I’ve seen more bad movies than anybody I know. Back in the 70’s I’d regularly go to my local drive-in with a lawn chair, a couple of quarts of beer, and watch terrible low-budget movies till 3 in the morning.
The question immediately comes to mind … why would I subject myself to steaming piles of cinema like: The Corpse Grinders, The Undertaker and His Pals, The Worm Eaters, Invasion Of The Blood Farmers, and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies?
Research.
I wanted to make movies and I wanted to see how bad a movie could be … and still get released. I wasn’t interested in mega-million dollar flops. I only watched the low-budget and no-budget movies because that’s where I was going to begin my so-called career. I was going to follow in the footsteps of Francis Ford Coppola, John Carpenter, and Martin Scorsese who all started out making cheap-o horror and sci-fi films.
I ended up watching a lot of irredeemable crap.
Once in great while I’d see some talent shining through the garbage. The script was well written, the direction and editing kept the story moving, and the acting wasn’t half bad. But Night of The Living Dead, Halloween, and Eraserhead were rare exceptions. The rest were just … junk. The worst things about these crummy movies wasn’t a boom mic in the shot, or the visible zipper running up the monster’s back, it was the cynicism of the producers and the contempt they had for the audience. The reason this misbegotten film genre is classified as “Exploitation Films” is because the producers play everyone … the cast, crew, and the audience … for chumps. Hollywood bottom-feeders don’t have the moral code of third-rate carnival hucksters.
What’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen? Everyone picks on Plan 9 from Outer Space but that’s an easy target. Everything about it is so ludicrously bad but the earnest ineptitude of writer, producer, director Edward D. Wood, Jr. makes Plan 9 from Outer Space magnitudes better than Innocence of Muslims.
I watched the clips available on YouTube. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
I call Innocence of Muslims a “thing” because I don’t know what else to call it. It’s not a “movie” in the same sense that porn scenes edited together aren’t movies. The camera is turned on, something happens in front of the lens, then the camera is turned off. The camera simply records what’s in front of it. Just because the clips are edited together doesn’t make it a movie. The cast of Innocence of Muslims memorized lines, dressed up in costumes, stood in front of a green screen so the “desert” could be added later, and repeated their lines in front of a video camera. And we’re being led to believe that 14 minutes of that crap uploaded onto YouTube made Muslim countries explode.
That’s Insane.
All blasphemous references to Muhammad and the Koran were ineptly dubbed over the original dialog in the YouTube clip in July. In September the entire clip was overdubbed in Arabic. I don’t know Arabic so I have no idea what anybody’s saying, but anyone who’s sat through Godzilla vs. Monster Zero knows what wretched dubbing looks and sounds like … and the Innocence of Muslims is worse. This 14-minute clip is such an amateurish pile of dung it’s impossible to believe it was the trigger that sparked violence and death throughout the Muslim world. Do we really believe that Muslims can’t tell the difference between a regular movie and a 14 minute long no-budget piece of trash? Do we really believe that they believe Innocence of Muslims represents an American view of Islam and Muhammad? Do we really believe that Muslims are that stupid and naïve? Are we that stupid and naïve?
So if it wasn’t the YouTube clip … what set off the bloodshed on September 11, 2012?
The only answer that makes sense to me is: The actions of the U.S. government towards Muslims since September 11, 2001.
Their countries have been invaded, they’ve been rounded up, thrown into prisons, tortured, and killed by the hundreds of thousands. What better day to strike back at America than September 11th? The Government of the United States used the attacks of that day 11 years ago as the excuse to go on a rampage of perpetual war. But television-buffoon Joe Scarborough explains it all away saying, “They hate us because of their religion. They hate us because of their culture. And they hate us because of peer pressure.” “Morning Joe” is a well-paid idiot who has seen too many movies.
Since the beginning of movie making in America, Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, and Palestinians (they’re all interchangeable in Hollywood-speak), have been the go-to Bad Guys in over 1,000 films. Emory University professor Jack Shaheen, author of Reel Bad Arabs, wrote, “What is an Arab? In countless films, Hollywood alleges the answer: Arabs are brute murderers, sleazy rapists, religious fanatics, oil-rich dimwits, and abusers of women."
We’ve been conditioned for generations by mass media to see all Muslims as mindless, murderous, religious fanatics. Any news story that blames the violence over the last week on the Innocence of Muslims reaffirms that conditioning. So does the State Department. From the Tampa Bay Times, “… Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged the film, which conservative Muslims said denigrated Islam and its holiest figure, Mohammad, as the likely cause, although she made it clear she felt "there is never any justification for violent acts of this kind."
See? The Movie Made Them Do It. We all know they’re crazier than outhouse rats anyway. Just another example of inane Muslims going berserk at the drop of a hat because their religion tells them so. They couldn’t possibly have another rationale for attacking America. They have no real grievances against the United States. It’s just the followers of that nutball religion running amok … again.
Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi Arabia citizens so it made perfect sense for the U.S. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. With that sort of lateral arabesque logic at work are we going to see the events of the last week somehow turn into a strike against Iran? Sounds like a bad movie to me.
Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre, “Bad films may sometimes be amusing, sometimes even successful, but their only real usefulness is to form that basis of comparison: to define positive values in terms of their own negative charm. They show us what to look for because it is missing in themselves. After that has been determined, it becomes, I think, actively dangerous to hold on to these bad films … and they must be discarded.”
If only we could cast off our Ruling Psychopaths as easily.
Whoever is behind this … whoever the “producers” are … they’re showing the same cynicism and contempt the Hollywood sleaze exude. They don’t care if we see the zipper running up the monster’s back. They just want our money. They just want their war.
