Guilty Pleasures

Schindler's List is another obvious (and necessary) exception.

 

This past weekend I revisited The Beast (1996), a cheesy flick starring William Petersen about a giant squid terrorizing a small fishing community:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115109/reference

It was based on a novel by Peter Benchley (yes, the same guy who wrote Jaws) and is basically the same movie as Jaws except with a squid in place of the shark. It's pretty corny and the FX are rather poor, but I still found to be quite entertaining. I first saw it back in '96 when it was originally broadcast on TV as a 3-hour miniseries, but afterwards, most (if not all?) of the VHS and DVD editions were heavily edited. (I had a DVD version that ran only 115 minutes). Luckily it was later reissued in its uncut 176-minute form, and tracking down a DVD copy over the weekend is what led me to finally revisit the film.

 

"The Mummy" (the recent one with Brendan Fraser) is a good guilty pleasure. The 1932 release with Karloff is now a classic of course and such status thereby absolves any guilt.

I bought a double-disc set of "Deathstalker" films a couple weeks ago after I got this terrific book on Roger Corman's history as a filmmaker. Unfortunately "Deathstalker" while promising to serve as a guilty pleasure ended up mostly guilt with very little pleasure.

 

Rodriguez's Planet Terror, a goofy mishmash otherwise, has a sympathetic child character shoot himself with a hand gun - and plays it for laughs to boot!

Ah - the Jaws rip-off! From The Last Shark to Devouring Waves, by way of Tintorera, Tentacles and Sharks' Treasure - a bounty of guilty pleasures await. The Italians were never so shameless in their studied rip-offs than in their post-Jaws sea creature film frenzy!

Sadly, I've yet to see (the unedited) The Beast, but your post has reminded me to chase it up. I'll have to double bill it some night with The Deep. God bless you, Peter Benchley.

 

'The Girl Next Door' - Elisha Cuthbert and Emile Hirsch before 'Into The Wild'. I watched this for the soundtrack. First time ever I heard The Verve (Lucky Man).

 

I just watched an obscure Canadian horror flick from 1982 called Deadly Eyes, and there's a scene where a baby gets eaten by a group of giant killer rats. (Yes, a BABY!)
You don't actually SEE the baby getting eaten, but it's very clearly implied. (You see the rats approaching the baby in its highchair, then a few moments later someone comes in and finds the highchair knocked over and a big puddle of blood on the floor). I thought it was a pretty ballsy move by the director (Robert Clouse, Enter the Dragon).

 

Just re-watched Omen III: The Final Conflict for the first time in years... a whole bunch of babies get killed in that flick! (Not shown, of course, but implied). I guess the "never kill a small child" rule gets violated a little more often in movies than I expected....

 

Alligator, starring Robert Forster and Robin Riker. Always enjoy watching Robert Forster, wish he'd made more movies.
Empire of the Ants. Terribly low budget movie, love looking at Pamela Shoop though.

 

An entire town's population of babies were slaughtered in The Ten Commandments under Herod's decree.

Btw, how did "killing the kid" become part of a Guilty Pleasures thread?!

 

Charli XCX video appearances.

 

I've got some guilty pleasures that I feel like sharing. Here are a few of mine:

Let's get this one out of the way first. The guiltiest pleasure I have when it comes to watching TV shows is Sailor Moon. The sad fact is that any male who watches the anime is labeled as either gay or a pervert. I myself am neither of those things. Is it really wrong for a straight non-perverted guy such as myself to watch Sailor Moon? I hope not, as there are plenty of worse things I can think of. Back in October, another forum member started a conversation with me about why I like Sailor Moon, and this is what I had to say: "Well, some nostalgia does play a factor in me liking the show. I remember seeing Sailor Moon on Toonami (when it was part of Cartoon Network), and I always liked the colorful animation and bizarre monster designs despite not caring for the show itself at the time. The monster "death" scenes were (and still are) a nice treat for the eyes; many of them are almost trippy. Heck, I even find it interesting to analyze the different styles of the animators depending on the episode (which I also enjoyed doing while re-watching Batman: The Animated Series earlier this year). I also vaguely remember having a bit of a crush on Sailor Venus around that same time. I largely forgot about Sailor Moon until one day in April 2012, when I found a VHS tape containing the first few episodes. I popped it in my VCR and vividly recall recoiling in horror when I heard the terrible voices and couldn't understand what was going on with the plot. This is what motivated me to make that post on my Worst TV Shows thread. I decided to watch the tape again after finding a set of 7 Sailor Moon VHS tapes at Half Price Books for $0.25 each back in May (and these videos are generally within the $5-10 range on eBay, so I would've practically been losing money if I left them sitting in the store). Since I approached it with an open mind this time, I found myself sort of appreciating the wackiness of the show. It was a surreal and fun way to escape reality after having bad days too! When I started seriously watching Sailor Moon back during summer, I particularly enjoyed seeing the slow, but sure evolution of Usagi's character. She starts out as a whiney airhead who relies on Tuxedo Mask and the other Sailor Senshi during her earlier battles, but she soon gets the confidence and is willing to fight on her own (sometimes). I believe Nostalgia Critic mentioned that in his review, but I can't remember since it has been about a year since I last watched it. Fanservice isn't the reason I watch Sailor Moon, seeing as how Venus is the only character who qualifies as good looking IMHO." I know that liking this anime has pretty much diminished my manliness, but the fact that I'm manning up by telling this forum I like it says a lot, doesn't it? Plus there are other guys who like it, so that makes me feel like I'm not alone.

As for a guilty pleasure that I'm not afraid to admit, I really like Gene Deitch's Tom & Jerry shorts. Yes, his shorts are bad, but in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. I enjoy the bizarre animation, the spacy sound effects, and the overall sloppy nature of it all. Everything has a sort of surreal quality that appeals to me. These things make me prefer Deitch's output MUCH more than Chuck Jones' shorts. To me, Jones' T&J shorts are too safe and bland (though the later episodes with Dean Elliot's music are quite decent). The character designs range from okay (in terms of the standard style of a Chuck Jones cartoon) to plain-disgusting depending on the episode, with Tom looking like a jackal most of the time. In fact, I'm convinced that he IS a jackal in these shorts! At least with the Deitch shorts, Tom actually looks like a cat. So that's another thing I prefer over Jones' stuff; the character designs that more closely resemble the the Hanna-Barbera era. Of course, I still enjoy the classic 40's and 50's material the most at the end of the day.

The last guilty pleasure I must share is the 60's Batman TV show (and the movie too). I don't need to explain why since the show pretty much speaks for itself!

 

Alligator: Script by John Sayles, check, critically praised, check, guilty pleasure??? And Forster has been in 50+ movies, just not that many really good ones.

My biggest guilty pleasure, I suppose, is 1941, although I don't acknowledge that it is bad, I think it is extremely good, just misunderstood. I also love Brewster McCloud and think the same thing about it.

Also remembered, in the same category of the critically reviled that I love, Wet Hot American Summer. I guess these really belong in a "Movies you like that everyone else hates" thread but I'll list them here anyway.

 

Mob Wives

 

Celebrity Apprentice
Hell's Kitchen
Shark Tank

Most of the cooking shows on PBS.
No idea why, because I don't and can't cook.
I just really enjoy watching them.

Edit: I do cook, but not like they do.

 

Cow and Chicken
Tiny Toon Adventures