A Reflection Upon the First 25 Films in the Sunday "Bad" Movie Blog Series

First thing is first.  Thanks for reading, everyone.  I never expected anyone to want to read my opinions on a bunch of bad movies.  I never had the best track record of sharing the same opinion as other people, and it’s nice to know that there are people out there who appreciate my opinion, however much they disagree with it.  Really, I’m truly humbled by anyone who actually takes time out of their lives to read what I have to say.  I’m not important at all, but you care.  Thank you.

This post here is basically a personal summation of the first twenty-five posts in my Sunday “Bad” Movie series of blog posts.  Twenty-five.  Who knew that it would last this long?  Okay, some people probably did.  I do watch a lot of movies that are considered bad.  That’s the reason I started this series.  I watch enough bad movies, surely I could write something about them and build up not only my knowledge, but the knowledge of anyone reading.  My unfounded opinions and impressions of the movies have given me twenty-five posts worth of writing so far, and there is more on the way.

This post is meant as a reflection upon the first twenty-five.  Therefore, I shall reflect upon the first twenty-five posts, covering twenty-eight movies that most people would consider bad.  I might not agree with that on some of them, but from what I can tell, the consensus is that they’re bad.  Why don’t I start with this reflection now?

The blog post series began in November 2012, when I decided I should write about some of the bad movies I’ve watched.  The idea was to get interaction between me and the readers.  I would put up a poll with three movies, and the readers would choose one for me to watch.  Then I would watch it and write about it.  There were a few simple issues with this idea, however.  Though it allowed for more interaction, I didn’t really have readers, so there was no way for the interaction to truly happen.  Most of the time, I was still choosing the movie myself.  Then there was the timing.  Sometimes, I wouldn’t have enough time, due to my own schedule, to watch the movie between the time of the poll and the following Sunday.  The other major reason was summer.  Yes, it’s still not summer.  But in the summer, I will have less free time.  This made me want to have a backlog of posts ready for weeks in which I didn’t have the time to write one.  For these reasons, I eliminated the poll, and just watched movies as I felt like it.  I don’t know if I’ll ever bring the poll back.  It was an interesting concept, but I still don’t think I have enough readers to make it worth it.  Yet, at least.

As the series went on, there were a few more changes that happened.  Soon after I eliminated the poll set-up, I started just writing about any bad movie I saw.  This led to a few movies in a row being from the past couple of years.  I wanted more of a variety in the movies, both in genre and year, so I started to make a schedule of what movies I would write about and when.  Not only does it give a variety to the posts, but to what I watch.  This makes it more exciting for me, as well as, I assume, any readers.  Around that same time, between posts 9 and 14, I had also switched to straight reviews, which is something I don’t particularly like.  I’m not sure why I did this.  Perhaps I thought it would be better, but it wasn’t.  I struggled with the writing a little bit.  By post 16, for Rise of the Zombies, I had decided that I would write whatever I felt like.  If it was a straight review, so be it.  If it was something more about a topic and how it relates to the movie, so be it.  I’d rather enjoy what I’m doing than follow some conventions that I set for myself in the writing area of it.  I just want to have a good time.

The writing of this blog series has been a mixture of what felt like fun, and what felt like work.  I’ve had some pieces that I felt really good while writing.  Here are my top five:

1.            Rise of the Zombies – This was my return to writing what I want instead of just reviewing the movies.  It tapped into my history with watching movies produced by The Asylum, and I was able to work the movie into the topic discussion without it feeling forced.  It is among my favourite things I’ve ever written.

2.            Death Race – This was the first time I did more than one movie in a blog post.  I liked thinking about the series as a whole, rather than an individual movie.  Though the theme of my writing wasn’t deep, I was still interested in what I wrote.  Something just clicked for me.

3.            Playing for Keeps – Sometimes it’s just fun to write out the horrible plot of a movie.

4.            Starcrash – The first post in the series was also among the top 5.  It showed me how much potential the posts had, and that I could actually do some good writing (by my personal standards) if I try.  Plus, when you write about a movie with David Hasselhoff in it, everything is more fun.

5.            The Room – It’s easy to write something based on personal experience.  It’s also fun to share personal stories.  That’s what makes the blog post for The Room so enjoyable to me.

Each one of these posts flowed out of me without too much thinking.  I knew, for the most part, what I was going to write about before I wrote the post.  It was all a matter of putting my fingers on the keyboard and having the words appear on the computer screen in front of me.  They were easy to write and fun to write.  That’s always a good thing to have when writing.

One of the things that makes the writing a whole lot easier is having a wide variety in movies.  I’ve had movies in many different genres.  I’ve had comedy, action, horror, science fiction, musicals, and animated movies.  Some were entertaining, and others were painful to watch.  My five favourite movies so far have been:

1.            Miami Connection – The music, action, and love for the movie itself really helped elevate this one for me.  I loved every minute that I spent watching it.

2.            Robot Jox – The effects made this movie much better than it could have been.  With poorer effects, the movie could have easily been fumbled.  It’s a joy ride from beginning to end.

3.            Starcrash – It might be a complete rip-off of Star Wars, and a few other movies, but it’s so earnest that it’s easy to overlook that.

4.            The Room – Everything about it might seem bad on the outside, but through the many experiences that I have had watching it, I’ve fallen in love with these qualities.

5.            Death Race – How can I dislike a movie with Jason Statham and Ian McShane in it?  Oh, that’s right.  I can’t.

As you can tell, there is some similarity between the posts that I like and the movies that I like.  The movies that I have preferred gave me more inspiration to write.  This is one thing that I hate to admit, but know as a fact.  It is much easier for me to write on a topic about a movie I like than it is to write on a topic about a movie I don’t like.  There is more inspiration within liking something than there is within disliking something.

Before I finish this post, I just want to give a few statistics about the first twenty-five posts in the Sunday “Bad” Movie series.  Throughout the first twenty-five posts, I have seen twenty-eight movies.  Four of the twenty-eight movies have been suggested by other people.  The most frequent year that the movies featured in the series were released is 2012.

However, what I want to focus on the most are the actors who have been featured in more than one movie.  So far, twenty-one actors have been featured in multiple movies.  Three of the twenty-one were featured solely in archive footage in one of those movies.  Three of the twenty-one were in three movies.  Two of those three were only in one series of movies.  Sixteen of the eighteen actors in two different movies appeared in two movies that were in the same franchise.  The following list is the 5 actors in the most movies, listed first by the number of movies, then prioritized by number of franchises.  Thus, someone who has been in three movies ranks higher than someone in two movies, and someone in two movies of different movie series outranks someone in two movies within the same series.  Here are the top five actors:

1.            Danny Trejo – He has been featured in three movies.  He was in Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno, and Rise of the Zombies.

2.            Robin Shou and Fred Koehler – Both were featured in all three Death Race movies.

4.            French Stewart and Chad Lindberg – Both actors were in Rise of the Zombies.  French Stewart was in 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity With the Devil Inside the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  Chad Lindberg was in Alex Cross.

That brings this reflection upon the first twenty-five movies to a close.  Twenty-five movies have been watched, and there are more to come.  Another post will be going up about what’s to come from the Sunday “Bad” Movie series of blog posts.  There are some good things coming up for this series, and I hope that those of you who do read it like what I have planned.

The final thing that I want to leave in this post is links to the other posts in my 25^th post extravaganza.
The Future of the Sunday "Bad" Movie Posts
Writeup for The Room (2003)

Also, if you have a suggestion for a movie to be watched in the future of the Sunday "Bad" Movie, leave a comment or suggest it to me on Twitter.