There is a fine line between real crap and fake crap. If that seems a little strange, take the case of something like Robot Monster vs. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. Still don’t understand? With the former, a 25 year old writer director named Phil Tucker set out to make an alien invasion film and came up with one of the worst, most jaw-droppingly bad sci-fi slop jars of all time. The latter was a forced farce in which a group of modern artists got together and purposefully tried to manufacture some Ed Wood-ian cinematic stool. Tucker’s attempt remains a part of the ‘so bad, it’s good’ lexicon. No one except the obsessive discuss Lost Skeleton. To put it another way, ‘Best Worst’ movies (to steal some of Troll 2‘s thunder) are born, not built. They are discovered and dissected by those with a particular penchant for goofy grade-Z schlock, not preordained and then preprogrammed as same.

All of which brings us to the weird, slightly wonky situation with The Worst Movie Ever Made. Actually, the film in question is A Dozen Ways to Die! , a 1990 (?) thriller (??) written (???) and directed (????) by someone called Randall Hill. It tells the story of a French Canadian policeman (who may be American after all), his blousy wife and their still-pining-for-the-early-‘80s daughter. Together for a little familial R&R in the Arizona wilderness, they come across a miscreant gang of stock stereotypes (German Nazi, Mexican Bandito, a Ninja martial artist, etc.) all led by the elephantine Cyclops. After the mandatory raping, kidnapping, and leaving for dead, Dad decides to get revenge on those who’ve wronged his lax loved ones. Thus the final act has our hero (?????) outwitting a band of bad-asses (??????), all the while, aiming to bring our vile villain down once and for all.

This past weekend (5 March) began a new phase in the career of everyone’s favorite indie icon/punching bag, Kevin Smith. Per plan, he debuted his most recent film, Red State, to a special group of admirers at Radio City Music Hall. As part of an old fashioned roadshow ideal, Smith will be doing his best Kroger Babb, wandering around the better part of North America for the next few months, offering up his first “horror” effort at special “appearances.” There will be close to 15 of these screenings, with more planned possibly, each one a facet of Smith’s desire to “self distribute” what he agrees is a complicated, controversial film (the subject matter takes on religious fundamentalism in frightening, unflattering ways).

Now, there is nothing really novel about what Smith is doing. Cracked actor Crispin Glover has been doing something similar for the last few years, touring his cinematic performance pieces What Is It? and It Is Fine. Everything is Fine! to larger and larger audiences. Considering the content of these films (one is made up mostly of actors with Down’s Syndrome, another was co-scripted and starred a man with cerebral palsy) and his cult status, it’s not hard to see why. In fact, many non-distributed films find the old exploitation mannerism a creative way of getting their movie message out to audiences. Titles like Black Devil Doll and the sickening A Serbian Film have traded on the old dynamic to take difficult material and commercially managing it.

Before it hit theaters last year, few outside the faithful knew that the dizzy documentary Best Worst Movie was actually about the making (and eventual cult embrace) of the hackneyed horror apocalypse known as Troll 2. For many, that title was nothing more than a mindless supposed sequel to an already stunted Albert Band original - though the two films actually have little in common. But in the frat house fumes and slacker cafes of underground indie culture, Troll 2 is Rocky Horror. It’s a mutant Midnight Movie made available around the clock thanks to the ready access of home video. It is worshiped and worried over, a real rite of passage for those too young to remember the Medved’s original Golden Turkey takes. With the addition of the documentary (made by the feature’s child star Michael Stephenson), the failed fright film has become a clear cottage industry.

All of which begs the question - what’s the next ‘Best Worst Movie’? What film among the many flotsam flops and jetsam junk will be deified by the denizens of Messageboard Nation. It’s not merely a question of bad. Few will be filling the Alamo Drafthouse for special screenings of Battlefield: Earth or rearranging their life based on Barry Sonnenfeld’s Will Smith stinker Wild, Wild, West. No, in order to make it into Troll 2 territory (or, by that regard, the exclusive kingdom of Plan 9/Eegah! /Red Zone Cuba), it takes a specific kind of crap, a movie so ripe in its ambitions and yet so miserable in its execution that the two approaches combine to set off a nutty nuclear wasteland of worthwhile entertainment. Again, it’s not hard to locate cinematic stool (just open up today’s Cineplex listings). Finding the right kind of filmic feces to celebrate is another matter all together.

(Reposted on the occasion of his 65th birthday)

Dear God of Post-Modern Moviemaking:

Too much? Have I put you off already? If so, I’m sorry. It’s just hard imagining what I have to say, and how I have to say it. You see, I’ve loved you for a very long time. No, not your subversive Midwestern mentality that sees beauty in the most grotesque of worm-infested rotting meat mannerisms. Nor am I particularly enamored of your current concentration on Transcendental Meditation, though I can completely see where you’re coming from with the whole “free your mind” ideal. You see, I’ve loved your MOVIES for a very long time - since I first saw your “straight” drama The Elephant Man way back in 1980, and I’m here to say that I miss you, and need you back in my life terribly.

Wow - how weak-willed and whiny. I was hoping to come off a little more forceful than this. You see, I am a real movie maniac, someone who linked up with your Wild at Heart so significantly that I remember watching it over and over when it was finally released on VHS (I know, you HATE that. Sorry again). Several dozen viewings later and I can argue with anyone over the merits of your bizarro-world Wizard of Oz riff. I’m as Powermad as Sailor and Lula, hotter than Georgia asphalt and convinced that peaches do indeed spread diseases. Crazy old cousin “Jingle” Dell’s got nothing on me, and I can easily…dammit. There I go, rambling again. You have that effect on me, don’t you know.

The movies often teach us a lot about ourselves. They often boil down the human condition into simple celluloid slices of recognizable, universal truths. Sometimes, the lessons learned are dispirit and hard to swallow. Sometimes, they are as obvious as an ad campaign for the latest insipid studio comedy. Hollywood hates to think it does anything “educational” with its product. Instead, it meters out the mediocrity like so much kindergarten apple juice, believing (often rightly) that the masses want something mindless, not meaningful. The proof? The pathetic returns for films with actual legitimate meaning and artistic merit.

Still, we can learn a lot from the movies, with the tutorial often coming directly out of an unseen left field. In fact, the real import of the lecture can be lost in a swirl of CG gimmickry and tacky ticket over-pricing propaganda (ie - 3D). So before 2011 delivers its own collection of cold hard truisms, Short Ends and Leader has decided to outline some of the 24 frames a second messages we received via the cinema during the last 12 months. More importantly, feel free to share some of yours below. That way, we can walk through this funny little muddle called movie life together, without being sideswiped by some unseen filmic truism.