The Hall of Infamy

THAT will never happen!

Wow, you guys are having more convo & fun in this Hall than any I've ever been in! You should make the Hall of Infamy an on going thing. I can tell people love bad movies and are digging this idea.

An honorable idea, but sadly...

We can split the difference, and alternate between the two. Give one nice comment, then the next has to be scathing, and vice versa.

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Yeah, who knew watching a bunch of bad films could be enjoyable? I don't know if I'll put up a follow up to this right away, but maybe in the future.

Organ (1996) -

For the first half, I was actually enjoying this quite a bit. I appreciated the gore (the hallucinatory sequence of one of Saeki's victims emerging from a cocoon-like object is easily the highlight to the film's gore) and found some of the disturbing bits to the film quite promising. For instance, Saeki having a secret room in his school office where dead and mutilated bodies were stored (Numata's brother, for instance) was a disturbing concept. I also found Numata's investigation of the gang compelling since it came with emotional stakes. For the first half of the film, I was on board with the film and eager to see how everything could culminate. Unfortunately though, somewhere around the halfway point, the film gets increasingly harder to follow. With so many characters and motivations being added, it became more and more difficult to keep track of who was who and what the motivations of everyone was. Eventually, many scenes in the second half made me ask "Where did this come from?" repeatedly. This culminated in a messy and ponderous final act which took all kinds of confusing fates to the various characters and crammed them into each other in a very unpleasant way. The final fight in Saeki's school office was horrendously messy, in particular. Also, while I enjoyed the gore at first, it didn't ramp up as the film went on and eventually got to a point where I kept asking "Didn't they already repeat a similar effect several times?" as I watched it. So yeah, just a big letdown overall. I wouldn't quite call it a bad film though as the first half contained enough potential to prevent it from being a complete waste of time and, in spite of what I said about the second half, there were a few promising moments thrown into the mix (that was few and far between though) that gave me brief breaks from the second half's mostly ponderous tone.

Next Up: R.O.T.O.R.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

Trog (Freddie Francis, 1970)

Okay this shit is adorable. The Trog costume is immaculate. Look at his little slippers!! Amazing! Love watching him throw dudes around and tip a car that explodes instantaneously for no good reason. Love watching him think about dinosaurs from another movie for like 10 minutes. I honestly enjoyed the first half hour and the last 20 minutes a lot and everything in between is still pretty cute, watchable at least, and the performances are fun enough to carry us through the extremely basic plot. Who could get mad at this? RIP Trog, forever in our hearts

Lust for Frankenstein, 1998

My heart is full of love, but my brain is full of hate!

Moira (Lina Romay) discovers a creation of her ancestor's called Goddess (Michelle Bauer), a Frankenstein-like creature. The emotional and sexual needs of the two women lead to carnage and, well, a lot of laying down on clear tables.

In the continuing trend of technology trying to save me from the films in this hall, I had a heck of a time getting to watch Lust for Frankenstein. I don't use piracy/torrenting sites (especially not with the direction "Just turn off your VPN" ), so I hopped on Amazon and snagged the $45 DVD. JUST KIDDING! I snagged the $9 VHS tape because would any Hall of Infamy be complete without watching something on actual home videotape?

Then came the saga of getting a VHS player that would actually show me the thing. The first VHS player, perhaps out of some sense of self-preservation, simply shut down every time I put the tape inside. The second VHS player--clearly more of a good Samaritan type--actually tried to eat the tape out of the cassette. But the third time was the charm, and with the nostalgic appearance of those wobbly tracking static bars, we were in business.

Like several people in this thread, I didn't hate this movie. There were parts I found so silly as to be kind of funny, and other times it was just weird enough to be slightly intriguing. I mean, did anyone in this thread fail to smile when Goddess was, like, humping a palm tree while nearby a reasonably attractive man was chopping wood? Or the entire sequence with the stripper, who seemingly was told when she was hired that if at any point she stopped undulating she would NOT be paid for her day's work?

There was also something, dare I say, endearing about Lina Romay running around dressed like a mom who is driving her oldest child to his weekend soccer tournament. So often the bodies of women who don't conform to strict parameters are either not seen or only seen as horror or comedy. Seeing a woman in her mid-40s who actually looks like a woman in her mid-40s so absolutely assured of her own sexiness was kind of fun. (Also, shout out for the scene where she's having sex with her socks on. Got the jump on Emily Nagoski's researchers with that one!)

I've seen Franco's Female Vampire, where a nude Romay spent like 86% of the run time just skulking around the set nude or mostly nude. Neither the pace of the film nor the "naked lady walking" brand of eroticism was surprising to me. As with many films in this hall (including my own entry), this is a movie that feels like it's stranded a bit. Neither committed enough or interesting enough in its eroticism, nor interesting as a story independent of the sexy shennanigans. It does commit that sin of being really boring for long stretches.

In case you weren't all jealous enough, my VHS tape came with a 1994 interview with Michelle Bauer, and she seems like a pretty grounded and nice lady! I'm sure it's on YouTube somewhere.

The VCR we have in the living room absolutely destroyed the last tape we tried to play in it. It's good thing yours wasn't as vindictive, and you were able to salvage the VHS. Imagine going through the effort of getting the film on tape, just to have it torn apart right in front of your eyes before you got to watch it...

Don't forget that the camera kept zooming in on his knee, as if that's what the creature found sexy about him.

Is there a special prize for going above and beyond?

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Captain's Log
My Collection

What I loved most was that the blocking didn't really make it clear that she could actually see him, so it was more like a montage of a man chopping wood and a woman humping a palm tree, independent of each other. Actually, one of the zoom ins seemed like it was zeroing in on his crotch, only to panic and retreat down to the safety of the knees. Cowards!

There is.

It's called, I get to watch Lust for Frankenstein on VHS anytime I want.

And with the lingering image of a pair of breasts flattened against a plastic tabletop, I am finished!

Great job, everyone! These movies were terrible!

I'm glad you didn't enjoy them!

Organ
This movie is wack.


More later.

Leave the cassette on your coffee table to act as a conversation starter for guests.

I looked on Amazon when I was having trouble and could have grabbed the DVD for a mere $142. (that's $96 U.S.) - the seller obviously, subconsciously, doesn't want to part with it.

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I guess it's a rarity. I see books on Amazon that are stupidity priced by an independent seller.

When it appeared that the tape was stuck in the VCR, I was like, "I literally cannot return this tape player with Lust For Frankenstein trapped inside. I cannot." Like, if push came to shove, I would have "accidentally" dropped the thing down the stairs. (As many times as necessary).

I live in a world where Lust for Frankenstein can be found on VHS and the original cut of Freaks is lost. That's fair.


On the subject of lost media, I would kill to find episodes 10, 12 and 26 of Toad Patrol in English.

There are two going on ebay - one for $89.08 (and $32.40 shipping and handling for me) and one for $41.22 (plus $36.79 shipping and handling) - I eventually found a place streaming the movie, but for a few moments I thought I would never get to see it.