Terrible-hunting: Neowolf

Trash is a drug that I don't mind crawling through the dumpster to find. In fact, I love crawling though dumpsters. Duh, right? What has this blog been if not a 5-year trove through the trash bins of pop culture? Scanning movies and TV to find the worst of its worst (aka the best) at this point feels like a sport. I have pages worth of work to prove my cinematic bloodlust, but my main driving force ever since Showgirls or Amazing Discoveries or Mama's Family has been trashlust. That's only strengthened since establishing this outlet, because for better or worse, I find that the pop culture I have the most to say about is the pop culture that I bond with the most. Good, bad, but never indifferent, my taste often relies on my reaction (as backward as that sounds). It follows that I've long believed that taste has more to do with why than what (and a lot to do with how if you're a writer or critic). To be completely objective, I can't be sure if I've convinced myself of this out of necessity or because it's so, but either way, it works for me.

It works so well, in fact, that it led me to check out Neowolf, a cheap, direct-to-DVD (as of this week), so-unscary-it's-scary horror flick that even its own director disavowed...

 

Aw, poor Neowolf. That's OK. I'll adopt you.

(Warning: One screen shot is slightly NSFW below, but it's worth it, I assure you.)

Because really, why not Neowolf? While I consider my take on taste to be an expansion of its notion, I understand how others might see it more as a breakdown. By my credo, nothing is off-limits. There's nothing too inherently awful to skip unless it's boring...but then again, even the most boring shit can produce flashes of gold and sometimes boring is hysterical, too. I'm, of course, reminded here (and everywhere always) of the motto of what I consider to be my most kindred of online spirits (not to mention an obvious inspiration a lot of the time), Everything Is Terrible: If everything is terrible, then nothing is. You can read that as cynicism, but what I love about it is its egalitarian view of culture. If taste is dead, then at least so is snobbery, too.

(And let me back up and explain that I don't approach everything from the terrible-hunting perspective -- although when terrible crops up in something that I'm giving myself over to and not necessarily playing a game with, like for example, Meryl Streep smoking pot and getting allllll fucked up in It's Complicated, the jolt can be exhilarating). 

In my experience, there are certain elements you search for when terrible-hunting. Sketched broadly, they are:

• Incompetence
• Absurdity
• Melodrama
• Extreme view points
• Miscellaneous weirdness or quirks

A succinctness to these elements. Whether something works in this context relies on the ability to pull out these points and say, "Here you go, world! Laugh at this!" Ironically, the ability to pick apart works as a binding tie. Without it, you have a big, sloppy mess -- something like Caligula, which I've never written about for this very reason. Like, what do you do with that shit?

Neowolf is no Caligula. It is the story of a werewolf pack band that someone's boyfriend joins, saddending that someone and something something something (after all, there's terrible...and then there's the plots of terrible shit, which are almost always beside the point). Neowolf contains all of the elements listed above, and because they're so succinctly put, I can present them to you now. Thanks, Neowolf!

Incompetence

The lack of suspense and inability to even do cheesy catchphrases right ("Goddamn werewolves!" "I'll be there with bells on...silver bells...") stand out foremost, and, of course, so does the inevitably awful acting. The werewolf voices are pitched-down via what sounds like a TalkBoy. Best of all are the costumes...

...and the transformation sequences...

There is so much lace front on these werewolves, you woulda thought their last name was Knowles:

And the painted-on musculature is straight out of the pages of Mariah Carey's Hello Kitty diary...

Absurdity

Uh, yeah:

 

Melodrama

The protagonist who becomes a wolf is first a dog of a boyfriend with a wandering eye (he apparently enjoys boxy women in longish denim skirts). When his girl disavows their relationship, he grows solemn and softly lit...

...so that he can visit a tree with something that would be significant carved into it if only this movie could invest anyone in anything remotely emotional...

 

...but he's what matters and in the end, he is ambiguously moved...

 

By the way, he woos her back (temporarily) by playing her a Christian Contemporary-sounding ballad that goes, "You and me belong together / ‘Cause you and me are one of a kind / One of a kind."

Extreme view points

You don't need Jamie Kennedy to tell you that sex and drugs leading to death is a standard horror cliche, and yet Neowolf interprets this so literally and cloddishly that it makes the message's utter wrong-headedness feel fresh. Also, the idea that rock music leads to excessive body hair seems extreme to me, true as it may be.

Miscellaneous weirdness

The eye on the lead actress (singer-songwriter's girlfriend who becomes a werewolf widow) is so stank, I smelled tuna on first viewing:

 

 

 

 

So there, hilarious. Now I can't wait to watch Neowolf's sequel, Beowulf.

In a pop cultural climate that seemed at least temporarily obsessed with Birdemic (which played the incompetence card best...and to the eventual point of monotony), it seems unfair that Neowolf, for all of its singular stupidity, would go unnoticed. All things being more equal than ever, I ask again, why not Neowolf? For that matter, why not anything?

Comments

[hoosier]

I am so glad I found your blog.

[hoosier]

DARK HARVEST

[DLCF]

Another one that's so-bad-it's-amazing is "The Room."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/

[Lara Pagan]

Have you seen Scarecrow Slayer???

[Pamela]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1039646/

worst movie ever!

[Sharon]

Rich, I was just going to ask how it is possible you have never written about "The Room" but I see someone else has linked to it. It could be a Master's Thesis in terrible-hunting. It has incompetence, absurdity, et al in spades and the midnight showings of it are so much fun.

[LL]

I honestly thought that was Mark Hammill in the first screencap and was like "He's aging well...... terrible about his movie choices, though."

[EZ Mac]

That first screenshot is a wasted opportunity for a site banner. You could have photoshopped the backwards "Google" into a backwards "fourfour."

[Jawn]

This is like the "new media" redux on Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp."

[Caroline]

I'm emailing this to my parents. Whenever I'm home they criticize the quality of television I watch. "Get a hobby!" they say. "You don't understand! Trash is my hobby!" I exclaim. Seriously. There's a lot to be said for "low culture" television, especially reality tv. It's a social archive of personalities, trends and behaviors we will have to study well into the future. And, oh yeah, it's fucking ENTERTAINING! But yeah, the way you describe your trash hunting articulates my thoughts exactly. SEE MOM AND DAD??

[Nicole]

Have you ever written about Twin Peaks? You should. It has absurdity, melodrama, a giant AND dwarf.

[Elle]

Please use this clip wisely. I was once watching the SyFy channel, terrible-hunting, and I found the most terrific terrible of them all. It is called Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Every detail, from the horrible acting, the casting of renowned 80s star Debbie Reynolds, to the exquisite CGI that could have probably more realistic if they did it with Play-Doh, makes this movie my favorite bad scifi movie ever.

Here is probably the greatest scene in direct to DVD movie history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16_8l0yS-g&feature=related

The rest of the movie has many gems though, and you need to watch it! Here is the preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TnVm2ZC_U&feature=related

[Elle]

Here are some choice quotes from the Wikipedia page for Mega Shark v Giant Octopus:

"The film features veteran actor Lorenzo Lamas and singer/songwriter Deborah Gibson as part of its cast, and was originally titled Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 3D, but "3D" was stricken from the title when the studio failed to acquire adequate funding for 3-D film"

" In the chaos, the helicopter crashes into the glacier, and the combined damage breaks the glacier open, thawing two hibernating, prehistoric creatures. MacNeil narrowly avoids destruction as, unknown to her, a giant shark and octopus are freed."

" MacNeil reflects on the polar ice caps melting due to man-made global warming, and wonders if the creatures are mankind’s “comeuppance”"

"The shark then resurfaces and bites a portion of the Golden Gate Bridge."

[solar collector]

Few countries in Europe use either a collectivist system or exist as "welfare states." An in-depth look at the health care expenditures of the US v. European countries would immediately show the enormous--and I emphasize enormous--savings in the European systems.

[dinning chairs]

Oh I loooooved The Monster at the End of This Book. It would be interesting to see that fleshed out for a whole movie. Would these be movies for kids? Or movies about kids for adults like Where the Wild Things Are? I loved the Boxcar Children.

[dinning chair]

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble has some very adult themes and could be really touching. Hm- I'll have to think some more- there's a book I want to read called Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children's Book. It's a collection of essays from public figures on what they learned reading as a kid. Sounds pretty great.

[solar energy]

I really like your take on this. At my daughter's college the mood was celebratory. She told me she questioned it, but at the same time understood it.
"Sometimes you don’t realize how you feel until you don’t feel that way any more.

[bar chairs]

Thank you OSers for a flattering series of comments on the story that details my most embarrassing moment. I have rarely told this story, and certainly never to a large audience where some might take offense. But this has been a truly liberating experience, which you have all been a part of - and I thank you for coming along for the ride.

[leather sofa]

damn! It was going to be such fun watching all the mockery...

[hydraulic jack]

Translation: he read the polls that showed he had dropped from 26% to 8% in one week, after Obama released his birth certificate, killed bin Laden and, oh yeah, mercilessly ridiculed Trump at the Correspondents Dinner and made him a national laugh.

[jack stand]

Condemning torture should be welcome but I don't think he should get brownie points to use for other things. I was pulled in for a while by his "straight talk express," fool me once etc.

[Power cord]

Okay. I'm woman enough to admit that I shed a tear when I got to the part about your soon-to-be-ex-husband lying down still for you while you touched every part of his body, to remember. Nice work!

[Coach Outlet Online]

So fun article is! I agree the idea!

[water heater]

What a beautiful thing you did, helping your daughter create this project with such love and originality. I think you should ask the teacher if she objected to the stabbing story and then ask her why.

[solar system]

I'm glad you are not succumbing to the weight of others who don't know how to be helpful to you in your widowhood. Keep writing, I'll keep reading.