Dark Tower (1989)

I miss bad, cheap horror movies done with a straight face. It seems like all the horror movies that come out now, assuming they aren't a remake of an earlier movie, are trying so hard to be the next Troll 2, but on purpose. What a lot of these directors fail to understand is you can't make Troll 2 on purpose, the magic of that movie is how it was done in total seriousness. If the filmmakers behind the movie hadn't been trying their hardest to make that movie the best damn picture put on film then the movie would just feel cynical and not worth anybodies time. There's love amidst the rubber masks and poor framing, and it leaks out onto the screen, much to the audience's disbelief and joy.

I don't know the production back story behind Dark Tower, a movie about a haunted skyscraper that's as dumb as it sounds. I know it stars the always fun Michael Moriarty, no stranger to the bad movie circuit, known for his star turn in Q and the original Troll. I know it was filmed in Spain and as such has several different languages spoken throughout the movie, which is really disorienting. I know it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But, although I don't know the circumstances under which this movie was made, I do know it has a lot of heart to it. It's like a kindergartner's macaroni art project. It's not really good, but it's charming and kind of enjoyable to watch under the influence of a lot of alcohol.

Free Money (1998)

There are two types of "so good it's bad" movies. There's the ones that clearly has a film crew behind it trying to make the best movie they can but just lack the talent/self examination to do so (Troll 2, Plan 9 From Outer Space, The Room). Then there are the movies that are trying to be bad, knowing their audience is going to be stoned college kids watching their movies on Netflix that the filmmakers create while giggling to themselves (Snakes on a Plane, all the Leprechaun movies, anything Tommy Wiseau has done after The Room). The difference between the two is usually that the former are discovered years after they came out as some weird anomaly while the latter force how wacky they are down our throats.

With these choices in front of us, I have no idea which camp Free Money falls into. It's labeled a black comedy, it's clearly trying to be funny. Yet it's also trying to be the type of arty action thriller people in the 90s thought was really cool. It desperately wants to be Pulp Fiction or Fargo. Instead it's a poorly structured, fairly dull movie.

Except for one thing. The thing that turns Free Money into an unbridled gigglefest, that makes the stupid into the sublime, that uses a taser on Charlie Sheen to punish him for farting in Church, which clearly needs to be on some sort of AFI list. That force of nature is none other then Marlon Brando.