At Least They're Consistant

I love bad movies. In fact I once appeared on a game show (when you live in LA it's a matter if IF, not WHEN) and Dick Clark asked me why I like them so much. "They make me feel good about myself," I replied to the delight of a tiny studio audience.

Anyway, it gets harder to find bad movies every year as digital production technique classes up even the cheapest product. Even a cheap monster movie can get a creepy patina added to it in post and suddenly it's not bad, just mediocre. With all the tools at one's disposal nowadays, to make a bad movie you practically have to be aiming for it.

Which is why I was so thrilled the other day when I watched Titanic 2 on streaming Netflix. It's deliciously awful. The acting matches the writing; the writing is crazy stupid. It takes place on the 100th anniversary of the launch of the other Titanic, and the conceit is they have the good sense to avoid icebergs on the route, but global warming causes a glacier at the North Pole to calve so massively that it causes a tsunami that PROPELS THE ICEBERG INTO THE SIDE OF THE SHIP. They shot on the Queen Mary, a ship that has been docked in Long Beach for over fifty years and I have no doubt that had they wanted to, they would have rewritten it so the iceberg would have fallen from space onto the deck.

Somehow they even managed to do what everyone else in Hollywood has avoided - they make the CGI look unconvincing, as is their SFX department is running off a handful of Commodore Amigas. "We need to save this shot! Bring more floppies!"

Full disclosure - I auditioned for a part in this movie last year. I don't blame them for not using me - I was unprepared and got there late to boot. Anyway, I like the guy they did use for first mate, so it's all good.

Anyway, keep an eye out for this movie and any product from The Asylum. I've seen two other movies by these guys and they're always just the right level of bad. I didn't get a chance to catch MegaShark Vs. Giant Octopus yet, but again, it's not IF.