https://www.looper.com/1145/movies-earned-0-rating-rotten-tomatoes/
It’s a long list, but some take me back to that golden age of seeing films. I must have gone to the theatre weekly, for sure, because I remember seeing Mac and Me in the theatre during its two week run, and it was up against Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Big, and Die Hard. Stiff competition. But during the pandemic, I am revisiting… well, basically my whole life of pop culture, movies, and music. It’s been a delight to catch up on so much old “content”, especially as there is a dearth of new content. The slow down in production has really been a boon in discovering rare, lost, or missed gems, as well as revisit the movies and moments that “imprinted” so deeply on us that it developed our memories and loves of genre and celebrate the tropes, and the films we didn’t appreciate… or films we appreciated and should not have. I’m lucky that I found MST3K so early, because I’ve been able to suffer along with Joel and the gang, so it wasn’t so brutal or lonely.
The Paul Rudd Conan bit aside, I sort of remember liking Mac and Me, and 100000% wanted Coke and McDonald’s afterwards and I sort of want it now. Funny how that legitimately works on kids with the products and the placements and what not. It’s interesting Mac and Me was about enabling the disabled as well as using profits for charity, which is so fucking weird for Hollywood at the time, and the way it was perceived.
The below link is a fascinating exploration of the process of getting Mac and Me off the ground, and the truly altruistic and sort of oddball approach the Producer had in getting it done. https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/mcdonalds-mac-and-me-paul-rudd-movie-et-spinoff
BUT, I was reminded of the Thing With Two Heads, which is a film where they “grafted a white bigot’s head on a soul brother’s body”. Ray Milland and Rosie Greer. no skidding. And a young Rick Baker worked on the effects. And if you’re wondering if a film like that could be made these days, well we’re still close enough to Adam Sandler’s Ridiculous 6 that I would say probably.
However, the terribleness that came from the 1980s and 1990s was just some spectacular terribleness. Just stellar terribleness, and that is SIMON SEZ with Dennis Rodman, as a follow up to Double Team with Van Damme.
The second billed is a young Dane Cook, and he’s no even on the one sheet. LOL
And the scene of Dane Cook needlessly acting like a dinosaur aside, I’m more impressed with the costume design of the day, and no, that is not Dennis Rodman doing white face:
If you’ve got an hour to laugh, these guys do a review of Simon Sez by asking “Is it Good Bad, or Bad Bad?”
I also have to give a big shout out to Manos Hands of Fate, and the fact that someone found the 16mm workprint in California in 2011, and they, no kidding, released a master transfer as a bluray. lol
I am absolutely thrilled I’ve most of the films on that list, but I am feeling like reveling in the “so bad its good” land, and that list is top notch. The only one I feel a strong need to see is Heartbeeps, and like Cats, we can already question the level of sobriety I would need to *NOT* operate at to deal with it. Just look at Andy Kaufman as a weird Chevy Chase:
And, I must recognize the Barry Bostwick vehicle, because he went to my high school, and he’s wearing a cardboard RV:
