noonecanhearyouscreen

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Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals Season 2!

Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals is a fiction podcast based on The Hugo Award Winning microfiction series "Midnight Pals" originally posted on Twitter by Bitter Karella https://twitter.com/midnight_pals. The series stars classic horror authors Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dean Koontz all gathering around a campfire to tell their stories like in the classic kids horror anthology "Are You Afraid of the Dark?".

Our first season premiered last year to much success and all of our episodes are currently available at http://www.midnightpals.com/ or wherever you like to get your podcasts.

We are currently crowdfunding our Season 2 which will feature parodies of Hellraiser, Angela Carter's Red Riding Hood variations from The Bloody Chamber, The Watchers, Interview with the Vampire, "A Shadow over Insmouth", Richard Bachman, and Rebecca. If you like a healthy dose of laughs with your horror, we just might be your jam.

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The Bad Movie Rules

Watching Bad Movies has become a thing we do on purpose now. In this age of media saturation, watching a bad movie has become more than something that can wreck your day. Now we can seek out horrible things to watch and argue about what's the worst! Isn't living in the future great kids? That arguing about what's worst though, therein lies the problem. Just by ratings the worst 5 movies on IMDB are:

Disaster Movie- The terrible parody version of films like Armageddon.

Manos the Hands of Fate- which…we will come back to. 

Birdemic: Shock and Terror- You may have heard of this one, but the main complaint I hear is  the "effects are terrible" of course they are, have you seen this thing? I'd be more surprised if they were great.

Super Babies: Baby Geniuses 2- A barely put together children’s comedy that isn’t even intended for the people that hate it.

The Hottie and the Nottie- Not even an incompetent movie so much as a misogynistic romantic comedy about a guy falling for the “hot” girl’s “ugly” best friend. Most of the complaints are that this stars Paris Hilton, and if you think she’s the worst actor ever…oh you sweet, summer child.

In my mind only one of these even has a chance at being the worst movie ever, because four of these things barely qualify as movies. If you want to enjoy a bad movie with your friends, none of these are going to be enjoyable. So I’ve come up with a list of guidelines that will lead you to the kind of hubris induced failure that is worth your time.

1- It must have had a theatrical release

If a movie didn't get a theatrical release, that means that the people behind it didn't think it was worth advertising the film.  They basically decided they would rather wait till people watch it accidentally via streaming (or home video in the good old days). If they don't care about it, there's probably nothing worth seeing.

However, if a bad movie has had a theatrical release it means that someone believed in this movie enough to buy advertising, print posters, send it to theaters and charge people for the pleasure of seeing it once. And that is beautiful. This includes major releases on streaming platforms that are advertised like theatrical releases. 

2- No Blatant Cash Grabs

Similarly blatant cash grabs don't count because no one really cared about this movie in the first place, not one person was actually attempting to create something. These movies were not filmed, they were manufactured. Complaining that these movies are bad is like complaining that spray can cheese is bad. What are you really expecting?

Cash Grabs Include:

Sequels: Sequels are predisposed to being awful because generally they aren't planned and a filmmaker is offered huge sums of money to make one even though they only really had one good idea. See also prequels. Can you blame George Lucas for making Episode I? It was free money, and he'd already used up his good ideas. Ditto whatever Star Wars sequel you don’t like: studios only make sequels because they know the public will watch them, so whose fault is it really?

Fool Your Grandmother movies: Anything by Asylum counts under this heading as it is all they do. Asylum never really expects anyone to watch Transmorphers. They just expect to make enough money to get by on people's grandmothers buying the wrong movie at Christmas, or someone pressing play because they “just saw an ad for that movie.”

Parodies and "Genre Comedies": These are really the same as above but they're basically just making the same movies expect filled with unfunny jokes and ultra low budgets. Basically only Mel Brooks ever knew how to do a parody right anyway. Speaking of-

3- No Comedies. 

Drama- Quality= Comedy

Comedy- Quality= Misery

You don't really want to listen to someone tell bad jokes for two hours do you?

4- It has to have the best chance possible.

This is by no means an endorsement of  the American movie studio system. 

Just as a movie can be excellent because its makers made the most out of their small budget and limited effects, to be truly bad a movie has to squander every possible advantage it has. It's no fair calling something bad if it was made by a college student in Russia for $10. If someone makes a good movie with that it would be an achievement, if you make a bad movie with that it's expected.

This also applies to movies that are made for a niche audience: Christian movies, Sci-fi channel movies, Lifetime movies, etc. It's not fair to call a Christian movie the worst thing ever when that studio only accepts scripts from Christian filmmakers about Christian themes. They aren't playing with the same deck.

5- Someone Had to try.

This is the key to having a great bad movie experience. Just one person, who believed in the movie enough to give it their best shot. Whether it's a classically trained actor who's acting their heart out of a terrible script; a set designer who has amazing potential; or a brilliant director desperately trying to salvage horrible performances. All of these things can show you a glimmer of hope in an utterly terrible movie.

I ask you, dear reader, to keep these rules in mind as you follow me down the dark and unholy rabbit hole we’ll call Bad Movies with Brad. Sometimes we’ll adhere to these rules heavily, sometimes I’ll break one to show you a glorious exception to the rule. Sometimes I’ll show you the brutal aftermath of exposing these films to human test subjects, or as I call them, my friends. And maybe someday I’ll have a whole vault of these films that I can show Hollywood whenever they decide to remake them.

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Oh, there’s a Tumblr.

Instagram is probably going to be the new thing, or maybe Mastodon, but I had forgotten I’d even done this little blog soo maybe I’ll get this thing going again.

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Farewell Sir Christopher Lee.

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Thoughts from Ian Malcolm, to Zac Snyder, DC/WB

The Problem with the idea you’re trying to use here is..

Usually I think Malcolm was the worst professor and totally full of shit, now I know what his argument is good for!