thenintengenius

Everybody's heard of movies so bad they're good. In the case of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, I would like to nominate it as the first film that's so bad it's utterly hilarious.

Starring a group of nobodies and a young girl who should've remained a nobody (Pia Zandora), the film battles with a low budget and poor acting all throughout. The story is actually relatively original for a movie of this budget: Martian children are growing bored and listless, causing the adults on Mars to kidnap Santa Claus to try and alleviate this condition.

Beyond the story, most of the rest of the movie is too funny for words. Santa acts like a drunkard, the Martians use a freeze ray on some of our heroes (that doesn't work as the actors don't know how to stand still), a man in an extremely fake bear suit chases two Earth children (who act so poorly that I can hardly believe they're actually children), a robot is made out of cardboard boxes and dryer tubes, and so on, and so forth.

Despite the film's obvious low quality, I think everybody should watch it at least once. The film is so full of unintentional humor that it makes it well worth the small investment. (I've heard there is also a Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this episode, but I've yet to watch it. I'm sure it's quite hilarious, though.)

Tangents (better known to MST3K watchers as Time Chasers) is a prime example of pure MST3K fodder. Made on a shoestring budget by a small production company, it's a by-the-numbers example of a small-budget film with big-budget aspirations.

The plot itself is a fairly interesting take on well-treaded territory: the hero, Nick, invents a way to make his ultra-light plane travel through time and sells the idea to a CEO, only to later discover that the CEO is going to use it for, you guessed it, evil.

The excecution of the plot, however, suffers from a number of handicaps. The portrayal of the future (both the utopian and apocalyptic ones) is laughable at best with the former looking like an 80s shopping mall and the latter a bad Warriors knockoff. The main characters are all boringly average (causing Crow to dub the film "The Adventures of the Average People" in the MST3K episode), the only one having anything identifiably unique about them being the main character, Nick, whose only unique traits are "building a time machine" and "not being able to drive a car" (setting the stage for an absolutely ridiculous bicycle chase scene). If anything, the film reminds us that probably the only Vermont export of note is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream (who, coincidentally, provided ice cream for the filming of this movie).

All in all, Tangents falls in the same general category of MST3Ked films as Overdrawn at the Memory Bank; a small budget film that is ridiculous enough on its own merits to make it a decent watch for lovers of pure cheese (though, as always, I recommend watching the MST3K version instead).

Most famous for being featured on MST3K, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is a very obvious target. Starring actual talent Raul Julia for who knows what reason (Did he need the money? Did he feel sorry for the PBS affiliate related to this?), the film is basically a cross between watered-down 1984 and Tron, minus the elements that made the preceding two any good. There's doppling, Casablanca, crappy names, and not even cool for their time computer graphics.

That said, unlike many films featured on MST3K, Overdrawn is actually pretty ridiculous on its own. In fact, if you try to view it as a dorky comedy (not hard when you have Raul Julia giving a voiceover to stock National Geographic footage of a baboon) as opposed to a serious sci-fi outing, you'll find your enjoyment of the film increse tenfold (mainly because it'll then be easier to digest the film's more asinine aspects). Still recommended in its MST3K iteration, but isn't too bad otherwise.

Like most who've commented, I saw this film with the help of MST3K, and I have to admit that this is one of the very few films I couldn't watch without it (along with the Coleman Francis trilogy and Manos).

There is so much wrong with this film that it's hard to start. The plot (if it can really be called that) is a retread, a boring premise (house with dark secret) that's been done to death in every other horror film ever made. The male lead, Jody (yes, JODY), is an ineffectual dope whose most memorable contribution to the film is yelling "Zah!" The "villain," Lucinda, is an ugly troll-like hag who can only spout gibberish when she's not busy hacking useless side characters into giblets. The love interest, Melissa, is a empty-headed ditz whose most enjoyable moment is showing Jody where "the fish lives" (and, quite fittingly for this film, is the character with the "dark secret").

Combine all this with horribly stilted dialogue (it feels like almost 3/4s of the film is pauses, either between lines or between words) and pacing somewhere between "cold molasses" and "glacier" (not to mention the fact that the first verse of "Amazing Grace" is used about 20 times in the film) and you have a movie that doesn't even manage to be affably mediocre or so-bad-it's-good, much less scary. Avoid this film at all costs, unless MST3K are shielding you from this film's dreadful slowness.

Where can one even start on this film? It's most certainly one of the Top 5 worst films I've ever seen in my life, and winner of my impromptu "Most Incoherent Film" award, due to incredibly shoddy editing and exceptionally unmemorable performances. If anything, the best way to sum up the film is "Curly look-alike goes to Cuba, returns from Cuba, throws a man down a well, and dies."

The most nightmarish thing about the movie is not the poor acting, poorer writing (where the hell's the plot? WHAT the hell's the plot?), abysmal editing, grainy footage, or Curly in Hell as played by Coleman Francis. Rather, it's the rather paradoxal nature of the film. Individually (and even when put together), all of the aspects of the film are quite forgettable. Yet, once you've watched this film, you can somehow never forget it. Ever. It will haunt you for the rest of your life, taunting you for ever having experienced it. Even with the help of MST3K (where I and most others got a glimpse of this trainwreck), it can give you nightmares. Only recommended for the foolhardy or masochistic. All others should not view this film without a crash course in Coleman Francis' other catastrophes (Beast of Yucca Flats, Skydivers), or the aid of MST3K (thought admittedly, it doesn't help much).