The 12 typical flaws of bad B-movies

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, cover

      ( - and C-movies too)

According to "Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide" B-movies & C-movies ("I C-movies") are marked off by these typical characteristics - which are decided faults! :
  1. Gross miscasting:

    1. "Middle-aged teenagers"
      1. Ring of Terror
      2. Daddy-O
      3. Teenage Caveman
      4. Teenagers From Outer Space

    2. Embarassed / misused talent.
      1. City Limits

  2. Actors acting stupid, really stupid. See almost any Ed Wood movie ( - His vision was that of an anti-Spock, of serious and sublime illogic.) Wendell Corey, Sid Melton, etc...

    1. Woman of the Prehistoric Planet
    2. Robot Holocaust
    3. The Lost Continent
    4. Pod People
    5. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
    6. Kitten With a Whip
    7. Angel's Revenge

  3. Cheap special effects. Re-used props. Iguanas standing in for dinosaurs, etc...

    1. Robot Monster
    2. King Dinosaur
    3. Mighty Jack
    4. The Giant Gila Monster
    5. The Killer Shrews
    6. Crash of the Moons
    7. Bride of the Monster
    8. Danger! Death Ray!
    9. ... And, almost any Godzilla or Gamera movie. - There's nothing intrinsically wrong with rubber-suit effects, in & of themselves. Look at how they had a great effect in 'Dune' [- well, yes, they weren't lizard-style rubber suits. But still... ]   Or, more familiarly, in 'Creature From the Black Lagoon'.
         - A tip: It's good not to let us see too much of them! to keep the rubber suit / prosthetics / whatever   out of sight mostly, don't ever let us get a good look at them for 5+ minutes at a time (which is the main Toho film fault, I'd say.) '2001' was a real great film because the effects were never absent [ ...except maybe when Bowman eats & drinks near the end ... provides a subtle sibliminal alarming effect to that scene, that it's entirely 'effect-free' or 'normal' -?! ].    And you could stare at them repeatedly and they still looked convincing ( well, convincing enough.... at least before the 1980s. And maybe since then too.)

  4. Alien planets just exactly like Earth, wow! (or, aliens exactly like Earth people.)

    1. Women of the Prehistoric Planet
    2. King Dinosaur
    3. Stranded in Space
    4. Alien From L.A.

  5. Gross racism / parochial attitude to the multicultural. D.W. Griffith of course... though it isn't *really* rascist (see #3) if your prejudice is against grease-painted Caucasians. "I hate them some myself..."

    1. The Black Scorpion
    2. Jungle Goddess

  6. Really dumb morals(-to-the-story). Deflational or unhelpful narration.

    1. King Dinosaur
    2. It Conquered The World
    3. Bride of the Monster
    4. The Creeping Terror
    5. The Beast of Yucca Flats

  7. Titles that are completely inappropriate. I mean, a little surprise is OK, but where's the pods in 'Pod People', where's the monster in 'Monster a Go-Go'?! This is a really characteristic one. ('A Space Odyssey' would have been a really dumb name for '2001', which narrowly escaped this flaw... [ - Because there are no Cyclopes, Circes, storms, clouds, Calypso, Scylla & Charybdis, gods, sirens, Phaeacians, Nausicaa, or Penelope... No Trojan War, either. So, what Odyssey? ]

    1. Pod People
    2. Stranded in Space
    3. It Conquered the World [ - No, it didn't either. ]
    4. War of the Colossal Beast [ - 'Beast'?? ...'War'?? ]
    5. The Being From Another Planet [ - Which one? like, specifics (It's just a mummy, dummy!) ]
    6. Monster a Go-Go [ - "No monster". ]
    7. Alien From L.A. [ - No alien . . . not Hispanic enough, for certain. ]

  8. Rotten music, and/or lyrics.

    1. Godzilla vs. Megalon
    2. Pod People
    3. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
    4. The Being From Another Planet
    5. Warrior of the Lost World
    6. The Beginning of the End

  9. Mad scientists. It's OK if they create Frankenstein's monster in a really classical manner, or such . . . but if it's just to wallow in a lotta Mad Science and general madness, well....'A Clockwork Orange' is a refreshingly different approach to that, at least... Give us a break! How could any of these Doctor Dummschleims get funding (from anyone but Mel Brooks) nowadays i.e. after 1968 or so ?

    1. Mad Monster
    2. The Corpse Vanishes
    3. The Unearthly
    4. The Castle of Fu Manchu
    5. The Killer Shrews
    6. The Indestructible Man
    7. Bride of the Monster
    8. The Brain Taht Wouldn't Die
    9. The Wild World of Batwoman
    10. The Atomic Brain

    P.S.:   How about a realistic, shamelessly frank bio of Nikola Tesla? -!!!   He fits the bill:  Grandiose/nutty, inventive, prone to throw high voltage around lavishly....

    - Enough of the Gratuitious 'Frankenstein'ism !

  10. Indifference to a main character's death, "On with the plot, who could care!"

    1. Fire Maidens of Outer Space. [The patriarch dies, "Ho-hum".]
    2. Swamp Diamonds. ["My girlfriend got eaten by a croc. Well, there are toher women..."]

  11. People... who really aren't needed people. Who make us feel... like the *unluckiest* people... in the world. The yuckiest people.
    (Every movie has one, but a movie *stuffed* *packed*, *saturated* with them...!)

    1. Project Moonbase
    2. The Sidehackers
    3. The Hellcats
    4. Attack of the Eye Creatures
    5. Eegah!
    6. High School Big Shot

  12. Film ends in a fireball/explosion/big fire, like '20,000 Leagues Under The Sea' [ - correct me if I'm wrong about this, I haven't seen this movie through for quite awhile... ], only without much meaning and just to clear the decks for "The End". Or, that borrow ending situations or any major elements, without any real reason for including them. This includes borrowing footage because of being too cheap (but that also could be regarded as under (3).)

    1. Bride of the Monster
    2. The Amazing Transparent Man


- Page created July 19-20-21 & 27, 2000, from a draft (c) July 9th 2000, by Russell Hess, Webmaster (hess1@bigfoot.com) of 'UpSky2 & UpSky'.

                       
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