The Purpose-Driven Tripe: A Meditation on Crappy Movies and What Makes Them Good

Judge David Johnson

March 18th, 2004

There's a scene in the 1985 action film Gymkata where Jonathan Cabot (then-gymnast-elite Kurt Thomas) is desperately trying to escape a rushing mob of crazy people in a small Eastern European village. His flight ends at the town square, where dozens of garden-implement wielding maniacs surround him, murder on their minds.

Because our hero relies on an amalgam of competitive gymnastics and karate, his resources for doing battle are fairly limited. But, lucky for Cabot, in the middle of the town square is a pommel horse. Yes, a pommel horse, apparently a needed fixture in all agrarian/sanitarium enclaves.

The ensuing spectacle represents the action centerpiece of Gymkata, the culmination of spinning, twirling, flipping, kicking, and grunting in a movie designed solely as a star vehicle for Wheaties-box-flavor-of-the-week Thomas and rife with such amateurish acting, storyline inanity, and lousy everything-else; it's, frankly, so bad its good.

The Crappy Movie. An encompassing term to much celluloid, yet so intricately stratified that it begs sub-categorization—The Crappy High-Budget Movie That Looks No-Budget; The Crappy Movie That's Really, Really Crappy But Still Fun to Watch As Long As Everyone Watching It is Hopped Up on Paint Fumes; The Crappy Movie That Makes You Hate Your Life For Watching Its Crappiness, etcetera.

And each film genre contributes to this classification: Crappy Horror Movies, Crappy Action Movies, Crappy Science-Fiction Movies. For each one of these—and more—I'm sure every person reading this can rattle off a list of "favorite" titles.

The tricky part, particularly for a reviewer, is discerning what festering pile of yak discharge falls into which category. Once a film has been classified as "Crappy," it can no longer be compared to those decent, relatively well-budgeted and financed movies that dwell on the surface; it's like H.G. Wells's Morlocks and Eloi, where in the abyss dwell movies of lamentable quality (perhaps led by a governing council of Dolph Lundgren, Kari Wuhrer, and Antonio Sabato Jr.) who desperately try to suck past A-list actors to the depths. Cue Jean-Claude Van Damme's howl, as he plunges into the darkness.

Now, no one wants to waste time on any activity—particularly an activity that commands the better part of two hours of one's life—that is destined to be unfulfilling. Watching Crappy Movies is often akin to blacking out for two hours and coming to, nauseous. But there is value in some of these features, especially if there is someone with you to enjoy the show.

But for that to happen, an odd conundrum must take place. So at the risk of waxing Matrix Reloaded, I offer this treatise:

For a Crappy Movie to be worth two farts, it must be made useful, counter to its intended purpose.

For instance, The Gore-met Zombie Chef From Hell may have been created by the filmmakers as a legitimate fright film, yet for all intents and purposes, the film's sole use comes not as something to be taken seriously, but rather to be mocked and berated for its wretched failure of said purpose.

To retain any merit, its existence thus serves the fact that, in the end, it has no right to exist.

Let's look at the Gymkata example again. The following is a hypothetical, but a scenario, I would suppose, that may not be too far off:

In the distance, a dark, hooded figure, perhaps the physical manifestation of Cruel Fate, laughs to himself.

The filmmakers' foresight was ultimately rewarded with a box office haul of $5.7 million and a 1986 Razzie nomination for Kurt Thomas as "Worst New Actor."

Worthless on the surface where the real movies live, yes, but underground, where the "Mor-schlocks" dwell, Gymkata can find new life, new purpose. Now it is an object of scorn, of belittling, of laughter solely at its own expense.

And its brethren are everywhere! Those cursed souls made with a desire for legitimacy, but their true nature shown as buffalo turd. These Crappy Movies offer the finest amusement, the films that wrest purpose from its perverted ontology. In short: It is funnier to laugh at a movie that sucks but not meant to than at one bred solely to suck.

So when it comes to homemade movies like the recently reviewed Weasels Rip My Flesh and They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore, so obviously cheap and dumb, the thrill of the hunt is gone. To berate films like these is like playing Scrabble with an emu: Where's the challenge? Where's the competition? Where's the pitiful attempt, which, when it fails utterly, can be so enjoyably demeaned?

What is the criteria, then? What separates an on-purpose Crappy Movie from an inadvertent, and thus entertaining offering? Well, one can find glee in anything, but for my money, the presence of a "gaffer" and a "key grip" in the end credits is a good line in the sand.

Then, you've got someone's vision at your fingertips to harangue.

As viewers—and hecklers—we don't laugh at the badness, but rather the failed attempt at goodness. Don't you see? It comes down to pride, one of the greatest of human hubris. We enjoy watching others wallow in their own suffering; that is, people trapped in a microcosm of crap, parading as "actors" in a "film." In a way, it is empowering to scoff at these films. And perhaps it is power sourced in bitter, bitter envy.

But that's a subject for another time.