Sunday "Bad" Movies: 50th Week Retrospective

It’s been fifty weeks since I sat down one day and thought “Why don’t I write about all of the bad movies I watch?”  It was almost a year ago that I had that thought.  The fifty weeks have flown by with all of the bad movie fun that I’ve been having.  I thought that it would be the perfect time to take a look back at all of the movies I’ve covered and all of the things that I’ve written as part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I did this same sort of thing for the twenty-fifth week, so I’m not going to delve into the history of the first twenty-five posts, as much as give a reflection upon the posts between that time and now.  I will also give some updates on statistics such as actors who have been watched the most, or directors featured the most.  Things like that.  But first, the posts themselves.

This chunk of the Sunday “Bad” Movies was a really interesting collection of films that ranged through many different genres.  That’s quite similar to what came before it.  I saw horror films, dramas, comedies, and even some science fiction.  That’s almost exactly what I said for the first twenty-five posts.  Oh yeah, I had a musical and an animated movie in this bunch of movies.  In fact, the musical was an animated movie!  I had surprises and disappointments, like anyone would.  That’s how the cookie crumbles.  That’s how movie viewing goes.

All in all, I enjoyed the movies that I have been able to watch because of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I like seeing new things and reflecting upon what I’ve watched.  I might not be the most eloquent when it comes to the writing part of it all, but I have a good time.  What more is there to life than having a good time?  I like to give movies the chance that they all deserve.  I’m all for equality in movies.  The Sunday “Bad” Movie series helps me to find things that I never would have found otherwise.  Would I have seen a movie like Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend without these blog posts?  Well, yeah.  That’s a bad example.  The name of that one interests me enough to get me to see it.  What about Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery?  I probably wouldn’t have watched it, even though I own it.  Thanks to the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I have seen it, and I have no regrets.

Now, I obviously have a few favourites between the twenty-sixth and fiftieth posts.  Let me first list off my favourite movies of the bunch so that you know which ones I would most recommend that you check out.  These are five movies from within this section of the Sunday “Bad” Movies that I enjoyed enough to say “Yeah, you should watch that.”  Here they are:

1. Hansel and Gretel Get Baked – This was definitely the biggest surprise of the movies.  There’s a dark comedic tone to this well-crafted horror flick.  I went in expecting something dumb, but got an intelligent horror movie.  It may not reach great heights, but it is entertaining and horrific enough that you’ll find yourself enjoying it.  I know I did.  There’s also a great performance by Lara Flynn Boyle, who looks like she’s having a lot of fun.  If there was one movie I would demand you see, this is it.
2. Chopper Chicks in Zombietown – This movie is also known as Chrome Hearts.  If you haven’t seen it, but you’ve heard about it, it’s either because of me, or because Billy Bob Thornton is in it.  It’s one of his earliest movies.  The movie is basically a comedy with bits of horror thrown in to add to the fun.  A female biker gang goes to a town and the town gets infested with zombies.  It’s just plain fun.
3. The Marine 2 – It’s basically a retelling of Die Hard, directed by the guy who did Death Race 2 and Death Race: Inferno, and starring Ted DiBiase Jr.  That doesn’t matter to me, though.  I still found it to be a solid direct-to-video action flick.  Michael Rooker shows up to be an awesome sidekick sort of character, which only helps the movie.  You aren’t going to get anything great out of this, but I still think it’s a good way to spend an hour and a half.
4. Torque – What is there to say that you wouldn’t already know?  I don’t know, so this is going to seem repetitive.  Torque is insane.  Bikes outrunning burning fuel.  Giant keys.  Cars suck, bikes don’t.  Ice Cube, Dane Cook, Adam Scott, Jaime Pressly… This movie was made as a response to The Fast and the Furious, and it stars one of the guys from The Fast and the Furious.  There’s no way to describe this movie in a way that does it justice.  It needs to be seen.
5. The Marine 3: Homefront – This might be the one movie in the franchise that I would call legitimately good.  I like the second one a little bit more, but this one has a better cast and a more original story, I’d say.  It also has Neal McDonough.  You might have fear about going into it because it stars The Miz, is produced by WWE, and went direct-to-video, but I’d say it rises above that stigma.  It’s worth watching.

Only one of the five movies made the top five of the entire Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I don’t know if that means that I filled this section with movies that I didn’t particularly love, or if I loaded the first twenty-five movies with movies that I would love.  The only movie to be bumped off the total top five was Death Race, which leaves my top 5 movies total as:

1. Miami Connection
2. Robot Jox
3. Starcrash
4. The Room
5. Hansel and Gretel Get Baked

I could get into the movies that I dislike, as well, but I can see that this post is already getting long enough.  I would also like to keep the retrospective on the positive side of things.  I like the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  There is no reason to bring it down by discussing the movies that I didn’t like.

The movies aren’t the only thing that has driven the Sunday “Bad” Movies forward.  The other part, and possibly the more important part, is the writing.  I’ve written fifty posts (fifty-three if you count this retrospective, the last retrospective, and the look into the future from the twenty-fifth week) for the blog series.  That’s a lot of writing.  Some of it has come in the form of reviews.  I usually save that for the newer movies, such as Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, or Hansel and Gretel Get Baked.  Other times, I will be rewatching a bad movie and writing about my history with the movie.  I’ve done that for movies like The Room and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.  Then there are the times where I write about a topic that is related to the movie that I watched.  Cases like these include Jonah: A Veggietales Movie, where I wrote about adaptations and the originality within them, or Crossover, where I wrote about the IMDb Bottom 100.  Of course, there are the odd outliers that don’t fit into these three main concepts, but for the most part, these are the things I write about.

I’ve had fun coming up with what I would write about throughout the fifty posts and I’m looking forward to writing about many more movies.  It’s a sort of release for me.  Writing helps me to release some of the bottled up thoughts in my head.  Whether or not you read or agree with what I write, it doesn’t matter to me.  The writing is for me.  Don’t let me ever tell you otherwise.  I appreciate that people put up with my opinion, but really I just want to get some of it out of my head and into the open.  The writing helps me clear my mind.  If I didn’t have the writing, I don’t know what I would do.

About those posts… I obviously have some that I favor over others.  I made a list last time of five of my favourite posts that I had written over the first twenty-five posts, and this time I’ll list five from between posts twenty-six and fifty.  The only order they are in is the order that they popped into my head.  So here are five of my favourite posts that I’ve written since post twenty-six.

1. Hansel and Gretel Get Baked – This is just one of my favourite things I’ve ever written, period.  It was, in my opinion, the best review sort of thing that I’ve written in my history of writing about movies.  I’m proud of this one.  I felt great when I finished it, and there’s nothing in the world that matches that sort of high.  It’s the high of satisfaction.
2. Jonah: A Veggietales Movie – I did not like the movie, but it gave me a lot to chew on.  The idea of originality in adaptations is one that I hadn’t thought too much about before writing about Jonah, but when I started writing, a lot of stuff came flowing out of my fingers.  I kept going and going and ended up with a lot of writing about a subject that I didn’t know I had that much interest in.  It was a surprise, and I think the post came out fairly well.
3. The Marine, The Marine 2, The Marine 3: Homefront – When I do a little bit of research, this is what comes out.  It might not be great writing, but it was a stepping stone to me becoming a better writer.  This post taught me that with a little bit of research, I am not flying by the seat of my pants so much.  It gives me a foundation and helps to give some credibility to what I write.  I like that about this post.
4. Snakes on a Train – This is where I tell my history with movies from The Asylum.  That’s why it’s here.  I like The Asylum.  I liked writing about why I watch so much from The Asylum.  I think it’s a decent post.  I know it’s one of my favourites.
5. Crossover – This post encompasses a few topics that I have problems with: hyperbole, the IMDb Bottom 100, and negative reputations.  It was basically a way for me to write about my problems with so-called “fans” of movies who do nothing but complain and exaggerate on the poor quality of films.  I feel like it’s decently written, and it’s a topic I will reference time and time again as I continue forward in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.

That concludes the portions of this retrospective or reflection or whatever you want to call it that are about the writing and the watching.  Now I’m going to move onto a few statistics.  This shouldn’t take too long as I’ve got everything together in an Excel file, as well as written somewhere else for safe-keeping.  Let’s go.

The first thing up is suggested movies.  At twenty-five posts, only four of the movies had been suggested by other people.  Four out of twenty-five isn’t even twenty percent of the movies.  Between posts twenty-six and fifty, nine movies were suggested by other people.  That’s thirty-six percent of the posts with a movie that was suggested to me by someone.  Look at that improvement!  I hope to have even more suggested films in the future.

Next up for discussion is the directors of the movies.  Since post thirty, for the Marine movies, I have been keeping track of the directors who have directed multiple movies within the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  That was all brought on by Roel Reine.  So, the following are the four directors who have directed multiple movies in the Sunday “Bad” Movies:

• Roel Reine – He directed Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno, and The Marine 2
• David Hillenbrand and Scott Hillenbrand – They both shared direction on Dorm Daze and Dorm Daze 2: College @ Sea
• Bob Clark – He directed Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2

There isn’t much to write about when it comes to directors who have directed multiple movies in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  However, there is much more to talk about in terms of the actors.  There are a total of fifty-three actors that have been featured in multiple movies throughout the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  That’s almost one for every movie that has been watched.  Nineteen of these actors have been featured in multiple franchises.  This number is only going to rise as the blog series continues.

I would like to highlight the ten actors who have been in the most movies within the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  There are a few rules to how I am ranking these.  Let me go over them first.  The first ordering rule is the number of movies that the actor has been in total.  Four movies would rank higher than three which would rank higher than two.  Within the different number of movies, the actors are ordered by number of franchises.  So someone in three movies of three different franchises ranks higher than someone in three movies as a part of two franchises.  Following that rule, the actors are ordered by the order in which their final movie was featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  The earlier the second movie in the blog series, the higher you would rank.  If the actors have the same final movie, the second to last determines the rank, then third, then fourth, and so on.  The top ten actors in the Sunday “Bad” Movie series are as follows:

1.  Jaime Pressly (The Ooogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, Torque, Cruel World)
2.  Danny Trejo (Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno, Rise of the Zombies)
3.  Fred Koehler (Death Race, Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno)
3.  Robin Shou (Death Race, Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno)
5.  French Stewart (30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Rise of the Zombies)
6.  Chad Lindberg (Alex Cross, Rise of the Zombies)
7.  Joshua Rush (Playing for Keeps, Parental Guidance)
8.  Ed Gale (Tiptoes, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown)
9.  Steve Bacic (The Marine 3: Homefront, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever)
9.  Tony Alcantar (The Marine 3: Homefront, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever)

That’s all I have for the statistics at this point.  I have the suggestions, the directors, and the actors.  I find this stuff interesting enough to include in the retrospectives.  I hope you find it insightful in a way.  The writing of it may not have been my best work, but it’s statistics.  It’s difficult to make statistics exciting.  At least, I have yet to find a way to do that.

You can look forward to another retrospective post come the time that I write the seventy-fifth post.  I want to do one for every twenty-five.  Next time, there might even be some bigger changes to the Sunday “Bad” Movies than this group of twenty-five movies had.  I’m trying to grow the series into something more than just a simple watch-and-write.  I have ideas, and if you have any ideas, feel free to share them.  I’m open to suggestions, though I might not use them.

That’s it for this retrospective.  If you have any suggestions to make the Sunday “Bad” Movies better, or any suggestions for movies to be featured, leave a comment.  I do read all of the comments.  You could also check me out on Twitter.  I try to reply to everything that people say to me on Twitter.  Next week’s movie is A Crush on You.  I’ll be back next week with the post for it.  See you then.

I’m just going to link the list of all of the Sunday “Bad” Movies right here instead of linking every time I mention a movie because that’s a lot of linking.