Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies by Michael Adams

As the author himself states the book is “A film critics year long quest to find the worst movie ever made.”  Honestly whenever I hear that someone is going to write a book about the “worst” movie ever made I’m always a bit cautious.  See most of the time it ends up being kind of a film snobs attempt to skewer the sort of cinematic fun that many of us love.  Sure some of the movies that I love are pretty badly made, but also a blast to watch.  It was with a bit of hesitation that I sat down and started reading the book.  But I have to say it was a pretty good read.

Instead of looking down his nose at the bad movies that he watches Adams sort of embraces them.  Or at least some of them that aren’t too awful anyway.  Each month is it’s own chapter and Adams gives mini reviews of the movies that he watched.  At the end of the chapter he gives you his worst movie of that month.  But what I also dig are his other selections of the guiltiest pleasure.  In other words like I hinted at earlier he isn’t at all snobbish about the films he is watching and actually admits the some of the bad movies are sort of entertaining.  I must also admit that when he mentioned Ted V. Mikels’ Corpse Grinders (a personal favorite of mine) as a guilty pleasure I did have a smile on my face.

Now I’ve already mentioned how the book is organized with each chapter being a month’s worth of movie viewing.  I also thought it was very clever how he chooses his movies.  First up he sorts the movies into categories.  For example one of the categories that he does are the bad sequels to good movies.  These include Exorcist II, Grease 2, Return to the Black Lagoon, Another 9 ½ Weeks, Speed 2, and Son of Mask.  Other times he groups movies by a common thread (at times directors like Al Adamson and Ted V. Mikels) and at other times they are just recommendations from people like Joe Dante or John Waters.  After he has his movies put together in groups he then assigns them a number and uses an old bingo game to select at random what he is going to watch.  I though this just added another bit of fun to the process, both for him and us as the reader.

I’ve read many books about movies, both good and bad.  If you are looking for a book that will give you insights to your favorite movies or might perhaps clue you in on a movie you don’t know about I don’t know that I’d recommend this one.  But then I don’t think that was the point here.  What Adams has done is write a book that takes us with him on his yearlong marathon to discover the worst movie that he can find.  I can’t say it is the worst movie ever made because he missed quite a few.  But I will say this is the most fun I’ve ever had with a book full of movie reviews.  This is an excellent read and I highly recommend everyone give it a chance.

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2010 John Shatzer