Good Bad Great Bad Good Bad Bad Good Great

So there’s Bad-Bad. There’s Good-Bad. And most important there’s also Bad-Good.

What the hell am I talking about?

Well- just the other night as I was flipping through my just re-sequenced 200 channels of cable (WHY do they keep switching where the channels are!? Every two years or so they “re-organize” the layout of the whole damn cable system and I have to RE-MEMORIZE that The Learning Channel is now next to American Movie Classics and NOT Discovery. ARGH.), I came across the movie Tremors. You know the movie, it stars Fred Ward (he of both The Right Stuff and Remo Williams) the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon (he of every movie ever made), and and is about giant underground killer worms. Oh yeah.

I LOVE this movie. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I saw this in the theater when it first came out and I thought it was the PERFECT combination of 50’s sci-fi monster movie and post-mod pre-Pulp Fiction self aware filmmaking. The film is really fun, but if for nothing else, it’s worth seeing for Michael Gross’ portrayal of a gun loving survivalist, with wife Reba McIntyre. You remember Michael Gross- he was the super liberal peace loving Dad on Family Ties. As a child of the eighties, to see Mr.Keaton shooting the living shit out of a monster carnivorous dirt worm with a 50 caliber elephant gun- and then say THE line of the film “You broke into the wrong godamn rec-room!” was just TOO cool.

Anyway- By all accounts, this film should be a piece of shit. It is what I would call Bad-Good. The odds of this film being decent are so heavily stacked against it, that by all odds it should stink. It does not. It is Bad-Good. That means that it’s really, non-ironically good.

Now if you take a film like ANY of the movies that Mystery Science Theater deals with- THOSE films are good–bad. They’re horrible movies that are SO bad, they're actually fun to watch. There’s levels of good-bad ness, and sometimes things are SO bad that they’re unbearable (Manos: Hands of Fate), and then you cross over into Bad-Bad. Although- SOME bad-bad films are SO TERRIBLE, they’re like watching a car wreck, and they loop around back to Good-Bad. I would also have to include an extra category that I would call Great-Bad, which are movies that are SUPPOSEDLY great pieces of cinematic genius, but are really pieces of shit.

ALL OF THESE categories can apply to ANY creative art form. (Film, music, theater, TV, etc…)

BAD-GOOD








GOOD-BAD









BAD-BAD








GREAT-BAD







SO- Here then, is the FIRST entry, of a few of my movie, TV and music choices for Bad-Good, Good-Bad, and Bad-Bad. (and maybe a Great-Bad as well…)

BAD-GOOD (stuff that should suck but is AWESOME)
Tremors
Real Genius
The song “Birthday Cake” by Cibo Matto
Escape from NY
Red Planet
The Song “Toxic” by Britney Spears
Starman (1984 film starring Jeff Bridges)
ABBA
Saturday Night Live Episode hosted by Garth Brooks
William Shatner’s Has Been album
Rocky Balboa

GOOD-BAD (stuff that is so awful it’s fun)
Tremors II
Tremors III
Flavor of Love (actually almost ALL of VH-1’s celebreality)
The 10 Commandments (1956 version)
Wild Things
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
Soldier
Every Album by William Shatner except Has Been
The Specialist
Early Neil Diamond Records
The Devil’s Advocate

BAD-BAD (stuff that sucks AND is un enjoyable)
Tremors IV
Escape from LA
Mission To Mars
The Surreal House
Hollow Man
The Fat Albert Movie
Later Neil Diamond Records
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (the ONLY movie I ever walked out of)
Rocky V

GREAT-BAD (stuff that is supposedly WONDERFUL but actually SUCKS)
Lou Reed
Last Tango in Paris
Eric Clapton after 1975
Rod Stewart’s American Songbook Records
The Passion of the Christ (and not why you would think…)


any more?...