A group of friends who enjoy getting together to watch and enjoy terrible films are inviting people across Nottingham to come and join them after they launched the city’s first movie club devoted to bad movies.
Gareth Winterman, Will Bailey and Chris Barnes say they are looking forward to sharing some of Hollywood’s biggest turkeys with like-minded people at the Notts Bad Movie Club, which has begun holding film nights at Annie’s Burger Shack in Broadway every two months.
The group held its first movie night in August, where the sell-out audience were shown a double of bill of 1990s fighting video-game inspired films Mortal Kombat and Streetfighter.
Friends Gareth Winterman, Will Bailey and Chris Barnes have launched the Notts Bad Movie Club, which will show terrible, but classic films at Annie’s Burger Shack in Broadway every two months.
The event will return on October 14 with a pre-Halloween special featuring Jason X – where the creepy killer from the Friday The 13th films is cryogenically frozen and reappears 445 years in the future as a killer cyborg – and Anaconda, the 1997 outing where a group of Amazon documentary-makers, including Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, are terrorised by a giant snake.
If spending a night eating burgers, drink beer and giggling as a 1990s rapper gets swallowed by a huge rubber snake is your idea of fun then you will be among friends, says Gareth, who says that bad movie clubs are popular across America.
The idea is not to sit down and watch films that are poorly directed and were badly received on their release, but often those which generally did well when they were first issued but which have suffered with the passing of time.
Anaconda is a good example of this, says Gareth, because although it was not the first on the organisers’ list for next month, it is classic example of a monster film which has two key ingredients of a bad movie – an unlikely storyline and dodgy special effects, thanks to the snake and now somewhat dated CGI.
Other ingredients include a bad script and moments or lines which, while acceptable in their day, have become wholly inappropriate nowadays due to changing social attitudes.
Gareth’s favourite example of the genre is Plan 9 From Outer Space, a 1957 Ed Wood film where aliens arrive on Earth to prevent humans from using a doomsday weapon by bringing dead people back to life in order to build an army of ghouls and create chaos.
Another favourite – which is a must-see bad movie which gave the friends the idea for their club – is Troll 2, which has now earned cult status among fans thanks to its unlikely storyline of a family who are pursued by vegetarian goblins bent on turning them into plants and eating them.
Gareth said: “Both of these films are wonderful examples of bad movies for a number of reasons and just the kind of films people will be able to watch at the Notts Bad Movie club, although we’re being careful not to screen our favourites too early.
“We had a great start at our first screening and both films went down incredibly well. We bought the movies on DVD and then we held a raffle so that someone could win them, if only because we don’t want to be stuck with them.
“There are so many bad movies for so many reasons but I think the passage of time is the main factor. Time can be very unkind to movies, sometimes because of the special effects or cinematography, but often because attitudes that everyone took for granted years ago can be hilariously shocking because things have moved on.”
The Halloween screening will take place on October 14 at the Ocean State Tavern, downstairs at Annie’s Burger Shack in Broadway, and tickets cost £8, with the first screening starting at 7.15pm. For more details visit www.anniesburgershack.com
ENDS
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