Guilty pleasures: films I love that you hate

It’s bad enough to begin with. I’m a film historian. I always seem to be in the middle of watching a movie. Usually it’s something in black and white, in a foreign language, and strange. This makes it tough on people who live with me. Too often they have to wrassle the remote away and put on something comprehensible.

I have a contrarian sense of quality. I like the bizarre, the obscure, the overlooked. If it’s popular, I will often reflexively and stupidly line up against it. Some part of me I am sure is always spoiling for a fight with the larger culture (too many years as a critic).

You can see where this is headed. We’ve all been there — you see a movie you love, you praise it to the skies. You lobby for it. You get people to sit down and watch it with you. And there is silence.

And they start looking at you like you’re something the cat coughed up.

This has happened to me so many times that I started keeping track of these guilty pleasures. I just checked the list, and there are more than 300 of these bad boys on it. I can guarantee, if you stay away from these, you will be a happier person.

I’m not claiming that these are neglected masterpieces. I know they are problematic, to say the least. Now, once in a while the critical consensus will change about a film, so that a stinker I like becomes generally acceptable. However, to date this has only happened to me in regard to the original The In-Laws (1979).

A lot of them are films in a series. I was raised on old movies, and have a sneaking affection for Flash Gordon, Ma and Pa Kettle, and Francis the Talking Mule. I followed the adventures of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes, Karloff’s Mr. Wong and Peter Lorre’s Mr. Moto, and all the incarnations of Charlie Chan.

The “oriental” detective is just one of the many politically incorrect figures of that period. Many more classic films are ruined by sequences of blatant racism. In Babes in Arms (1939), Holiday Inn (1942), and James Whale’s Show Boat (1936), blackface numbers stand out, deeply disturbing to watch now. Hauling them into the light does good, but films like this do not constitute fodder for a fun watch party.

Some of the films on the list of the forbidden are so-bad-it’s-good — It Conquered the World (1954), The Tingler (1959), Attack from Space (1964), and some are cheesy Technicolor fantasies — Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), Crack in the World (1965), and Fantastic Voyage (1966), in which Donald Pleasence is eaten by a white corpuscle.

New entries swell the list on a regular basis. John Carter (2012) is there, as is Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017). It’s a sickness.

So here are 13 of the most traumatic film experiences you should avoid. If by chance you like any of these selections, then know that you are a weirdo, and my very dear friend.

Where Eagles Dare (dir. Brian G. Hutton, 1968)

Do you like Nazi kill counts? Then you are gonna love this one. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood (a match not made in heaven) and company go on a secret WWII mission deep behind enemy lines to rescue an American general. That’s it. They do that and a bunch of other stuff, to at a level not seen until the casual bloodshed that permeates The Matrix. They just kill and kill and kill. This film is adapted from the work of formulaic adventure novelist Alistair MacLean (The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, etc.), for whom I have a weakness as well. It’s chaff, but it’s GOOD chaff.

Vampire Circus (dir. Robert Young, 1972)

It’s the only horror movie I know of that starts with what is a softcore porn scene. Oh, do I have your attention now? Yeah, it’s a hippy-drippy-trippy kind of horror film, in which a village suffers the vengeance of — a vampire, in the form of — a circus. There is a chuckling dwarf, a naked panther-lady, YOU know.

It will make you stop taking drugs.

Day of the Dolphin (dir. Mike Nichols, 1973)

“Unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States.” ‘Nuff said. It’s what I consider to be a neat little sci-fi thriller. There’s one problem. The dolphins have learned to speak through their blowholes. In tiny little squeaky voices. This is evidently a barrier to the suspension of disbelief, as any normal person watching will start laughing at this point and won’t stop until all the credits have rolled. And who will address you in said “dolphin voice” for weeks afterward. Even though this project was helmed by the great Mike Nichols and starring George C. Scott, it has is disappointed many. I still watch it.

Murder by Death (dir. Robert Moore, 1976)

First, you have to know who Truman Capote was. And to find that amusing. Now we’ve lost 95 percent of the potential audience. Then you have to understand a gallery of movie-detective stereotypes and their mannerisms. I’m thinking this whodunit was made because Neil Simon wrote it; oh yes you also need to know who Neil Simon was. If none of these cues spark your interest . . . oh well. This was a prestige project; many honored actors appear in the film including, bizarrely, Alec Guinness as a blind butler. Biggest laugh: “I want my Dickie!”

Movie Movie (dir. Stanley Donen, 1978)

The great director Stanley Donen got together with the great comedy writer Larry Gelbart and crafted this gem. It’s a parody of Golden Age Hollywood — a double feature! “Dynamite Hands” is a gritty black-and-white boxing drama and “Baxter’s Beauties of 1933” is a gaudy Technicolor backstage musical. The ensemble, which includes George C. Scott, Eli Wallach, Art Carney, and many other old hands, are drop-dead funny. If you get the references. “That’s the second time you’ve made me drop my panties today!” This is the level of humor at which I dwell.

The Stunt Man (dir. Richard Rush, 1980)

I love movies about the making of movies, such as The Bad and the Beautiful and Day for Night. I love this movie ever since I saw it as a rough cut. From my perspective it’s funny, wry, and profound. To those who’ve endured it, it’s pointless, meandering, and pompous. Take your pick. With Peter O’Toole as director as Prospero.

Red Dawn (dir. John Milius, 1984)

“WOLVERINES!” If there ever was a conglomeration of teens from Pueblo that could kick the Russian army’s ass, this is it. There’s Patrick Swayze again! Charlie Sheen! C. THOMAS HOWELL! Jennifer Grey! And they even throw in Harry Dean Stanton, and Ben Johnson, and Powers Boothe. All are called on to fight the Commies who invade our homeland, and everybody gets a character beat. Many industrial barrels of whoop-ass are opened.

Dune (dir. David Lynch, 1984)

It’s wasn’t his fault! He did the best with what he had, and later extended cuts demonstrate to me at least that Lynch had a grasp on the material, however bizarrely that played out from a design standpoint. It’s a space epic that’s tough to pull off — we’ll have to see if a new adaptation does any better with this “cursed” material. “Mua’dib! The Spice is life!”

Road House (dir. Rowdy Herrington, 1986)

First of all, the director has the best name in film history. I want to make a film with him just so I could say I did. Then: it’s terminally earnest Patrick Swayze as the mythical Dalton, the Ultimate Bouncer. (Yes, those people who maintain order in nightclubs.) He slides into a rural town in Missouri, a specialist hired to reform a bar with a bad reputation. In doing so, he piques the ire of Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), a picayune Capone whose mob-boss ways are a sharp contrast to the backwoods atmosphere in which we find ourselves.

Dalton is a peaceful warrior with a degree in philosophy from NYU. As such, he is called to knock the snot out of ruffians on a regular basis. He’s like a Zen monk with feathered hair. He romances the only professional woman in the county, a doctor he meets in the E.R. when he comes in for some stitchery. He famously remarks, in a display of good old mind over matter, “Pain don’t hurt.” The ridiculously over-the-top fight scenes are alone worth the price of admission, but tarry to revel in what passes for dialogue and characterization.

Joe Versus the Volcano (dir. John Patrick Shanley, 1990)

This comic fable is one of my favorite films of all time. They let John Patrick Shanley make it just like he wanted, and it’s wonderful. I swear to you it is. I watch it and I get all goopy and break down and cry and think about what a precious wonderful thing life is. In stark contrast to those around me.

Hudson Hawk (dir. Michael Lehmann, 1991)

What can I say.

Cannibal! The Musical (dir. Trey Parker, 1993)

OK, to supplement my non-existent comedy income I was waiting tables in Boulder. There, one of my fellow waitrons, who could score the best acid, mentioned that he was shooting a movie on the weekends with people from CU. It was a musical about Colorado cannibal Alfred Packer. I will ever regret not jumping at the chance to get involved. It was the first big project of Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park” fame. And it is hilarious. Those of this film’s cult and I can recite it verbatim. “Weep-wah, weep-wah, suro no hapo.”

Timecop (dir. Peter Hyams, 1994)

It’s Jean Claude Van Damme! He’s a cop! Wait — not just a cop but a TIME cop. A cop that travels though time. To catch bad guys to want to abuse time travel for fun and profit. So the statute of limitations goes out the window. Time-travel movies usually fall apart in terms of internal logic and this is no different. But it does give it a game try. Just turn off your mind, relax and float downstream . . .