Please note – this cover and chapter are from the Australian edition: for information on the US edition, click here
SYNOPSIS: With another year drawing to close, film critic Michael Adams found himself making an unusual New Year’s resolution: in the next 12 months, he would find the answer to the question: ‘What is the worst movie ever made?’ He would do so by watching at least one terrible film per day. For a year. That’s 365 bad movies in 365 days. No fast-forwarding. No pressing the stop button.
Armed with a toy bingo machine, which serves-up his movie-watching program each day, Michael’s life becomes a never-ending plasma-screen parade of martial arts morons, purplefaced vampires, bouncing bimbos and reefer madmen. From legendary turkeys like Showgirls, Battlefield Earth and Gigli to video-age obscurities like Ax ‘Em, The Tony Blair Witch Project and Rollergator, Michael begins to appreciate that while the films he sees are almost uniformly terrible, their awfulness holds their own undeniable fascination.
This is comic-quest memoir mixed with ‘extreme’ movie criticism and laced with film trivia and encounters with celebrities like Michael Bay, Matt Damon and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and interviews with bad-movie aficionados such as Joe Dante, John Waters, Eli Roth and Leonard Maltin.
As the months go by, Michael becomes hopelessly addicted, knowing that the bad movie he views today will only be supplanted by a worse one tomorrow.
And what is the worst movie ever made? With the countdown to the next year looming again, and with his final decision down to the wire, Michael makes the call, only to find that’s not quite the end …
To download the introduction and first chapter for free, click below!
Here I am, wedged in between a guide to 21st Century Sex-Ethics and a study on the film Artificial Intelligence. I am okay with that.
Adams, Michael. Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies: A Film Critic’s Year-Long Quest To Find the Worst Movie Ever Made. It: HarperCollins. Jan. 2010. c.336p. ISBN 978-0-06-180629-2. pap. $13.99. FILM
Adams, a professional Australian movie critic, challenged himself to watch a bad movie every day for a year in an effort to find the worst movie ever made. He ponders the important and sometimes subtle differences between bad, bad-bad, and good-bad as he mines the pits of the movie industry. He considers a variety of subgenres including big-budget flops, sequels, “Gorilla Cinema,” “Teen Troubles,” and star vehicles. His wife, kid, and career wander in and out of the story, but it is the incredulous plot descriptions, background information, and occasional interviews with directors and actors that make the book.
Verdict A foreword by George A. Romero grants bad-movie legitimacy, but without an index or even list of the 365 movies (so we can skip right to the good stuff), this book loses usefulness as a reference. Recommended for movie fans—even fans of good movies.—Lani Smith, Ohone Coll. Lib., Newark, CA
To coincide with the release of Showgirls, Teen Wolves, And Astro Zombies in the US, I’ve been writing a bunch of articles.
Here’s one for RottenTomatoes about unlikely kiddie movie stars.
There’s this on A-list hotties who started as Z-grade notties, for Hollywood Crush over at MTV.
And Movieline has exclusively excerpted a chapter about Bigfoot movies.
If you’re a super glutton for punishment, here is one of the 20 radio interviews I did today on morning shows across the United States, from Raleigh and Tucson to Philadelphia and Dallas.
“I did not HEEET HER! I deeed NARRRT! Oh, hi Mark!”
If you don’t know what this means, you have the chance to find out at the Sydney launch of Showgirls, Teen Wolves And Astro Zombies on February 1 at Event Cinemas, Bondi Junction.
Not only will I be prattling on about bad movies and showing some priceless clips, but we’ll also be presenting The Room, the 21st century’s answer to Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Written, directed and starring Tommy Wiseau, or Borat Schwarzenwalken, as I like to think of him, this is Z-grade melodrama at its very finest.
Get along! Bring your friends! Pass it on!
Book tickets here
Inspired – terrified, actually – by the prospect of having to see Tooth Fairy, I took a look into the crystal ball at what’s likely to suck balls on screen in 2010.
I wound up talking bad movies on KPCC in Los Angeles with the well-informed and very lovely Larry Mantle and his guest critics Andy Klein of Brand X and Lael Loewenstein of Variety.
Listen here.
