Bad movies have a beauty all their own

CHICAGO — How would we know a fine wine if we had never tasted a bad one? How could success be measured without failure? And how could films like “Avatar” or “The Hurt Locker” be appreciated if the world had never been exposed to, say, “A Night to Dismember” or “Samurai Cop”?

As the Academy Awards draw near, let’s take a moment to applaud the bad films that give us perspective, the zero-star efforts that put four-star masterpieces in context, the campy, mistake-riddled, poorly acted celluloid train wrecks we laugh at yet watch intently.

“Bad films are awesome in their own way,” said Lance Duerfahrd, an assistant professor of visual culture at Purdue University who teaches a class called “Bad Films.” “Traditionally, people say you have to study the bad films to know how good films are made. But I think watching a bad movie is a qualitatively different experience than watching a good movie. I think we enjoy bad films more intensively than we enjoy good ones.”

Duerfahrd recently brought his 29 students to the Music Box Theatre in Chicago for a special screening of the 2003 film “The Room,” widely reviled as the “Citizen Kane” of bad cinema.

“Everyone was talking during the movie and throwing things at it and chanting things at it and responding to it,” Duerfahrd said. “It was a beautiful event.”

Tommy Wiseau, director of the now cult-classic movie, was even on hand.

“The students all wanted to meet the man to blame for the movie,” Duerfahrd said. “It was more like a pilgrimage. Twenty-nine students wouldn’t have gone to see Spielberg or a successful director. They wanted to see Wiseau, this guy who made this horrible film.”

And that’s the heart of the professor’s respect for rotten movie making. It’s easy for us to watch and be entertained by a high-quality film. It’s a passive experience. Deriving enjoyment from a bad movie takes work, imagination and creativity — all the skills the bad movie’s creators failed to utilize.

Dave Jennings, general manager of Music Box Theatre, said more than 1,500 people came to see “The Room” on that weekend.

“Sometimes it’s not necessarily the quality of the film but the presentation of the film and the shared experience,” Jennings said. “With regard to ‘The Room,’ even though it’s not a good movie, there’s something about it that’s so entrancing. There’s an accessibility to it.”

Perhaps that’s the key to our affinity for bearing witness to abject failure — it makes us feel better about our own foibles.

“Most of the things that go on in our own life look like they’re out of a bad movie,” Duerfahrd said. “Forgotten lines, dropped engagement rings, poor acting. That’s what makes the bad movies so much like the life we lead.”

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5 DUDS TO WATCH

Lance Duerfahrd, an assistant professor of visual culture at Purdue University, teaches a class called “Bad Films.” Here is his list of five of the worst films from the past couple decades. He stresses that it would be virtually impossible to declare any five movies “the worst of all time,” as the universe of bad movies is so immense.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN: “Yes, I’m putting this in my list. It was like watching the Mattel factory explode for 2 hours. The whole time I wanted to throw a blanket over the screen to put it out. Also has a lot of unnecessary destruction of Middle East territories (which become the playpen for our military toys as well).”

THE ROOM: “This Tommy Wiseau feature from 2003 played two weekends ago at the Music Box Theatre (in Chicago). It’s a new cult phenomenon (our generation’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show”). It’s breaking new ground in empty filmmaking.”

SHOWGIRLS: “This Paul Verhoeven film straddles good taste and bad taste as if they were a pommel horse. It’s hard to say how much the director sensed he was making Trash, on purpose. Stars Elizabeth Berkeley from the TV show ‘Saved by the Bell.’ The bell didn’t ring in this film.”

DISASTER MOVIE (2008): “Wanted to set up a human relief fund for the makers of this film (and its spectators). It was a film that filled me with pity.”

POSEIDON (2006): “Remake of ‘Poseidon Adventure’ from ‘72. So many lives were lost on this one.”