On bad movies.

By Kel Morin-Parsons

Today’s entry is pithy, (hehe--I just wanted to use the word “pithy”), but still, like all truly pithy things, important. Very, very important.

I would love to hear from readers of this blog about their top bad movie pics. But listen; this isn’t as simple as it might seem. For there are two categories of bad movie to which I would like you to hearken. The first is so-good-they’re-bad flicks. Stuff that has taken on a life of its own in a parallel entertainment universe in which everyone has tripped merrily over the barrier between unpleasant and perversely delightful. I will offer up a number-one classic pick in this category: Can’t Stop the Music. If you don’t know of it, I’m not going to tell you a thing—go out and discover, boys and girls. You will thank me. Oh, you will thank me.

The second category of bad flick is far, far more painful to contemplate. “Sometimes,” the great philosopher Huey Lewis once sang, “Sometimes bad is bad.” Films belonging here are . . . well, just bad. These are films that in no way redeem themselves by becoming classics of camp or melodrama. They’re just . . . er, bad. My personal champion here is The Avengers. Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Jim Broadbent, Fiona Shaw, Eileen Atkins . . . nope. Still, somehow, toweringly awful.

So what say you? What’s baaaaaad, and what’s just bad?