Guilty Pleasures: “Deep Blue Sea”

1999 was a banner year for exceedingly-watchable films. You have your not-so-terrible ones (Blair Witch Project), your bad ones that you can’t escape (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Austin Powers 2: Let’s Exterminate All Traces of Joy from this Franchise), and then are the ones so bad, they can only be described as Guilty Pleasures. Wing Commander falls into this category, and that should be enough. But due to some weird confluence of factors—sunspots, planetary alignment, the Age of Aquarius, the eve of the new millennium…Whatever it was, it gave us another great, bad movie. And that movie is Deep Blue Sea. Or as I like to think of it, Jaws Takes HGH. We have genetically-engineered sharks capable, apparently, of advanced mechanical engineering, and humans who (on evidence) are barely capable of using their opposable thumbs. We have wanton violence and sadistic deaths. We have Samuel L. Jackson overacting when he’s not underacting. We have an utter disregard for the laws of physics. We have Saffron Burrows in lingerie. No, please, no more! I’m only human! Let’s run down the reasons I love this film, shall we? Yes, we shall!

At Long Last, the Wait is Over! “Aztec Rex”

I couldn’t download it. Amazon.com didn’t sell it. The manufacturer discontinued DVDs of it. And when I bought it off eBay, the seller sent the wrong DVD. I had almost all but given up my search for a copy of Aztec Rex, when a bootleg DVD stand on Sukhumvit and Soi 5 (sandwiched between a stand that sold carved, teakwood dildos and a pick-up truck that had been converted into a mobile bar) brought my quest for this Holy Grail of bad movies to an end. So was it worth it? Holy freaking crap, yes it was!!! This movie is sheer, sublime badness! It’s like the crème brulee of bad movies! Watching this movie is like slipping into a warm, bath or silk sheets. Had this film been around thirty or forty years ago, it–not Ice Station Zebra—would be the movie Howard Hughes played on a continuous loop. At least, I would if I were him.

Guilty Pleasures: “Wing Commander”

Oh Wing Commander, why can’t I quit you? Why am I powerless against your charms, doomed to make the time to watch you every time TNT or the Sci Fi Channel plugs you into a timeslot too undesirable for a rerun of Scare Tactics or Psyche? How did this totally forgettable movie which barely made a blip on the cinematic radar upon its release ten years ago cast such a spell upon me? How much do I love thee, Wing Commander? Let me count the ways: