[MielR]

Superman III.....Despite its general terribleness, there are some genuinely great Superman moments tucked within.

I love the good/bad Superman scene. Seeing him with a filthy cape and 5-o'clock shadow is equally disturbing and hilarious. Plus, there's that kid shouting "Superman's drunk!" :-P

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I have a hard time deciding which one I like the least, III or IV. The junkyard fight and the Smallville stuff saves Superman III. Quest has the Superman/Nuclearman fight but that's about it.

One of the biggest things that hurt Superman IV was the abandonment of the meticulous rear-projection techniques for the flying shots in favor of blue screen work, at a point in time when blue screen still wasn't ready for prime time, much less the silver screen. Some of that could probably be fixed relatively cheaply today with a modern visual effects team re-compositing the foreground blue screen footage with the plate photography. But it still won't fix the obvious budget limitations of the plate photography. When Superman III turned away from Richard Pryor every so often, it still made you believe a man could fly.


The other problem is that Superman IV had a lot of big ideas, but an insufficient budget with which to give them scale. I saw an interview once where Reeve described an epic scene of Superman marching down 42nd Street to the U.N. headquarters, with thousands of New Yorkers lining the street on both sides to catch a glimpse of him. It would have given his message gravitas and weight. In the final film we got some non-descript British building and a total of one extra to stand in for the iconic scene. In fact, I don't think the film actually did any filming in Metropolis at all. And then those weighty questions about nuclear disarmament and Superman using his power to take such a direct role in shaping the development of the human race devolve into Superman versus a glorified Power Rangers villain. I still don't know how they convinced Gene Hackman to come back, with Jon Cryer along for the ride.

 

[Oliver Ravencrest]

I agree that the Effects were pretty bad, even the opening credits looked cheap. According to IMDB, The movie's original budget was $36 million. Just before filming was to begin, Cannon Pictures, which was experiencing financial problems, slashed the budget to $17 million. As a result, the filmmakers cut corners by doing things like reusing special effects. The slashed budget explains why Superman had a new power to rebuild the Great Wall, instead of using super speed.


The movie had bigger problems. First, Nuclear Man should have been Bizarro. Second Cryer's character was just awful and pretty much ruined every scene he was in. Then story elements didn't make any sense, why did Clark reveal his secret to Lois, fly with her cross country, then erase her memory again. One would think that World Governments wouldn't take too kindly to Superman taking their Nuclear weapons and tossing them into the sun. Finally, Lacy shouldn't have survived that trip into space, they seemed to go pretty far from the earth.


There were some good things, Reeve gave a good performance in all of the movies, which helped Superman IV but couldn't save the movie. I liked the nuclear disarmament stuff and his speech. I also liked the idea of turning the Daily Planet into a tabloid paper. The movie had it's heart in the right place.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

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[Winston T. Boogie]

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[Beetlegeuse]

Humanoids from the Deep & C.H.U.D.... I can't help it I own both of them!