| User login |
The United States loves Bad Movies
The 1980s and 1990s saw a sharp rise in our culture's appreciation of bad movies. Some scholars attribute this to the rise of kitcsh and the collector's culture of the 1980s or the rise of Mariah Carey. Most, however, see the emergence of home video as integral in the spread of the mocking commentary style so necessary for the appreciation of bad movies.
The uplift in bad movie appreciation, the founding and production of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the notoriety of the NY/UF Bad Movie Club chapters resulted in a rash of new club foundings, including chapters in Iowa, Los Angeles, and Toledo. But don't let the nation-wide success of the club in the last twenty-five years fool you--we haven't lost our roots. Indeed, the UF and Chi chapters of the Bad Movie Club still set the standard for all the clubs to follow.
At the 2002 BMC national convention in Chicago, the UF chapter took top honors in the twelve-hour "jeer-a-thon", in which participants sat through Rollerball, Surf Nazis Must Die,
Left Behind, The Dead Hate the Living, and 2 back-to-back screenings of Battlefield Earth. The UF chapter's founding president, Harmony Walliburton, also made an
appearance to accept her "Lifetime Achievement" award. In her acceptance speech, she praised the work of Chris Columbus and the Fox network, suggesting that Hollywood execs get the next generation of bad film makers from behind the cameras of reality programs.