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 Lost Skeleton of Cadavra 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 part of the ‘so bad, it’s good’ lexicon. No one except the obsessive discusses The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. 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 this 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.
If it sounds a lot like a recreational vehicle take on Death Wish, you’re right. If you also think it resembles a dozen other dopey drive-in trash heaps circulating throughout the early home video marketplace, you’re also correct. Research provides little additional insight and the various sources for snippets and scenes argue for a real turd taking its place among the rest of the direct to VHS cassette paradigm. So it was only a matter of time before someone came along to proclaim this 83 minute mess a mangled masterwork, rewrite its rancid irregularities into some kind of stunted genius, and plaster the familiar Best Worst/So Bad tag on it. But there is an issue with the renamed Worst Movie Ever Made that needs to be addressed. Not a deal breaker so much as a word of aesthetic caution along the lines of those critical of Lost Skeleton and the like.
According to those preparing to distribute A Dozen Ways to Die! under the new label, this joyless junk heap needed some ‘help.’ Approximately 30 minutes or so of plot and subtext were ‘removed’ to make the experience more fast-paced and fun. In addition, the curse-word laden dialogue, featuring all manner of foul language and graphic innuendos, was/is altered in favored of the classic “beep” of imposed censorship. Again, the desire was to make the dialogue “funnier”. Finally, a few gratuitous moments revolving around an actress’s lamentably bad naked breast was determined to be so off-putting that a black bar was/is used to cover up the offending teat (and from what we see suggested behind the leather vest she wears, the obstruction is more than necessary).
Now, it has to be said that the changes do make A Dozen Ways to Die! a wholly interesting and enjoyable experience. The movie jumps around incoherently, the main narrative now reserved for a series of senseless fight scenes between our marble mouthed man of action and the various idiotic villains. The conversations, frequently broken up by a series of added-on bleats, take on a surreal quality, especially in moments when it feels like every other word is missing. Finally, the errant teat is indeed hilarious, becoming a character all its own in the process. We wait for the moment when a fellow biker paws at the matronly moll, hoping to cop a feel. With the black bar in place, they could be putting their hand into a time rift or a hornet’s nest for all we know, and the effective is mesmerizing.
But here’s the rub with The Worst Movie Ever Made – none of this was Randall Hill’s (or whomever actually pounded out this turkey) intent. Of sure, the certifiably stupid filmmaking with its gaping flaws and directorial disasters is still present and accounted for, but the rest of the retrofitting has been done by outsiders who, 20 years later, feel they ‘know’ better. By imposing themselves into the process, they irrevocably alter the original movie’s motives – for good and for bad or for who knows. In some ways it’s the argument may make against that TV classic Mystery Science Theater 3000. With the silhouetted riffing, there are those that complain that some otherwise decent genre efforts (the entire Godzilla/Gamera franchises, for example) are forever rendered into laughing stocks. The situation here is even more sticky. While MST3K would edit their targets for time and content, the distributors here have altered A Dozen Ways to Die! for perceived comedic value.
Now, such a decision works – this is a hilariously inept movie – but it does make one wonder…how much of our response is Hill and how much of it is those ‘commenting’ on Hill. By altering the original, A Dozen Ways to Die! is made to appear even more incoherent and incompetent (which was/is not hard to do, considering what remains) and since we don’t have the full 80-plus minute mess to compare it to, it’s hard to know if it’s indeed “better.” Similarly, by snapping the dialogue off with a simple bleep, memorable lines may have been lost forever. True, the tit situation falls squarely on the side of sidesplitting necessity, but for the most part, there’s something disconcerting about the entire approach to The Worst Movie Ever Made. It’s as if the distributors had so little faith in the film being picked up by Messageboard Nation as the new comic cult that they had to ‘force’ the issue, so to speak.
Make no mistake about it, A Dozen Ways to Die! is dreadful. It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching your incoherent weekend warrior neighbor wander around a campsite crashing into various inanimate objects. The acting is appalling, the script a collection of borderline ethnic slurs, and the final result a ridiculous combination of crudeness and slightly cracked brilliance. It’s just a shame that those who’ve reconfigured it into The Worst Movie Ever Made don’t give us the full Randall Hill version. The side by side would add a level of liveliness to an already ludicrous experience – and it would probably prove their point. Make no mistake about it, A Dozen Ways to Die! is more than a dozen ways of B…A…D. Just how much so, however, is currently up for creative grabs.