Thursday, April 9, 2009

Putting the "God" in "Godawful"

In his review of "Manos Hands of Fate," Keith Ellison of Teleport City explains the appeal of cult films.

"...cult films are the place you can go and be taken by surprise, to see something completely outside of the expected. We watch these films for the thrill of discovery, for the joy of witnessing something that would not be done in any other film, by any more talented and predictable filmmaker. Cult films are the places where true vision and madness find free reign, unfettered by industry and commercial training. In that freedom, yokels like me find great entertainment. Manos appeals to me because it is so wrong, because it is so unlike what any of us expect from a movie. It is the breath of fresh air in a stale environment full of movies in which damaged, quirky people try to reconnect and cold, disillusioned suburbanites struggle for feeling in a sterile environment. In an industry laden with clumsy messages and delusions of importance, the utterly baffling nonsense of Manos has more to say to me than any dreary lesson taught to me by a more competent film."

Why have I just quoted this block of text? Because I have recently encountered a trailer for a film that I believe is so incompetent, so head-scratchingly baffling, that if it wasn't for the shadow world of Christian film (motto: "We don't have to try real hard on this, so long as we're moral") then I don't know how it would ever be made.

Behold! "C Me Dance," from Uplifting Entertainment. It's the story of a ballerina who gets cancer (that's uplifting?) with "Law & Order" titles superimposed over her life, and then AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WTF.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ZOMG that looks awesome.

I especially like the "devil is possessing me now" pale-blue contacts.

I hope they had sufficient budget that each actor got their own pair.