Each week in October, Brian Hamilton will recommend some of the best horror movies to get you in the mood for Halloween!

We’ve been pretty lighthearted here so far. We took a look at festive movies and the gorier side of horror cinema, but those rarely provide more than a single night’s entertainment. They don’t stick with you very long after the credits roll. Today, we’re tackling the big ones; my three favorite horror movies of all time.

Each of these films stirs incredible emotion inside viewers. They do disturbingly good jobs of making the audience feel engaged in the story, even though nobody would willingly spend months locked away in a hotel or in the hot Texas sun running for his life. But when there is a work of art that is as poignant, perfectly executed, and genuine as these films, you can’t help but be roped in. You’ll see things that you’ve never seen before and will likely never see in the future outside of the film. It's Halloween - you better get cracking.

The Shining

In my opinion, this is the greatest horror movie of all time. Based on the Stephen King Novel, it stars Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall as a married couple who spend the winter as the off-season caretakers of the Overlook Hotel. Secluded and prone to massive blizzards, the hotel plays host to Jack and Wendy and their son Danny. As Jack struggles with writing a novel and sobriety, he starts to lose his mind.

Nicholson’s portrayal of Jack Torrence is the greatest thing he’s done in his entire career, yet it’s only one part of what makes The Shining as beautifully horrific as it is. Director Stanley Kubrick, notorious for his perfectionism and meticulous attention to detail, made sure that every single frame of this movie is composed perfectly, to terrifying effect. The camera is almost another character in the hotel, a ghostly guide for the audience’s first visit to the Overlook as we survey its long hallways and uncover its many secrets. The Shining was the first movie to ever use the Steadicam, which allowed the camera operator to capture incredibly smooth, long takes without a dolly. I could go on and on about how flawless this movie is, but this article can’t be a novel. Go watch The Shining. Trailer

The Exorcist

If The Shining is the greatest horror movie ever made, then The Exorcist is the scariest movie ever made. Ellyn Burstyn is Chris McNeil, a mother whose young daughter Regan suddenly becomes incredibly ill. While sick, she starts to swear and become aggressive. When the doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with Regan, and a friend of Chris’s falls from her bedroom window to his death, they see no other choice than perform an exorcism.

This movie is a far cry from any sort of theistic propaganda or morality tale. Chris doesn’t believe in God, and a priest who has lost his faith performs the exorcism. The questions raised in The Exorcist are enough to pique your interest in the demonic villain, but not enough for an audience to get angry about any sort of agenda the film may have (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). We never see any demon in the movie; all we see is Regan being possessed, saying horrible things, her skin a sickly pale color, her eyes full of hate, her body falling apart. By the film’s end, you feel so awful for this little girl, yet scarred by some of the most moving and disgusting imagery ever put on film. I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to a movie. It’s brilliant. Trailer

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Accept no substitutes. If you decide to seek this movie out, make damn sure you’re watching the 1974 original directed by Tobe Hooper and not one of the six other movies that share its name. That’s because, even though the plot for all of them is can be summed up as, “People getting killed off one by one by a deranged killer named Leatherface,” the original did so many things that had never been done before.

When you watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you will feel the boiling Texas sun beat down on your face. No other movie ever made is as raw as this. Its troubled production, amateur production crew, and low-budget set design means that they couldn’t fake any of the things they wanted to. The house is decorated with real animal bones. Some of the onscreen blood was real because they couldn’t get the prop blood to look correct. It all goes to show that the filmmakers are just as crazy as the chainsaw-wielding villain of the movie. The final act of the film, an extremely long and nerve-wracking chase scene, is exhausting to watch. As an audience member, you get to experience a small fraction of the insanity that it took to get this movie made. You’ll want to take a shower afterwards. Trailer

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that shakes you. In its storytelling techniques or technical prowess, it leaves an impact on you that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Birdman is one of these movies. On paper, it’s not all that unique: washed up action movie star Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) decides to become relevant again by directing and starring in a Broadway play. He faces countless obstacles throughout the process; his colleagues, friends, family, and even his own personal demons get in the way of fulfilling his creative dream. But the meat of this movie is watching Riggan overcome them and what we get to see on screen is spectacular.

Most notably, the entire film is a single shot. Let me repeat: The entire film is a single shot. It’s incredible. As a result, the action is incredibly fluid, as if someone were simply following Riggan and his cohorts around the set. The camera becomes a character, showing you things in a way that feels completely organic and natural. It gives the movie a smooth, seamless feel. Scenes end and flow right into the next one, usually by some inciting action that the camera 
“decides” to go and follow. Even though doing the entire movie in one take is practically impossible, the fact that it looks so convicing still makes the film a prime example of flawless editing and special effects. There is simply nothing like it.

Birdman is all about the dichotomy between what’s real and what’s fake. When Riggan’s attempt at staging a Broadway play makes waves in the headlines, word on the street is that he is that he is simply using his Hollywood clout to make it on Broadway. Is he genuinely passionate about theater or is this a last ditch effort to be relevant to a jaded 
public? Sometimes, Riggan himself doesn’t even know. Michael Keaton is brilliant in this role, battling his demons while letting us inside his head in bizarre and sometimes disturbing ways. Also starring are Emma Stone, Zach Galifinackis, and Naomi Watts, but in my eyes, the real showstopper is Edward Norton. He plays Mike Shiner, an actor in Riggan's play who takes his devotion to the theater a little bit too far. He demands that everything be as real as possible, from the whiskey 
onstage to his relationships with his fellow actors. As a foil to Riggan’s uncertainty and flakiness, Norton is brilliant.

I had the chance to talk to Alejandro González Iñárritu, writer and director of Birdman, via a roundtable phone interview. The movie has garnered criticism for embracing the fake, showy world that it makes fun of - Iñárritu has made it clear that this was intentional:

Just because his characters are pretentious doesn’t mean that his movie is. 

It’s incredibly rare that we get to see a movie like Birdman. When you watch the trailer, you’ll get a taste for the movie’s quirky, off-kilter style. It’s awkward, yet meticulous. Chaotic, yet calculated. This is a movie that needs to be seen to be believed.

Grade: A+

Saw

The movie that started it all. To be honest, it's much more of a detective story than blood fest, but when horror fans latched onto the movie's few scenes of extreme gore, it got all the credit for starting torture porn. The movie stars Carey Elwes and Leigh Wannell (who also wrote the screenplay) as two men who wake up chained to the wall of an old dilapidated bathroom. A cassette tells them that they can "win this game", that they can escape using clues hidden all around them. Let the game begin. Saw also follows the evil mastermind Jigsaw and the detectives on his tail, one of which is a fantastic Danny Glover. The resulting clustercuss of a film is a beautiful example of plotting, pacing, and gritty filmmaking at its finest. With a relatively small budget of $1 million and an emphasis on "The Script Is The Star", Saw will rope you into its tangled web of razor wire and leave you wanting more. The sequels are solid, but stop after the third movie - the first three make for a pretty good trilogy. The first, however, started a new wave of American horror cinema. Trailer

Hostel

Riding that wave almost immediately after Saw was Hostel by Eli Roth. He had previously made Cabin Fever, a throwback to 80s teen movies with a modern twist, so nobody could have expected what came next. Roth, with Quentin Tarantino as his producer, made a movie that is 40% porno, 60% straight-up torture porn, and 100% ridiculous social commentary. At its most basic, Hostel follows three college kids as they backpack around Europe doing exactly what you'd expect: getting wasted and having one-night stands. In a remote Slovakian village, they stay in a hostel that captures them and sells them into a brutal murder vacation ring. What makes this movie so effective, and elevates it above bad-taste schlock, are the lead characters. The leads (relative nobodies in the film industry) are the most stereotypical Americans ever. You spend the entire movie with them as you see what horrible people they are, but as the movie reaches it's absurdly disgusting climax, you'll have find yourself rooting for them in a way that shouldn't make sense, but does. Hostel walks a very fine line between bad taste and making its point. Trailer

Dead Alive*

Fun Fact: Before Peter Jackson made arguably the greatest trilogy in cinema history, he made a whole series of bloody, campy movies in the late 80s and early 90s. My favorite of these forgotten gems is called Dead Alive from 1991. Set in New Zealand (big surprise), it follows Lionel Cosgrove, who lives with his overbearing mother, Vera. She is bitten by an infected rat-monkey and turns into a zombie. Lionel spends the rest of the movie coming to terms with his mother's transformation while also dealing with his developing feelings for a local girl… but mostly fighting the zombie outbreak that overcomes the town. The cinematography is insane. Zooms, Dutch angles, unflattering close ups, and unparalleled energy make Dead Alive a visual treat from the get-go. Even if it's not the most technically perfect movie ever made, an insane amount of care was put into making sure it looks unique. What's actually on camera, however, will blow your mind. Mind-bending puppets and prosthetics. Lighting reminiscent of a shitty local haunted house. Dead Alive holds the record for most blood used during a film production, with 300 liters of fake blood in the final scene alone. There is a lawnmower involved. Best of all, all of this is done in an extremely silly way, unlike the two previously discussed films. I can't overstate enough how much fun this movie is and the bizarre emotional impact it'll have on you. It's one of my all time favorite movies. Watch it. Trailer

*Also known as Braindead in some parts of the world. You know it's good if it has multiple titles. 

Each week in October, Brian Hamilton will recommend some of the best horror movies to get you in the mood for Halloween!


Let’s set the record straight - I do not like being scared. Even with the incredible number of scary movies I watch throughout the year, I don’t actually enjoy being in my dark bedroom at night in complete silence. Good movies stick with you long after the credits roll - your mind will fill a dark room with all of the scary things you can’t see. It’s just a side effect of enjoying horror - the fact is that these dark, atmospheric, creepy movies will scare you. 

Fortunately, you can still get in the Halloween spirit without being terrified. Now that the air is chilly and leaves are pumpkin-colored, here are four fantastic movies that won’t leave you shivering at night.

Donnie Darko

This 2001 cult classic is many things. In addition to being a cerebral adventure movie similar to a comic book adaptation, it’s one of the movies most emblematic of Halloween. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the titular character, a disturbed teenager who has visions of alternate universes, proselytizing bunnies, and the end of the world. Along the way, he comes to terms with himself and his purpose in life. Heavy handed? Certainly. But in my eyes, no fall is complete without a screening of Donnie Darko. In addition to all of the wonderful nods to horror and macabre culture, the little town of Middlesex spends the course of the movie preparing for their big autumn bash. The climax of the movie is a Halloween party. When the hero of your movie is saving the world while wearing a skeleton costume straight out of Hot Topic, you can’t lose. It is so entrenched in Halloween culture that its opening soundtrack song, The Killing Moon, is the perfect song for the autumn. When you track this movie down, make sure you skip the Director’s Cut. It’s much more serious and bizarre than the theatrical edition. Trailer

Beetlejuice

Back when kids movies could get away with an F-bomb, Tim Burton made Beetlejuice. What makes this movie special is that it’s got all of the levity, ridiculousness, and fun of a kids movie, but none of the stereotypical pitfalls. Unlike most stereotyped characters in kids movies, each character is distinctive and plays an important role in the plot. In addition, they’re all incredibly well-acted. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis star as Adam and Barbara Maitland, an idyllic suburban couple with a beautiful old house in New Hampshire who die in a car accident and are doomed to haunt their house. When a snobby New York family moves into the seemingly abandoned house, Adam and Barbara decide to have a “reverse exorcism” to banish their new human tenants. Michael Keaton gives his role as Beetlejuice, bio-exorcist extraordinaire, everything he’s got. The result is Tim Burton’s haunted house full of ridiculous special effects and wonderfully bizarre creatures and set pieces. Trailer

Creepshow

Despite the fact that Creepshow is helmed by two of the greatest and most respected names in horror, Stephen King and George Romero, this horror anthology is 100% camp. I like to imagine that this movie came about when the two masters of horror were chatting it up at a bar, lamenting to each other about what a drag it is to take themselves so seriously all the time. As a result, Creepshow is one of the silliest, most fun Halloween movies ever made. It’s an anthology made up of five different short films. The film’s framing device is a kids’ Tales from the Crypt style comic book that his father punishes him for reading. They don’t try to hide that this movie is rooted in the B-movies and pulp comics of yesteryear. Leslie Nielsen, best known for his comedic roles, takes on his first semiserious role in years. Its monsters, reminiscent of old Universal movies, are tongue in cheek that your screams will be mixed with lots and lots of laughs. Creepshow’s tagline sums it up this best: This movie is “the most fun you’ll ever have being scared!” Trailer

Trick ’r Treat

Here we have another horror anthology in the same vein as Creepshow, but rather than being a comic book narrated to the audience in movie form, Trick ’r Treat follows several characters around a Halloween-obsessed town. It’s reminiscent of Love Actually in this way; characters know each other and everything flows from story to story naturally. Trick ’r Treat manages to never take itself too seriously, but still has a purpose: to entertain the audience with a rollercoaster of a fun movie. Instead of the old horror tropes that Creepshow takes on, Trick ’r Treat is all about the mood and feel of Halloween. It captures all of the whimsy and wonder of being a kid again, but turns it up to eleven for an adult audience. From exploring an old quarry in search of an old urban legend to carving pumpkins with your family, this movie lovingly riffs on Halloween nostalgia and makes it creepy, funny, and most of all, fun. It’s the most recent movie of the bunch, released in 2007 to very little press but almost universal acclaim. Trick ’r Treat is the cinematic equivalent of a spiked pumpkin spice latte. Trailer

Check out Part 2 and Part 3 of Halloween Movie Club!

Jason Reitman hasn’t been on his game lately. Despite the fact that he made two of my favorite movies of all time, Men Women and Children has none of the charm or authenticity of his previous films. He makes his films with the eye of an everyday person, making the exotic both familiar and painfully funny. In Men Women and Children, he fails on all of these counts. If I were to write a synopsis of the movie, I’d talk about how a small town tries to deal with life and love in a modern age. On paper, that’s a solid synopsis. In reality, nothing happens.

Men Women and Children follows almost dozen characters. It’s an ambitious turn for Reitman, whose previous films focus on only one or two characters and their development over the course of ninety minutes. What’s upsetting is that even though the film clocks in at just under two hours (and you can really feel the length), it still feels like we haven’t made a connection to any of the characters. The script is constructed such that every character only has one defining trait - there’s the anorexic girl, the video game addict, the dad going through a divorce. It’s weird seeing a Jason Reitman movie where the characters are so shallow. The film tries so hard to make character moments and relationships work, but by the movie’s end, it feels like we spent two hours following around all of these characters for no good reason and the audience walks away with nothing.

None of the performances are anything to write home about, either. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Garner are the biggest stars in the movie, with Dean Norris, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Judy Grier also rounding out the adult half of the cast. Most of the movie focuses on the high schoolers because they’re the ones that understand modern technology. And boy, does Men Women and Children focus on technology. In almost every single scene, characters have text bubbles above their heads as they tap away at their phones. A few choice scenes take place entirely on a laptop screen. It’s realistic, to be sure, but also boring and unoriginal. Last year, a short film called Noah made the rounds online because it took place entirely on a kid’s computer screen. It’s compelling because it finds interesting ways to tell a story, but in Men Women and Children, there’s no reason for so many scenes to take place on a screen - like the cellphones and computers are actually doing all of the acting for the kids.  The cast of small-time actors is given so little to do.

What makes the one-dimensional characters all the more upsetting is that Men Women and Children tries to tackle some serious issues. Suicide, bullying, adultery, and anorexia are all featured prominently in the movie. Admittedly it’s in good taste, but it’s so incredibly overbearing that the audience feels insulted. This doesn’t read as a “lesson movie” per se, but when you walk away from it, all you remember is what it tries to get across instead of how these horrible circumstances affect the characters. In my eyes, that’s a failure.

Grade: D

Kevin Smith has one of the most distinct voices in modern cinema. For the past twenty years, he’s made movies that are low-key in style, yet outrageous in their subject matter and dialogue. With Tusk, Smith showcases a new, flashy side to his career - he departed his earlier lo-fi style a few years ago with Cop Out and has been on an upward trajectory ever since. It may seem weird to see Smith direct a horror flick, but there are only surface level differences between Tusk and his repertoire of ’90s slacker flicks. Underneath the gore and suspense lies a foundation of bizarre conversations, irreverent dialogue, and a surprising amount of perception into the human condition.

The movie focuses on Wallace Bryton (Justin Long), a comedian with a successful podcast about ridiculous things that happen in the world. While on a trip to Canada to interview somebody for the show, he runs into Howard Howe (Michael Parks), a wheelchair-bound sailor who promises incredible stories of his life to Wallace. All fairly routine so far; however, the movie ramps up quickly as Howard drugs Wallace and traps him at the house to turn him into a walrus. No, seriously. He’s literally trying to turn him into a walrus. That’s all I’m willing to write for fear of spoiling the rest of the movie, but suffice to say that the movie takes some incredible twists and turns that are hard to see coming. I rarely do this, but for once, I actually recommend that you watch the trailer for a solid idea about Tusk’s feel. The trailer also does a fantastic job of avoiding spoilers.

Body horror movies like this need a villain that can anchor the movie to a psychologically horrifying place for the audience. Howard Howe is not a slasher movie villain, he is a deeply disturbed wheel chair bound sailor. For him, his only real “weapon” is his words, and words are Kevin Smith’s bread and butter. Michael Parks does an incredible job bringing this demented old sailor to life. There’s just enough menace in his delivery and enough restraint in his performance that even the simple scenes between Wallace and Howe in the first act of the movie are tense. By the movie’s end, Parks’s performance becomes a master class in restraint and nuance. Justin Long could have been the “everyman” that leads most horror movies, but as Kevin Smith so often does, he pours so much of himself into Wallace that it’s impossible for him to be relatable. He’s funny, douchey, and has an arc that defies all logic. Genesis Rodriguez and Haley Joel Osment also star as Wallace’s girlfriend and best friend, respectively, and do a good job of infusing this movie with a little bit of heart that most movies of this genre don’t have.

Even for Kevin Smith, who has done some absurd things in his movies, Tusk sometimes pushes the envelope in terms of discomfort. Most of the movie, like the rest of his filmography, focuses on conversations and character development. However, laughs have been traded for tension. The entire movie is unnerving in a way is more akin to a psychological thriller than a horror flick. Unlike most horror movies, the film is a far cry from a constant assault on the senses like early 2000s torture porn flicks - Tusk plays its cards close to the vest. When things become gruesome or shocking, it’s really only because there’s relatively few violent moments in the movie. It all happens inside your head. Smith’s comedy writing chops shine when scenes ramp up to big reveals and chilling moments, almost as if he’s replacing punch lines with scares. It’s surprisingly effective. However, one place where Smith’s comedy past may not be so appreciated is in the structure of the movie. In Chasing Amy, a ten-minute long digression from the plot for a conversation with Jay and Silent Bob is a welcome distraction from the plot. Tusk’s similarly silly ten minute long digression towards the end of the movie is an interruption that doesn’t add much to the plot or inform any of the characters. In purposefully vague terms, it grinds the movie to a halt and results in a rushed, yet bizarrely satisfying, ending.

This relates to a larger point about Tusk that I am still coming to terms with. I’m sure that if you asked Kevin Smith, he wouldn’t call Tusk a horror movie. It’s still undeniably funny. The idea came from Smith’s own comedy podcast. The fact that Justin Long’s character’s name is Wallace is enough to elicit a groan from even the corniest of dads. The film makes fun of Canadians almost as much as South Park. None of this is inherently a problem - horror movies can certainly be funny. But Smith is notorious for having comedies with a lot of heart and something to say. When abduction, mutilation, blood and gore are involved, it’s hard to reconcile that Tusk is, at its heart, still a Kevin Smith film. It tries to make a point and reach its audience with some of the most affecting and impactful imagery I’ve seen in a long time. As a result, the movie’s conclusion left a bad taste in my mouth. But as a whole, is Tusk in bad taste? I’ll let you decide.

As I’ve written before, the best bad movies are passion projects that went horribly, horribly wrong. When someone puts everything they have into a misguided project, the results are hilarious. Battlefield Earth is second best example of this that I’ve ever seen. (Here’s the first.) John Travolta first read the original L. Ron Hubbard sci-fi story upon its publication in 1982 and, as a devout Scientologist, wanted to turn it into a movie for a long time before he finally had the chance in the ’90s. I blame Quentin Tarantino for giving Travolta newfound influence in Hollywood after Pulp Fiction’s success. I hope Tarantino sleeps well at night. The resulting film, released in 2000, made less than half of its budget back. It currently has 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert wrote a scathing review of the film upon its release. Masochistic cinephiles (including yours truly) bust a gut during this movie. Battlefield Earth is one of the worst movies ever made.

In the year 3000, man is an endangered species. Earth was invaded a thousand years before by the Psychlos, a greedy alien race that mines conquered planets for their resources and then abanonds them. There are Psychlo labor camps populated by the last few humans on Earth, but some nomadic tribes still remain, hunting and gathering in order to survive the elements. One such nomad is Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. I swear, they never once said his name in the movie. I had no idea that was his name until I read the film’s Wikipedia entry. Regardless, Battlefield Earth follows him as he is captured by the Psychlos, but deemed resourceful enough to be taken under the wing of Earth’s Psycho Security Chief Terl, played by John Travolta. All throughout the movie, Travolta looks so happy to be covered in alien make-up and spouting out absurd dialogue like this was the role he was born to play. I’m sure he thought that he would finally bring his beloved L. Ron Hubbard into the mainstream with a blockbuster science-fiction action film. He could not have been more wrong.

I don’t want to make this article about religion, but let’s take a look at where Travolta and Hubbard are coming from. I’d like to direct you to a painstakingly researched and comprehensive look at Scientology created by leading experts in the field. Is that not one of the most ridiculous stories you’ve ever seen? Imagine a feature film with that same intricate plot and realistic subject matter and you’ll have Battlefield Earth. The way that the movie is paced and plotted out makes absolutely no sense. The characters’ motivations are one-dimensional at best. The humans decide to revolt against the aliens midway through the film. The alien higher-ups have a scheme going to extort profits of their mining operation. Those two tangents are completely unrelated to each other because in the end, when the aliens are defeated, there’s no point to any of the business mumbo-jumbo that made up a good chunk of the film. Also, anybody who is offended by my Battlefield Earth spoiler should write to me at this address.

The funniest things about Battlefield Earth are the cinematography and the dialogue. The film has a reputation for overusing Dutch angles but holy shit. Every single goddamn shot in the movie is a Dutch angle. Just watch this scene and look at how the camera is crooked in every single shot. Some of the angles go as far as 45 degrees. I like to imagine that the cinematographer was acting like this the entire shoot. That scene you just watched is also a fantastic example of how entire sets will be lit with a single solid color for no apparent reason. It’s as if they couldn’t afford to film anywhere but an abandoned strip club with all of its gaudy lights still in place. What’s worse is that it happens way more than you’d expect in this movie. Finally, that scene is indicative of this movie’s brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning dialogue. It’s baffling to think that someone somewhere believes that people actually talk like this in real life. Newsflash, screenwriters: Nobody talks like that. Ever. Even in a thousand years, nobody will ever talk like that. The movie is filled with golden nuggets of shit dialogue that will have you laughing your face off. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the N-Gage. You can’t afford to miss it.

Battlefield Earth is one of the most baffling movies I’ve ever seen. Some of the people involved with this movie went on to do great things. The lead guy whose name I didn’t know? He went on to win an Emmy. He wasn’t actually at the ceremony, so I imagine that he was too ashamed to leave the house because of his involvement with this film. Roger Christian, the director, won an Oscar for his work on the goddamn original Star Wars movie. John Travolta went on to make… Never mind. Great people, great talents, horrible movie. Flawed in completely irreparable fundamental ways and very specific technical aspects. John Travolta’s passion project is a flop in the best possible way. Go ahead, laugh at it. You won’t be disappointed.

This article is part of NUFEC's Bad Movies series. Find Battlefield Earth on Amazon here. 

The future is truly here. YouTube is a goldmine for movies that nobody cares about enough to secure copyright. Thankfully, I care enough to write about them. I’ve found so many brilliantly shitty movies free on YouTube that nobody cares about anymore, so I’ve got tons of content to riff on for as long as I’d like. Today’s selection is called 7 Lucky Ninja Kids, a film from 1989 in which the titular children fight a bunch of incompetent diamond thieves while struggling to deal with equally incompetent filmmakers. These children are only about ten or eleven years old and have absolutely no reason to be on camera, apart from their kickass ninja skills, because everything they do beyond fight gangsters is incredibly boring. The movie’s got all the classic tropes of crappy Asian B-movies, from random zooms and slow-mo shots to campy sound effects. However, as bad as the movie is, what makes this movie such a gem is the bizarre and hilarious dubbing. In the version I watched, the original language was dubbed over with American actors. I think they tried to market this to American audiences, but shot it in Japan and threw in as many American things as they could, which means we get such a botched version of American 80s culture. It’s magnificent.

To begin: the kids. The movie’s first sequence introduces the seven lucky ninja kids as they fight a bunch of faceless bad guys; each kid gets highlighted and introduced. They have names like Little Fatty, Rambo, and Bumpkin. How American. All the while, a disturbingly happy little song sang by a chorus of Japanese kids plays in the background. This two-minute sequence is the only explanation of these kids that we get. Beyond this, we have no idea why we should give a crap about these kids or what they do. When the movie starts off, it seems like these kids’ only job is to hang out in a nice hotel and eat dinner and hang out some more. But soon, they’re accidentally tangled up in a plot to steal a diamond. These seven kids talk in unison quite a lot and it’s really freaky.

Even freakier is the detached, soulless laughter that their American voice doubles lend to the movie. The kids run into a room, jump around a little bit, make a big scene, and laugh the entire time. But these giggles are so unnerving and empty, like a menacing little child’s ghost in a scary movie. It’s hilarious. And of course, it’d be too much work for the writers to throw in some kind of parent figure. These kids are completely unsupervised. The closest thing they have to a parent is a guy in a trench coat and fedora that follows them around. He claims to be responsible for them, but I have my doubts; he never actually interacts with the kids in any meaningful way. I have no idea what his name is. He’s the comedic relief of the movie, which starts off with him being a Three Stooges style slapstick character. As the movie goes on, it becomes disturbingly sadistic with scenes where he crashes through a pane of glass on a bike, smashes into a wall, and gets beat up by two random guys. Oh, and his motif is so goddamn annoying. It’s some A Talking Cat!?! level shit. So the kids’ only companion is another incompetent adult that serves no purpose for the plot and there’s no real explanation for why these kids exist as a unit. Perfect.

This movie was marketed towards kids… I think. So much about this movie indicates that it’s a kids movie; kid protagonists that take down a bunch of big scary bad guys, slapstick comedy (that falls flat on its face), incredibly cartoony and stylized quirks for each of the kids, and relatively few consequences for the fight scenes, where baddies just lie on the ground after a hit or two. But then we get looking up skirts, cross-dressing, a few legit murders, and some distasteful jokes about sexual harassment. Some strong language like “asshole” and “retard” is also thrown around. Then again, this was the 80s, when Beetlejuice got away with an f-bomb as a PG movie. So I honestly have no idea. I think 7 Lucky Ninja Kids was ultimately meant for kids because of one scene in particular set in an ice rink. An entire scene is based on the fact that the gangsters are chasing these kids through a mall and they end up on the ice, which messes up all of the dumb adults with no sense of balance and the kids kick the shit out of them. But they focus on this scene for 5 entire minutes. It’s not a particularly well-choreographed or acted scene; it’s just kind of there in the grand scheme of things. The guys behind this movie really didn’t give a crap about this scene, or any of the other big action set pieces in the movie, like a bicycle chase through the city.

The bizarre thing is that when it comes to the actual kung fu fighting, it’s pretty damn good. These kids were obviously cast for their fighting skills and not their acting chops. (Check out this scene where the little girl is crying. Somebody give her an Oscar.) Just as you think you’ve had enough of the bad-movie appeal of this movie, some surprisingly good fight scenes breaks out. The music scoring these fights is still shit, meaning that you never forget that this is something you can laugh at.

7 Lucky Ninja Kids is such a bizarre movie that I can tell that it’s going to be one of my go-to flicks for Bad Movie Night for quite a while.

This article is part of NUFEC's Bad Movies series. Find 7 Lucky Ninja Kids for free on YouTube here. 

This week, we’re taking a trip back to 1959. It was a simpler time; there were no hashtags, Kanye West, or reality TV to mess with our good ol’ American ideals. Eisenhower was president and Ben-Hur won Best Picture, reaffirming how rich and cultured we were back then. Until one man, armed with $60,000 and a dream, inadvertently gave birth to a subgenre of film that changed the world. Ed Wood, or as he preferred, Edward D. Wood, Jr., is widely regarded as the worst director in the history of cinema. Plan 9 From Outer Space is his crowning “achievement,” entertaining audiences ever since its release for all of the wrong reasons. And yet, this also has the most heart of any of the movies I’ve written up about so far for this column. Plan 9 is one of the most fascinating and hilarious films I’ve ever seen. It’s in the public domain and streaming for free on YouTube, so you have no excuse not to spend an hour and twenty minutes with it. It’s marvelous.

The movie begins with a suited guy sporting swirly blonde hair proclaiming to the camera that, “we are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” This is The Amazing Criswell and he was a real guy who had a reputation for spouting off incredibly inaccurate predictions of the future on TV and the radio. If he could have actually seen the future, he’d have avoided this production like the plague. He goes on to talk about how you’re about to see some horrific future events in this film and not even thirty seconds into the film, you’re treated to some brilliant nuggets of screenwriting such as, “Future events such as these will affect you in the future.” This film is brought to you by The Department of Redundancy Department. He calls the viewer “My Friends” at least a dozen times in this brief intro and speaks with completely random inflections and tones… And then goes on to narrate the entire rest of the movie the exact same way. 

Not only is the guy narrating the film fresh out of his first voice class ever, but the writing he spouts is equally terrible. The film is about aliens that come to earth to resurrect the dead and make them attack the living, so it’s not rocket science to put together a script that makes sense, right? Right?! Criswell’s narration in the first act literally describes what is happening on screen. When people on the freeway were startled by three flying saucers over Hollywood Boulevard, Criswell told the audience that people on the freeway were startled by three goddamn flying saucers over Hollywood Boulevard. It’s insane. There’s no logic to how this film is put together. 

For an example, it’s time to turn to the actual plot. An old man, played by horror legend Bela Lugosi, is mourning his wife at her funeral. A few days later, in his grief, he absent-mindedly steps in front of a large truck and dies. Two funerals back-to-back, but a few scenes in between created some bizarre comedic timing that you can’t help but laugh at especially considering Criswell’s horrible enunciation and inflection. It’s ridiculous. The husband and wife are the main zombies of the film, brought to life by alien “electrode guns” that stimulate the dead and make them thoughtless, slow, clumsy, and hungry for human flesh. We’ve seen that slow zombies can be scary (though it’s obvious that fast zombies are much better… please don’t email me), Plan 9 takes suspense and stretches it to absurd lengths; a single boring camera angle usually captures these undead creatures as they walk slowly towards their prey, but the best part is that the humans they chase just stand there. Seriously. They scream and react somewhat normally, but they don’t move. Therefore, we just sit there waiting for the scene to end and laughing at the idiots who don’t have the brains to get the hell away from the undead. Ed Wood really scraped the bottom of the barrel in terms of casting this thing, with the exception of Bela Lugosi, who sadly died before the film was completed. However, in another Ed Wood-style stroke of genius, he cast Lugosi’s wife’s chiropractor in his place. Seriously. Watch this movie. 

The aliens themselves are everything you’d expect and more. They wear 1950s “futuristic” space suits, have a lair covered with gizmos that light up and beep, and have a space station that looks like this. You can tell they really, really, really tried to make this work, but it falls flat on its face. The aliens have this weird salutation/salute thing that they do. The leader has a wonderfully flamboyant voice that sounds like Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s almost like watching Casablanca after watching romantic comedies your whole life; you finally get to see the origin of all the wonderful B-movie parodies and sci-fi references you’ve seen your whole life. There are some lines in their scenes that will make your jaw drop to the floor in disbelief. “Report to me in two Earth-days” is a favorite of mine, but there are other brilliant moments of dialogue that will have you reeling. 

There’s lots of talk about government coverups and conspiracies—I suppose this was in order to keep up the illusion that this will happen in the future—that all seem incredibly forced. However, in that same script where redundant dialogue and cliched tropes reign supreme, there are moments where Ed Wood’s passion really comes through. There are some passages about the human condition that, in some bizarre way, ring true. They remind me of Tommy Wiseau’s famous line in The Room: “If a lot of people loved each other, the world would be a better place to live.” You just kind of shake your head and say, “Eh, you’re not wrong… but…” and laugh it off and move on. But to a bad movie fan, even if Plan 9 From Outer Space isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as The Room or The Wicker Man, its cardboard sets and cheesy acting will charm their way right into your funny bone.

This article is part of NUFEC's Bad Movies series. Plan 9 From Outer Space is streaming on YouTube here and you have no excuse not to watch it.