THE 3RD HALL OF INFAMY: Infamy Rises Again

Out of curiosity, what would you guys say is your favorite critically panned film?

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IMDb
Letterboxd

Gummo has been my answer for a while, though it has garnered a decent cult following over the years.

If you have finished watching CRS, send me your ballot. Keyser, I’m looking at you.

can we get a list of all the titles, so I don't forget to rank any of them?

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Captain's Log
My Collection

The Super Mario Bros. movie from the '90s. It's a lot better and more imaginative than the one from last year, that's for sure.

Just a moment. I gotta look through the thread to remember which ones they were.

And now my ballot is sent. Time to finish that lame Chetan Bhagat novel.

Sure, I’ll post them in the first post of this thread.
Sorry, rookie mistake on my part.

I'll aim for having my review up over the weekend so I can submit my ballot. Overall, participating in this thread was a real blast...of shit!

We can say shit now? Just a second, I need to do a test

Bugger, blast, damn, *******, bloody, crap, ****, bollocks, arse, bastard, wanker.

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I'm the person who actually has Costa Rican Summer on DVD. "From the makers of Surf School," the packaging encouragingly offers. Now, take note - Costa Rican Summer has a 2.7/10 rating on the IMDb, but Surf School has a 2.2/10 rating on the IMDb. Costa Rican Summer was directed by Jason Matthews - and it's his only IMDb credit. In fact, I can't find a single detail or image concerning a "Jason Matthews" on the internet. Costa Rican Summer was written by Joel Silverman. Surf School was written and directed by Joel Silverman - and as such I have a theory. I reckon that Jason Matthews is Joel Silverman. Case in point - if you've seen the torment that's Costa Rican Summer, then the trailer for Surf School should look familiar - because it looks very close to being the same movie, give or take. Joel Silverman's imagination only stretches as far as making the same movie over and over again :


Not the exact same movie, but basically the same movie - if you get my drift. When you continue to read the blurb on the Costa Rican Summer DVD, you notice it's replete with numerous spelling and grammar mistakes. "...they resurrect a smely old surf champion...", "Also staring Pamela Anderson..." For something that's trying to pass as a bona fide sex comedy featuring surfing, it keeps coming off as just a little too sloppy to make it into that category. Unlike Jurassic Shark, Bigfoot or Double Down, this movie actually had a film crew and production team that makes credits - there were 8 crew in the Camera and Electrical Department, and 5 crew in the sound department. It boasts visual effects, and even has a second unit team. There were eight producers. But all the same - it can't quite join the club, because it's not good enough. It's poor enough to look amateur, despite itself. Where does the buck stop? Let's look at Joel Silverman.

Silverman must have a silver tongue - because his extremely dubious career spans 6 films amounting to a career that ran from 2001 to 2015. I've checked them all out, and they're all pretty bad - but there's a very loose trilogy that look like they've been filmed on the same beach - and they're all set in Costa Rica. First came Death to the Supermodels (2.4/10 on the IMDb), released in 2005, which looks abominable. Apparently it wasn't enough to kill Silverman's career, and Surf School came along in 2006 - and we've seen how bad that looks. After that, the man was still making movies for some bizarre reason, and Costa Rican Summer was made. "From the makers of Surf School" - as if that's something to be proud of. As if there were enough people out there that would be moved to see Costa Rican Summer, and enjoy it. When I first saw it - quite innocent and not aware of how bad this was, I wrote this on Letterboxd :

"No way. Peter Dante (a lower tier 'Happy Madison' schlub) and Pamela Anderson sink as low as they can go by featuring in this amateur, microbudget production. It has every mark of a "worst ever" movie - stilted delivery by actors not at all suited to the profession, nudity that feels so exploitative you'll actually look away, music that sounds like it's a Casio keyboard demo tune, excruciating "jokes" that are painful to watch, sub-par production values, "never handled a camera before - or even learned how" cinematography and a clumsily lifted storyline that's a cliché of clichés. Everything is rock bottom - Costa Rican Summer is easily one of the worst movies I've ever watched, and you can be damned sure I'm going to force other people to watch it as often as I can. Words don't do it justice really - even the two "big name" stars give wooden, awkward and halting line readings. This isn't bottom of the barrel - this exists somewhere beneath the barrel, most probably in hell itself. It's insane that this was even made."

The weird thing is - Surf School and Death to the Supermodels actually look worse! Everyone here has already said enough about the film's failings directly, so I just wanted to take a different direction, to fill out the picture. I'd love to know how Peter Dante and Pamela Anderson became involved in this, and I'd love to know more about Silverman and his efforts at making movies, as misguided as they were. As with all the great bad filmmakers, there's an essential disconnect that stops him sensing what makes movies enjoyable to watch, a lack of a good sense of humour, an exploitative streak when it comes to women, a lack of skill at being a director and many more issues. There are many one-note horrors in the annuls of bad film history, but rarer are the Ed Woods and Herschell Gordon Lewis types. I'm not saying Silverman is up amongst those figures - but he does stand out as being a rare figure to make more than a couple of absolute "worst of the worst" movies.

I'm glad we can also say bitch. Because what if I want to refer to a female dog?

Dear lord it's the same wig but in a different color.

Costa Rican Summer (2010) -

The filmmakers certainly intended for this to be a critique of the objectification of the female body, but I'd argue they didn't handle these points with a deft hand and lacked the maturity to go all the way on it. The portrayal of the unhinged characters is handled so obnoxiously, the nudity feels so exploitative and forced (to cut the film some slack, the men are sexualized a bit as well), and the dreamlike score whenever Pamela Anderson appeared onscreen made me check out entirely. While we're not asked to approve of the characters' behaviors, given the over-the-top direction of these elements, the intentions of the film weren't always clear. Whenever a film is critiquing nudity/sexuality, there's a thin line as to how much of that subject it can depict and how it portrays it before its commentary becomes muddled. The more it shows and the more emphasis it places on such, the more its points get diluted and the more it seems like depicting the "titillating" content is all the film wants to do. While I've encountered worse cases over the years (e.g. Cuties), this film still felt shallow. As for the rest of the film, it has the standard flaws I've seen in other terrible films, like bad acting, poorly-written dialogue, an overbearing and obnoxious score, poor cinematography, and an uninspired story. Of course, it's not like this is the only poorly made film out there which is disposable entertainment, but I think the reason this film bugged me so much was because it was pretending to be something else. At least Jurassic Shark and Meet the Spartans weren't trying to do this. I will grant that the second half is a slight improvement over the first half since it's more toned down, but not by much. Overall, this is horrendously bad on almost all levels and whatever undercurrents of quality are sprinkled in were ultimately overshadowed.

Ballot submitted.

If anyone needs it, here are all the nominations in this thread:

Costa Rican Summer
The Curse of the Bigfoot
Double Down
Jurassic Shark
Leap
Meet the Spartans
Robot Monster
Theresienstadt

Double Down, 2005

Aaron Brand (Neil Breen, who also writes and directs) is a genius secret agent who grapples with the role he is meant to play in a major terrorist action in Las Vegas. As Brand wrestles with his conscience, he is haunted by visions of his fiance, Megan (Laura Hale), who was killed due to her involvement with him.

For better and for worse, this film is a pure expression of ego.

In a video about the difference between training men and women in athletics, the presenter made a comment that I thought was nicely nuanced. He remarked that ego can be a mixed bag, because ego can push you toward doing stupid, dangerous things, but it can also push you to do great things. And watching this movie feels very much like exhibit A of that idea.

For a movie that has a certain degree of infamy, there are certainly strengths. Some of the shot compositions are very nice, and some solid use is made of the desert filming location. There are also just some good transitions, like a shot that hovers over a moving trolley.

The film also occasionally manages to catch that weird, dream rhythm where things “making sense” seems like an irrelevancy. In one key sequence, Brand is on the phone with several gentlemen. Instead of seeing those men on the phone, the actors instead read their lines directly into the camera. Scenes frequently end abruptly, only to transition to Brand waking up next to his car, disoriented, and with a bloody message scrawled on the side of the car. Yes, this is one of those movies where the stilted acting and bizarro choices----like a voice-over narration that lasts the WHOLE FILM---end up being effective more than you’d expect just due to the otherworldly vibe they help create.

But then there’s the downside of ego. This film embraces a vision of action tropes and spy stuff that feels about as evolved as the perspective of a 10-year old. To be sure, that lends the film plenty of hilarious moments, like when Brand reveals to us a denim vest covered in medals, as he rattles off his many, many awards. A full 70% of the narration feels like it’s just Brand talking about how amazing and powerful he is. And this is somehow meant to be true in the world’s reality, as Brand pulls off various operations and missions.

Now, when it comes to movies that are kind of silly, I vastly prefer films that are sincere. On one hand, it feels a bit meaner to laugh at someone who is genuinely trying to do something good, but on the other hand it’s nice to have a break from the more cynical movies that are trying to be bad and use that as an excuse to not put in effort. There is effort in this movie, which makes certain choices just baffling. If there is self-awareness here, it does not seem to be on display. In the reality of the film, slapping a huge handful of anthrax powder onto a guy’s arm counts as a suave covert operation.

There are also multiple times that ego hurts the film. There’s a scene in which Megan and Brand are in a hot tub and the only clothing in site are Megan’s bathing suit bottoms. Yet it appears that (possibly due to the actress’s discomfort) there is an effort to avoid showing her face on, and Breen likewise stays inexplicably turned away from the camera. The result is a scene where two people awkwardly stand in the corner of a hot tub, ostensibly having a conversation yet standing perpendicular to each other to avoid either facing the camera. So . . . why not just give him some shorts and her a top? It feels honestly like “THEY DEFINITELY HAVE SEXY TIMES” was the point of the scene, and it just ends up coming off very badly staged.

My appreciation of this film might have been a little higher if it weren’t for having somewhat recently watched Damon Packard’s Reflections of Evil. It’s another early-2000s, low-budget passion project, but one with a lot more self-awareness and ability to show instead of telling. In fact, Packard’s seeming self-loathing is almost diametrically opposed to Breen’s self-importance, and I just find the former a lot more compelling, especially as talking yourself up for 85 minutes and then struggling to walk down a slightly steep hill just ends up being funny in the wrong way. (I mean, no shade here. We’ve all had to do that undignified walk-run-baby-step-shuffle down a steep hill).

Ultimately this movie left me feeling as if someone wrote an outline of a movie and then never filled in the details. A note like “He gets terrible news and then gets another call” turns into “Oh, God, oh, no! That’s terrible . . . Hold on, I have a call on the other line”. It’s enjoyable enough to spend time with, and full of ironically wonderful quotables, but then there will be a glimpse of some genuinely decent imagery and I find myself wishing Breen had found himself a collaborator who could have helped him refine this vision.

Okay, I'm confused. I thought Megan (Laura Hale) was the fiance. But Megan is apparently the little girl with brain cancer?

So who is the actress who played the fiance?

EDIT: In the credits it credits someone as "Girl at Dinner." So maybe the person who wrote the IMDb trivia is just confused?

I'll try to watch the last one Tuesday or Wednesday

Costa Rican Summer: Worst Wig Ever!

Oof, well It was mostly what I expected it to be, a teen sex comedy without sex, teens or jokes, a surfer movie without surfing. I didn’t pay close attention to it. I don’t think it deserved close attention or would have been half as enjoyable if I had paid close attention. The seafood related double entendres, that passed for jokes, were so awful. I was begging the guy to shut up. But they just kept coming (no double entendre intended.)
I was not rooting for the boy to get the girl. He barfed on her breasts. That would be an instant no for me. When you end a movie about a surfing contest between two longtime rivals without surfing, the lameness never ends. The beats in the story were so obvious and boring. The whole thing was just tiresome.
I did enjoy the yacht rock that was playing throughout. I know that makes me the odd man out.