There is a point in retrograde at which a bad movie becomes so bad it is alchemically transformed into a good movie. If the actors are terrible enough, the direction inept enough, and the script godawful enough, then the fine line between enjoying something for being excellent is indistinguishable from enjoying something that is terrible.
Indie Memphis, Black Lodge Video, and local filmmaker Mark Jones (who makes movies that are not horrible) present two such terrifically dreadful films on Wednesday, June 25th, at Malco’s Studio on the Square. The Room and Miami Connection screen in double-feature fashion beginning at 7 p.m.
The films are so very bad-good. The Room (2003) is considered by many to be the worst film ever made; Entertainment Weekly calls it “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.” (Perhaps one day we’ll see a loving treatment of The Room‘s filmmaker, Tommy Wiseau, and the making of his film, à la Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, about the charmingly bad director of Plan 9 from Outer Space.) The Room will screen on 35mm film, which is like presenting a turd on a Tiffany platter (in other words: great idea!).
Miami Connection (1987) is a retelling of the classical plot that dates back to Homer or Virgil or something: a rock-synth band called Dragon Sound, comprised of black belts in Taekwondo, battles an army of ninjas in Florida.
Shakespeare, it ain’t, which is a good thing.