Customer Reviews

Bad Movies We Love (Plume)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I hate to say it, but I think I have seen every movie in this book, most more than twice. This is a very funny (and helpful for the afficianado) book. The premise is different than the usual book about "bad" movies: no "Plan Nine from Outer Space" et al- that's left to Michael Medved and his ilk. No, these are movies that just are slightly crazed, over the top, or just, well, BAD. Ones that will make you ask "What were they thinking? What were they smoking! " Some of the movies are laugh-out-loud stinkers like "Female on the Beach", some are just jaw-droppingly awful like "Xanadu". But the writing is funny and fresh, and you will find yourself agreeing with the reviews of the movie you have seen, and going to the video store for the movies you have not. Unfortunately one of the authors is no longer living, but I would hope that they could collect the rest of the reviews from Movieline (the magazine from which this book sprang) and put out more editions as soon as possible

As a movie buff, I not only love a truly great film, I love the "so bad they're great" films! While I have never seen some of these films, especially the older ones, I was rolling on the floor when I read the reviews for Love Story, Mommie Dearest, Flashdance, Xanadu, and the Airport movies! What really makes this book a must read is the authors' diabolical senses of humor! My only question was, why weren't Two of a Kind (1983), Ice Castles (1979) and The Two Minute Warning (1976) included???

this is THE book for you! It's nice to have all of one's fave "bad" films at one's fingertips, especially when some of them aren't available on video yet. A MUST for any film freak

This book is an absolute riot. The authors takes on these movies are great. What makes the book better than the standard bad movie review is how they trash movies you think might be good (like Fatal Attraction). My only complaint is there are sections with too many references to old (50's) movies that I have never heard of. Otherwise it is hilarious.

Whether you like bad movies or not, this book is great fun to read. Inspired by the Movieline magazine column of the same name, Bad Movies We Love offers a tour of the worst of many genres, even devoting entire chapters to specific actors. Sharon Stone [Chapter 11: The Stone Age] was a good enough sport to write the Forward.

I can't pick this book up without laughing out loud. I keep it on the end table by my sofa within convenient reach of my remote control.

Absolutely hilarious collection of short reviews of bad movies--who's in them, how they got that way and what to watch for. The reviews ARE vicious (and hysterically on target) but it's obvious the authors do love movies so they don't come across as cruel. These guys love bad films (as do I) and pick out a actually mind-boggling number of them. They're put under descriptive chapters such as..."Trash Yourself Cinema", "Vanity, Thy Name is Lucy", "Bad Girls", "All This and Troy Donahue Too" etc etc. There's also a whole chapter dedicated to Sharon Stone--"The Stone Age"! To show what a good sport she is Stone even writes a short funny foreward to this book. There's an introduction explaining how the authors picked their films AND 16 pages of movie stills (all in beautiful b&w). This is dated (it only mentions videos and it came out in 1993) but it's well worth having. As the great film critic Pauline Kael said (and I'm paraphasing), "You can't know great films without knowing bad". Too true.

"Bad Movies We Love" is a great how-to guide in finding cheesy/hammy movies. Authors Edward Margulies&Stephen Rebello classify them in different categories. "Slay it with music" deals with Hollywood's worst musicals. "Bad Movies A Go-Go" is a treasure trove of psychedelic cheesefests. "No,but I saw the book" shows that not every movie based on a novel is automatically good. "Slip us a Mickey" is devoted to Mickey Rourke while "The Stone Age" is dedicated to Sharon Stone.

"Bad Movies We Love" isn't deep reading. It even takes on "Valley of the Dolls","Fatal Attraction" and "Butterfield 8",the soap opera movie that earned Liz Taylor an Oscar. It's fun reading,and a how-to guide in finding bad movies that are fun watching.

Written by a couple of L.A. guys for Movieline magazine: Stephen Rebello has authored two previous books. Ed. Margulies was Executive Editor of the national film magazine in 1993. The movie stills on the cover and in the photo section are great, seeing the stars when they were young and in their prime.

Some of the movies I did like: Marjorie Morningstar, Grease, Half Moon Street, Vertigo, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Jazz Singer (Neil Diamond), and Ash Wednesday (?). I agree that Play Misty For Me was bad. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Buy Nick Clooney's THE MOVIES THAT CHANGED US for a really good book about some of these same films.

Anyone who's willing to write about Shelley Winters' HUGE bloomers in the underwater sequence of the Poseiden Adventure gets a snap from me!

UPDATE: Why oh why can't they update and reprint this for us? Mine's old and yellow and the pages are falling out from so much use. Last night we had it handy during our viewing of MOHAGANY, a movie that was everything I hoped it wouldn't be!

Would love their "take" on SHOWGIRLS which may very well knock VALLEY OF THE DOLLS down a notch but not MOMMIE DEAREST.

Being a fan of movies, both good and bad, when I saw this book at my local library I thought it'd be a fun read. I was wrong. Bad Movies We Love is an idea that's ripe with potential, but this book never lives up to it. It's very dated, which isn't an unforgivable sin seeing as how it was published in 1993, but content is very poor. Most of the book is spent on trashy dramas, romances and big-screen soap operas. The book almost entirely ignores sci-fi and horror movies (home of the greatest bad movies ever made), while devoting entire chapters to Sharon Stone and Troy Donahue. A lot of the themes that they divide the chapters into are negligible, and half of the movies listed could have fit in virtually anywhere.

The chapters themselves are arranged with the films in alphabetical order, frequently creating a situation where the authors refer to a movie that they haven't even discussed yet. And the writing itself is just dull -- they make the same tepid commentary time and again, over and over. Really, how many times can you read the same joke about a film killing off someone's career? And for that matter, how many times can the same actor kill off his career?

This is a bad book, but not a bad book I love.