DARE-AOKE MBV3D

MY TOP 50(ish) GUILTY PLEASURES

Finally! I return from the abyss with my large list in hand. Take that as you will. I say 50(ish) because who knows where I'll stop. I started writing this list a few years back, and some films have moved from being a pleasure to...something less in that short amount of time, and I've discovered new ones as well. That's how these work, people.

GUILTY PLEASURES.

We all have them. They’re those flicks that you’re simultaneously proud and ashamed to have displayed on your shelf. When people come over, and they ask "why do you own THAT," and you feel the immediate desire to hide and/or defend yourself and said "THAT", you know you’ve found a guilty pleasure. It’s true that very many of these are indeed incredibly terrible productions, but sometimes you just can’t help what you adore. Fuck, I know I can’t. My collection has grown large enough that I’ve decided to separate the "cult" films that I own by segregating them to the basement screening area. Why do I own these things?? Is it nostalgia? Is it cheese? Is it bad taste? All in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. One man’s trash is another man’s trash that he bought from the bargain bin, and now wants to keep on a shelf and occasionally view. I shall now display 50(ish) favorites, though not a TOP 50(ish), that I love to hate to love, in no particular order. It’s like ranking your children; I can pick the top few but the rest are just all over the place! I have lots of kids. I'm like Flavor Flav.

1 Hard Target (1993, dir. John Woo, US)

Sam Raimi produced this piece of action trash for John Woo’s English film debut, a "hard boiled" action-thriller set in good old Naw’lins. Unfortunately, the studio didn’t quite understand who they had gotten to direct this thing – during the final shootout, they complained that Woo had far too many villains entering the building out of nowhere to fight Van Damme’s Chance. Woo’s seemingly endless supply of henchmen is something that isn’t really given a second thought in his Hong Kong flicks, but, y’know, us regular American people like logic. Likewise, Van Damme didn’t realize that Woo would want him to fire guns a lot more than flex them Brussel-muscles, so we get some sort of odd hybrid between two styles as they butted heads during production. Van Damme will shoot somebody between eight and seventy times, and then roundhouse them in the face to ensure a victory. Score! It’s nice that they found a middle ground. Van Damme also stretches his immaculate acting ability by adding an southern/French twang to his already muddled, often indecipherable, broken English. On the plus side, this is the last film that Woo has done since his transition to the US that retained his less-glossy realism (aka. he still didn’t have much money) and on-the-fly style of action choreography that feels over the top and yet immediate and fresh as if this sequence is actually unfolding right before your eyes. Face/Off got some of it back, but it was all downhill from here. Hell, it IS downhill -- starting here. The story is ridiculous and even attempts to say something about the poverty of New Orleans – by hunting the homeless for sport, we can get rid of them. Believe this fun fact: it’s based on a novel!!!(!!!). Somebody wrote this BEFORE it was an action movie! Eat your heart out, Tom Clancey. I still love Hard Target for all its excess and terrible acting, and for Lance Henrickson’s truly menacing, scene stealing heavy. It was worth it (or worth it to me) to find the workprint that has all the unbelievably ridiculous violence the studio decided to cut, and a totally useless love story subplot between Yancy Butler and Van Damme, who manage to have the direct opposite of chemistry. Hatred? I’m sure he was constantly harassing her sexually. Them were the coked up days.

CHOICE CUT:
Yancy Butler: Why’re you named Chance?
Jean-Claude Van Damme: Meh mamma took ‘unn.

I haven't really decided how to post these. It may be a few at a time, but this was one I wrote literally, like, a year ago. Gotta start somewhere. I'm gonna be in Colorado for a few days this week, but I'm gonna try to get some more posted while I'm vacationing. See you soon.

-M