The verdict is IN

[annathepiper]

Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This bad film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene...simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.

Well maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn't good.

--Opus, Bloom County

kathrynt came over this afternoon for our Bad Movie competition, bringing with her a tape of Alien Express (with apologies from her and llachglin written on the label)--and an actual purchased copy of On Deadly Ground. That's right, folks, Q paid actual money for this movie. She wound up having to do this because she had no rental card at Hollywood Video, nor did she have a credit card. She relays to us that she had the following conversation with the clerk at the store:

"Hi, I need a copy of On Deadly Ground!"

".... Why?"

"I'm having a bad-movie-off!"

"Ohhhhh, okay!"

Then she discovered that she couldn't rent it, and the clerk said, "Y'know what? This is maybe kind of sketchy, but I'm just going to sell it to you out of inventory."

And Q said, "You sure that's all right?"

And the clerk replied, "Honestly, I don't mind if I never see that movie ever again."

With a lead-in like that, and with me on Percocet, we were absolutely in the right frame of mind for the bad movie competition!

In this corner: Alien Express, featuring Lou Diamond "I look badassed putting on my alien-attacking garb!" Phillips. Todd "I'm a Secret Service agent but still Gary Coleman's big brother" Bridges. Bad guy who can't stick to an English accent to save his life. Smarmy overweight Senator who's got his ex-wife AND a blonde bimbo mistress on board the train they're all taking to Vegas. Effects that look like they were put together in Photoshop, badly, complete with pixellated explosions. And, the crowning glory, aliens that looked like sock puppets.

And in that corner: On Deadly Ground, written by, directed by, and starring Steven "I really need to make the audience understand what a big badass I am, so I'm going to have two different characters spout off paragraphs of dialogue about how I'm everyone's worst nightmare" Seagal. Which is really all you need to say about this movie, and which now has led me to understand the true depth behind this quote out of The 776 Nastiest Things Ever Said:

On Macho, Not So:

I don't get why anyone takes this guy seriously. With his soft chin, black-shirted paunch, and ponytail the size of a chihuahua's penis, Seagal looks more like a schnorrer at a Hollywood party than like the toughest man in creation.

critic John Powers in a review of macho actor Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground

Now, spazzkat had a very good point going into this contest, which is that Alien Express is a "Sci-Fi Pictures original" and therefore has a very low quality bar to start with, while On Deadly Ground was actually a theatrical release. But that said, there was amazingly little distance between these two films' badness especially when watched back to back. And I did in fact have to call it a draw as to which was worse--because while Alien Express was overall a worse film, On Deadly Ground did in fact have several excruciatingly bad, fork-in-your-eye moments.

Alien Express wins hands down in terms of craptastic effects, almost universal badness in every cliched line of dialogue uttered by every character, the token black character biting it, an (well, we hope it is) unintentional allusion to Manos: The Hands of Fate, and a godawful setup for a sequel.

On Deadly Ground competes with the excruciating "slappy hands" sequence (complete with the pontification at the end of the fight), multiple characters sounding off about how badassed Seagal's character is (Mary Sue points right off the scale, making this film way more of a Mary-Sue wankfest than even Star Trek V), mizkit's "favorite" line of "Of course I can ride, I'm a Native American!", and the fork-in-the-eyes badness of the environmental speech at the end. Paul claimed it was fifteen minutes long. smeehrrr claimed it was twenty. I timed it; it was more like three. But it was interminable enough to feel like half an hour.

So yeah. It's a draw, and Paul and Kathryn now have to buy each other beer, a verdict they have both cheerfully accepted. Though Kathryn has to buy Paul extra beer because he recognized one of the lesser characters in On Deadly Ground and she didn't believe it was who Paul said. So Paul comes out ahead anyway.

Me, I'm just happy to have survived both flicks.

Comments

I can top those movies..

[(Anonymous)]

"Battle Beyond The Stars"..Originally released in 3D..I think. "Spacehunter:The Forbidden Zone"-also originally in 3D. The only cool thing in the movie was his car...a modified Dodge WW2 troop vehicle. His spaceship's monitor was a 1970's Quasar TV(I had one just like it..) The pistols were off the shelf Crosman BB guns,with Estes Mosquito model rockets attached.
"Radioactive Dreams"- Post nuke disco-mutants..that was the peak..
My favorite Best Worst Movie: Rock and Roll Starship..a 90 minute home movie, filmed in 8mm. So *bad*it's fun to watch.
"Event Horizon"..I saw that..the Medeival-looking starship engine? IIRC, it went FTL by taking shortcuts thru Hell and picking up passengers.I saw it free-they were handing out tickets to it in front of the theatre..it's up there on the Lame Scale..
Glad to hear your surgery went OK...are you going to be on Thyroxin,or some sort of supplement? It would seem that now your thyroid is gone,it would be necessary. Scott

Re: I can top those movies..

[annathepiper]

Have you SEEN Alien Express or On Deadly Ground? If you haven't, you aren't prepared to say you can top them, I can guarantee you. ;)

And yes, now that my thyroid is gone, I have to take Synthroid. Right now I'm on a .05mg a day dose. This may get adjusted later by the endoc I need to go see, but we'll see what happens with that when the time comes.