My Top 25 Guilty Pleasure Movies

I like this movie.
That's right.
I said it.
  While I initially dismissed this king of kings of all crappy movies because of its reputation, I have since then actually developed an affection towards this film.
  I mean, sure,
it's probably lives up to its rep as the worst movie ever made,
but it's not without its charm.
There are plenty of bad movies out there that are just bad and then that's it. No more to add.
  But this film,
there's an instinctual level to it,
in which it feels like that there came a day when all the film-gods gathered together and decided to inspire a woman's cashmere sweater wearing B-film (okay, okay.... D-film.... and that's being generous) "director" to make a movie that's so bad, it can almost remind us that a big part of the concept of filmmaking is to just have fun. To "escape" into the process of making a movie as much as in the viewing.



  Okay, maybe not everyone will get any kind of positive response from watching this train wreck of falling backdrops and bad acting (really bad acting), but you don't even have to watch it. Just knowing that it's there is enough. As a reminder that we cannot have a day without a night. We cannot have the good without the bad.
We cannot have an Apocalypse Now without a Plan 9 From Outer Space.
To reminds us just how good movies can be if some of 'em can be this bad.

 And to its credit, considering the time it was made,
some of the effects are kinda amazing.
I mean, I don't know how they did it, but they actually made some of the props in this film look like they were made out of actual cardboard.
And this was before CGI.
  Like way before.

 I remember stumbling across an online article about a year or two ago about a study that was being done in Japan.  It stated that researchers were looking into the long stemming psychological effects of having an atomic bomb dropped on their country during World War Two and if these effects were still stemming all these decades later.

Not too long after I read that article, I came across a discussion that going on one of the social media platforms which was covering some of the zaniest films ever made. One of the names that I saw that came up the most was Robo-Geisha. Of course, with a name like that, I figured that it hadda be pretty off the wall and therefore, worth the effort of putting together a one-man search party in the hopes of tracking it down.

 And the inter being the internet, it was pretty easy to find and give it a looksee. Examples of some things I saw included… 
 a cyborg geisha that could transform into a wall-clinging half battle tank,
 a multi-tiered pagoda that transforms into a giant daikaiju-style rubber-suited robot, a singular fried shrimp being used as a deadly assassin's weapon,
 goblin themed, scantily clad women shooting throwing start out of their asses, 
 and finally, well.... you get the Dali-esque type of picture here. 
When it was all over, my mind harkened back to that article about the long stemming psychological effects on the populace of the land of the rising sun, and yeah.... they're still pretty effed up on the whole.

I love ABBA. And I love the sugary sweet taste of saccharin that is the music. Dancing Queen is my favorite.

And sayin' that does not make my hardcore pimp-ass any less hairier.
So, you know....
Shut up.

Anyone else remember this space-faring, ice-stealing, Urich-starring, not-so-classical sci-fi 80's film-fare?
Anyone...?



Anyone....?




...Bueller...?

For the first time ever, Godzilla, Minilla, Mothra, Rodan, Gorosaurus, Anguirus, Kumonga, Manda, Baragon, and Varan, all together in one movie, kicking all sorts of ass with their big, floppy rubber feet (or any other appendages of like-minded floppy purposes).
Okay, do I even hafta explain the charm and attraction that I or any other fan of massive monster movies have for the daikaiju films from the famous Toho Studios in Japan? Particularly the one that features the battle royal of all battle royales??



Yeh, I didn't think so.

The aliens are through klowning around (torturously kliche bad pun intended).
They're hungry for human flesh. Or in this case, human soup(?).
And so in order to satiate their appetites, they're taking out the big guns. Or in this case, the big balloon animals.

I remember this 'historical" disaster pic getting murdered by critics at the time of it's release.
But as a kid, I thought that as far as thriller escapist fares go, this movie, just like many of the other 70's diaster flicks of the time, was pretty bad-ass.
But, then again, this is coming from someone who, considering my age at the time, thought that stop-motion effects were the sh#t.

Boy.....



.... remember back when stop-motion was the sh#t?

   As this list makes pretty evident, it's that Japanese monster subgenre know as kaiju in one of my biggest guilty pleasures when it comes to watching movies. Now, of course, we all know that a big part of the charm of this kind of cinema are the rubbery suits, the easily collapsable cardboard buildings, and the toys vehicles masquerading as the real thing. However, despite the non-serious approach that id required this kind of entertainment, that is not to say that there isn't any kind of quality level creatively to these city stomping cryptids. Mothra is a good example of this. Not settling for just being a mammoth sized moth from Monster Island, Toho Studios, the birth place of many of these kolossal kaiju kreatures, also added the ability to rise out of ashes of death in a very phoenix-like manner, live a second stage life in a large larvae form (almost as formidable as when it "earns" its wings) and finally, accompanied the butterflying behemoth with  two tiny fairy-like beauties who act as sort of a dueting set of familiars, and whose singing voices have the ability to direct and communicate with the tower-sized insect.
Making Mothra not just a departure from its floppy feet cousins but also giving it a unique twist that belies the goofiness that the genre is most associated with, not to mention, most famous for. 

Ants.
Atomic radiation.
The process of mutation.
The desert.
You do the math.



 Giant goofy animatronics portraying the kind of buggers that like to come to one's picnic uninvited. Sure, they might look clumsy, lumbering and stiff, but when they're this big, is there really any chance of stoppin' "them(!)"?

   As the population of the entire globe continues to grow with new generation, the amount of garbage that follows suit also tends to grow, and at a much more accelerated rate. How to dispose of all that waste that has reached mountainous proportions has become one of mankind's biggest challenges. Meanwhile, The King of All Monsters has his own set of challenges, which includes going monster-sized mano-a-mano against a giant shambling mountain of red-eyed sludge that terrorizes the island of Japan by transforming itself into a flying smog-billowing force of pollution incarnate.
 It's the kind of thing that makes you kinda wanna start recycling, huh?

A steel mill welder by day, a sexy dancer by night,
Alex (short for Alexandra) is on a mission to make her dreams come true.
With determination that's fierce, a boyfriend who's her boss , and a pit bull that likes to watch, she's out to prove that she's a maniac.
On the dance floor, that is.

Flashdance is an early 80's dance flick.
A bad early 80's dance flick.
Really bad.
But, boy,
that Jennifer Beals......



what a feeling.
She's definitely what you'd call a guilty pleasure.

I gotta be honest with you guys....
this is only on this list b'cuz after watching this movie as a little kid,
I used to fantasize about having a 50 Ft. tall woman attack our hometown just so's I could have an excuse to look up her dress without getting in trouble.

 There's something about movies like this that are based on historical mythologies that reveals a big flaw when it comes to ancient pantheons and their dynamics....   when you look at all the destruction and chaos that Zues & Co. release down on our humble planet just outta petty jealousy and pride, it really reveals the truth behind the old saying, "The gods must be crazy".



 While I'm not usually a big fan of movie remakes,
for me, the original Clash, is an excellent example of a classic that would greatly benefit from today's special effects technology (which it did when it remade in 2010, although the story in that update didn't hold up s well to the more modern tastes of today's fantasy-adventurers).
I'd really like to see a lot of these old stop-motion flicks of yesteryear get the updated treatment that many of us as children could only dream of back when these films were first released.
 But even with that said,
it doesn't change the fact that, as cheeseball as they were,
most of these ultra-fantasy originals will always hold a special place in my heart, basically just because they were a part of my childhood.

  In their quest to "steal Christmas" with the use of dorky ray guns and cardboard robots, the present that The Martians will be unwrapping this particular yuletide year, will be a nice big ol' can of whoop-ass from none other than Santa hisself.
Because of their actions of festive felonies, when these otherworldly up-to-no-gooders landed on Earth, they also landed a spot for themselves near the top of the naughty list.
  As a result, this is a camp-infested Holiday classic that has landed a pretty decent spot on this guilty list. 

  It's bad enough when an innocent family of vacationing road-trippers find themselves in the midst of the carnage and blood of a hidden coven of cravenous, murderous vampires out in the middle of the desert,
but then on top of that, they also hafta face the threat of the snake-cradling Selma Hayek and her absolutely formidable and absolutely perfect puppies. I promise you, after watching her in this Tarantino/Rodriguez monster mash-up, it won't be her neck that will you be fantasizing about sucking. 
Count Dracula can only wish that his will-sapping gaze was this hypnotic.



  Now those are my kind of creatures of the night.

  I got asked once of why this movie was on the list. And the reason is because back when Hoffa was first released back in the early 1990's, it had quite a polarizing effect on those who watched. Some said that the real life events that were supposed to be depicted in the rise and fall tale of Jimmy Hoffa were fudged to the point that the story suffered. And Jack Nicholson got razzed by several film critcs for this performance. Me, I was on the opposite side of the spectrum when it came to all of this. The truth was, and still is, I liked this biopic of the world-famous Teamster leader. A lot. Despite the film not being as award worthy as many may have expected it to be at the time, I still find the overall project to be a worthwhile effort which I enjoy watching. And whenever I look at footage of the real Jimmy Hoffa, in my humble opinion, I think that Jack looks and sounds in this film very much like the infamously corrupted union leader.
  However, since I'm in the minority when it comes to such an opinion, I'll just end my thoughts on this film here so that the attention of anyone who reads this will not disappear as silently or as quickly as Hoffa's body.

Teri Hatcher and Charlize Theron.



Now those are my kind of cats in a fight.

  Initially, this movie had all the makings of big hit: a then up and comer Michael Pare, a very young and incredibly sexy Diane Lane, a bad-ass Flock Of Seagulls lookin' William Dafoe, a serious role for Rick Moranis, a cool soundtrack, all capped off with a script and direction by Walter Hill, the guy responsible for The Warriors, Southern Comfort and 48 Hours. 
But then again, it's also the same guy who was responsible for Another 48 Hours. And the '85 version of Brewster's Millions. And Supernova.

  Okay, so I guess that they all can't be winners. I guess ya just gotta take Walter's movies as they come. Even if they're on their way to "Nowhere Fast". 



  BTW, that was a reference to something within this movie's plot. 
As the saying goes, "If you know, you know."

Before there was the Matrix,
there was TRON.
 Okay, so maybe there really isn't all that much as far as compelling storyline goes in this cyber-epic-fantasy. But, boy, those visuals were unlike anything we had seen before. The science of computer graphic effects was fully upon us and in a land not too far away, the force known as CGI was gestating to become the meat that would make the eyes of sci-fan's drool from here to the eternity of this genre's future.
 Maybe I look upon this film with the nostalgic affection that held my young visual senses in an unblinking attention at the time, but it also represented of what was possible when man and modem meet.
  I won't try to convince anyone out there that this is a great film on any level (especially since this was the same year the superior sci-fi world of Blade Runner was also released), but I do feel that it's a step in science fiction that was inevitable.
You are now entering the infinite possibilities of cyber-space. Not to mention the matrix of my own personal guilty pleasures.

A movie about a big giant glob of pink snot that only gets bigger and bigger as the storyline progresses.
Could somebody hand me over a city-sized piece of tissue, please?

There are a couple of reasons why I like this movie so much.
And they both have to do with Adrienne Barbeau.

  You wanna know what one of the benefits is of being the last dragon? 
You can do some really crazy-ass martial arts sh#t. 
Like catching a bullet with your teeth. 
 After reading that, you may be like "Oh c'mon... is that really possible". 
 To which the answer is, if you're The Last Dragon, 
Sho-Nuff.
  (That's yet another reference that you'll only get if you watched this movie.)

  At first glance, this looked like a B-style action-flick that was just too goofy for me. But as I watched it, it became more like a movie that seem to sufficiently balance between the lines of well-crafted high-fantasy creditability and a comic-book-like storyline. And also at the same time, between epic wuxia style battle moves and cheesy yet energetically fun kung-fu camp.
And at the center, tying all these almost conflicting themes together are three high-flying colorful female warriors whose chemistry made it impossible for me not to fall in love with each one of them. This trio of hot Asian super-heroines who fight crime with such cool moves and kick-ass sultry outfits are so sexy, that it makes my pimp-ass want to do sumthin villainous just for the spanking.
Plus, I defy anyone not to "lose their head" over the villainous Kau and his throwing "skull-cage" on a chain.
  While I realize that this isn't really considered a maverick of this field, for me, the charisma between these well-rounded and distinct characters was enuff to hook me into this non-guilty guilty pleasure.

  To be honest,
while the movies I've included on this list are worthy of mention as "favorites",
the truth is, I really wouldn't pay to see any of 'em on the big silver screen of a movie theater.
  With the exception of this film.
For me, The Room is the epitome of acting so SO bad, that it actually swings around to being not just good, but unforgettably classic.



  It's a piece of cinematic crap-art that has been playing in theatres since it's initial release in 2003 and is still going. And the main reason for that is b'cuz it has developed a reputation as an audience-participating event.
It is now standard for movie-goers to quote or yell out responses to specific scenes,
or to even throw plastic spoons at the screen whenever a certain prop makes an appearance.
  You will even spot a football being tossed back and forth from one side of the theater to the other during certain intervals.
  In other words,
it's the straight person's answer to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

  And to be honest,
isn't it about time we got one?