Celebrating failure

Usually at around two or three AM most nights I scan the cable channels for anything of note before trying to get some sleep. Sometimes you strike gold, but most times you see incredibly bad Japanese films, Starship Troopers, The Mummy 2 and (literally as I type this right now) Resident Evil 2 or films of this 'calibre'. Last week I found another level, D-Tox, starring Sylvester Stallone.

Sparing you most of the plot details, our troubled hero (a cop) is having problems and is sent to a detox program with fellow police officers but someone is mysteriously killing off the good guys. Suffice to say the villain of the piece was unsurprisingly an Englishman. The acting was some of the worst I have ever come across (and I used to watch El Dorado and Prisoner Cell Block H) and this made it all the better because I have to confess that I am one of those people who can find bad films good.

I love watching great films, but of almost equal pleasure to me is watching a film so bad that it's awfulness can be enjoyed on another level. It's true, bad films CAN be good. Despite being an appalling film from start to finish, I will never pass up the chance to watch Jaws 4 if it's on TV, a film so bad that the shark actually screams like an elephant when harpooned by the boat at the end of the movie. Yes the shark was impaled by a boat then it exploded whilst from somewhere obtaining a set of rudimentary vocal chords. I also have The Swarm on DVD - Google the Swarm, or go to IMDB.com and check film quotes from that, then you're talking serious cinematic faux pas. There is glory in success and glory in beauty but there can also be glory in defeat and sometimes glory in failure.

Watching this film (D-Tox) - which I couldn't watch all the way through, it was THAT bad/good, got me wondering what's the worst film I ever seen. You can't just pick any old rubbish, straight to DVD piece of trash, you have to pick a film that has been cinematically distributed. Where hope, expectations and serious financial investment has been made. And off the top of my head, that film for me is Jason X a continuation of the dreadful Friday the 13th horror series but this time set in the future, in space.

I saw this on TV in Korean - I have seen it in English AND in Korean (it's better in Korean). The film manages to have possibly the worst cast I've witnessed allied with a nonsensical script, appalling dialogue (one made is killed on some corkscrew drill device and his dying words are "I've been screwed") complete with with cheap special effects and is also possibly the least scary horror film I've ever seen. I genuinely LOVE the horror genre even at it's worst but I've seen scarier situations waiting for the bus.

The best thing I can say about it is that I didn't pay to see it, or no-one I know is in it so there has been no shame brought onto my family name. Yet I have still watched it twice. Korean has brought me down to that level. For better or for worse