Absolute Turkeys

One of my guilty pleasures is watching bad (i.e. stupid, not vulgar) movies. I'll admit it freely.

Some of you may be thinking: Why, Jon? Why do you put yourself through that kind of torture?

I can think of lots of reasons. To name just a few, bad films (or "turkeys") are enjoyable to watch because:

1) They are easy to make fun of, in the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" tradition.

2) In the same sense, they are good practice for "Hecklers," an Improv game that I get to play from time to time.

3) At the very least, after watching a bad movie, I can then help warn my family and friends about how lame certain movies are and save them $7.75 (or a rental fee).

Of course, I like to see good movies, too. It's the films that are neither good nor bad that I try to avoid, for they are the least entertaining of all. (A good example would be pretty much anything Nicolas Cage or Renée Zellweger have been in.)

The latest offender on the bad movie list is Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000, which I caught on TV the other day. This was one infamous cinematic clunker that I had heard about for a number of years, and the verdict is: Yes. It really is that bad. It may even be worse than you've heard, if that's possible.


Picture a future 991 years from now in which humanity has been enslaved by a human-like race of extraterrestrials called the Psychlos. Worse, John Travolta (who I'm left to understand picked up a $10 million paycheck for this piece of drivel) is at his most over-the-top as some kind of a human dogcatcher. Even worse, everybody's hairdo looks like Amy Winehouse's.

Humanity fights for freedom. The Psychlos fight back. And the hilarity ensues.

No need to thank me for the heads-up on this one. That's what I do.