5 FILMS PANNED BY CRITICS BUT LOVED BY MR. RICHARD ALAN LONG

Richard Alan Long, who's given us some great reviews of Italiano Exploitation, has now come on board as a permanent reviewer, which is fantastic news as it takes a lot of pressure of me and we get a different perspective on films. So to welcome him to the cine-apocalypse family which so far consists of just me, I allowed Richard to send along a list of 5 guilty pleasures that he loves and critics hated. It's an interesting list. Please check it out after the jump...

The following five movies, although panned by critics, have always held a special place in my heart. I have tried to pick five films from different time periods, some have aged badly but I think others are timeless classics. They are all films I have enjoyed, and still enjoy watching and they are certainly worth watching if you have never seen them. These are more personal reviews for me, but I hope you find what I say about these 5 critically slammed films of interest, and perhaps you might blow the dust off them and give them a second chance.

BED OF ROSES (1996) Dir: Michael Goldenberg

Bed of Roses is a romantic drama starring Mary Stuart Masterson and Christian Slater. Lisa (Masterson) was abandoned as a child and raised by a foster father. She now lives alone and has abandonment issues, substituting work for any kind of life, until one day she starts getting flowers from a secret admirer. Enter Lewis (Slater), the florist, whom after being asked by Lisa who sent the flowers confesses that he sent them after seeing her crying at her window as he was out walking one night.

The film has a great mood and feeling and when you’re not in love or single it gives a feeling of hope and the want to meet someone so it might be as special as this. Scenes have a wonderful autumn quality in colour and fashion (mid nineties commercial grunge).

There are little gimmicks that you get with most romance movies. The isolation between the two lovers is wonderful and although there are other minor cast members you do feel like you’re alone watching these two people living out there lives and moving on from troubled pasts through their relationship. It is a romance movie, but doesn’t fall into the trap of others of this genre. There’s no chasing the girl to the airport at the end. It is a sober and tender film, filled with hope and meaning with an ending that doesn’t close everything neatly and put it into a box to zoom out with a kiss in the rain. The fact critics slated it and praised ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ is because people want the fairytale more than what’s real, but when love is real, it’s far more overwhelming than any fairytale.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (2011) Dir: Michael Bay

I personally find Michael Bay an interesting character. He has no fear of taking a genre movie (Amityville Horror) or a revived character (Freddy Kruger) and trying to throw money at it and make it a grand opus. The results aren’t always pretty but there is something Fred Durst like about Bay in that he does it so larger than life without giving a f**k what his peers say about him.

Please enter Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Finally after the mishap that was Transformers: Rise of the Fallen we have the third instalment, which has got rid of Megan Fox and stereotype robots.

The story centres around mysterious events of the past threatening planet Earth and, you guessed it, an epic war between the Autobots and Decepticons. There are quite a few surprises during the ride not to mention moments when you generally worry about the outcome of the Autobots. I mean come on; they killed my favourite transformer Jazz in the first movie so anything’s possible.

Critic Roger Ebert called Transformers 3 "a visually ugly film with an incoherent plot, wooden characters’’ Well I didn’t watch Showgirls when I was 17 for the superb plot or character development. I wanted to see titties. With Transformers I want to see epic scenes of robot wars and carnage and you can say you hate the film but this doesn’t look visually ugly.

I was going through some tough times when I saw this movie and the last thing I wanted to do was watch ‘The Artist.’

Sometimes there is a time and a place for art house movies and sometimes like after a 14 hour work day, there is a time for giant robots kicking the oily snot out of each other.

Transformers Dark of the Moon is like an ACDC record. People who don’t like it moan all the songs sound the same, but people who do like ACDC know what they’re getting when they buy the record.

Critics have spent way to long over analysing this franchise, claiming it’s ruined the nostalgia of child’s toy. Please, stop right there. It’s a movie based on a kid’s toy which is trying to please a cinema audience as a whole. Okay it has a good looking heroine in it that seems to walk upstairs slowly with a camera stuck on her ass but it’s hardly something that is ruining a child’s toy.

Ask critic’s their opinions on Michael Bay’s latest and of course they will hate it, but if I’d seen this sort of stuff when I was a kid I would have been gobsmacked. All we had was Masters of the Universe, which although a good film, featured new characters because the studio didn’t have the technical ability to do ones from the series. Also it spent the last half of the movie thinking it was star wars with its stupid laser gun battles. Enough said.

I’m not saying the latest Transformers is well written, or at times well acted, and it will never get an academy award for best director, but if you just want to have a little escapism and watch something truly larger than life, then go for this one.

BLAME IT ON THE BELLBOY (1992) Dir: Mark Herman 

Blame It on the Bellboy is a 1992 comedy about mistaken identity. Lawton (a hit-man), Horton (a man in search of holiday hanky panky via a dating agency) and Orton (checking out properties for his boss) all stay at Hotel Gabriella in Venice at the same time. However due to the confused Bellboy and his mix-ups all three visitors get the wrong letters meant for the other. Horton meets up with a classy estate agent Caroline to see what she's offering, Orton attempts to make a gangster an offer on his property and Lawton sets out to assassinate the dating agency member meant for Horton.

Each of the three characters is pitiful, Orton for his wimpiness, Horton for his lustful ways and Lawton for his cold bloodedness. However, early on we learn to like these three misinformed characters. The mishaps are funny and the situations (especially for Moore) are tense.

I love this film because whenever I watch, it makes me feel better. It cheers me, it’s that simple. Richard Griffiths (Horton) has been in countless shows and films, but he really shines at comedy, whilst Bryan Brown is wonderful in his dead pan characterisation of Lawton.

The soundtrack by Trevor Jones is sentimental and comforting, and every time I hear it now I think of Venice and these three fools running around its streets.

It has a slow pace which fits with the film nicely, something lost in modern comedies that rush to deliver gag after gag. It’s another one that didn’t do well at the box office, but that never really bothered me. I first saw it on Sky some years ago, in the nineties and have been a fan since. It contains some moments of tenderness too, especially for the relationship that builds between Brown’s character and the fabulous Penelope Wilton.

I’d recommend this film to anyone that wants to see how a great comedy should be made, which is not by creating a storyline around a series of funny sketches.

TROLL 2 (1990) Dir: Claudio Fragasso

Okay the first Troll didn’t do well when it was released. However, compared to Troll 2 it looks like King Kong. Troll 2 is a cheap film, without the grunge most low budget horror movies use to their advantage, but it’s so cheap it’s enduring.

Firstly there are no Trolls in Troll 2. The film being called Troll 2 is, of course, a film about Goblins.

Secondly the film has nothing whatsoever to do with the original other than stealing the title.

The movie has been deemed one of the "least scary horror movies ever"

From a script written in English by native Italians who couldn’t speak English the film plays out with deadly seriousness, even though the majority of dialogue and expressions make you fall off your seat laughing. The director of this film called it his masterpiece, which often leaves anyone who watches it scratching their heads.

I could on and explain the plot...but I don’t think it would do much good.

This is a perfect film for a drunken party, it will leave you with many questions, but the most important one will be, ‘Who can I share this with next?’

THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE (1987) Dir: Rod Amateau

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is a 1987 live action film based on the popular trading cards. The cards themselves were a parody of the popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, and featured characters which were disgusting, abnormal or focused on cultural figures and mocked them. The film depicted a handful of the most popular characters, one from each series of cards. This film holds the legendary title of ‘the worst movie ever made’

The film centres on bullied kid Dodger, who works for eccentric Brit Captain Manzini (played by the only good actor in the film Anthony Newley) at his antique store. Also in the store is a garbage pail which, when opened, releases seven of the Garbage Pail Kids. The kids try to solve Dodgers love life and hunt for their friends, and they do some breaking and entering, stealing, drinking beer and having bar fights in the process. Sound crude? It is, but that’s why kids loved it. When I first saw this movie I, like so many other kids, was into trading and collecting the stickers. They were everywhere in popular culture and when the movie came out, every kid in my school was into it. It was rude, it had fart jokes, and had more edge than the stuff aimed at kids at the time. It has been established that not a single critic gave this film a positive review.

But this wasn’t a film aimed at critics. It was kids who took this to their hearts. I clearly remember sitting in the television room at school where every year we gathered to either watch Sinbad or Indiana Jones. Those were the only two movies we ever fucking watched. Well this one year some kid submitted to the teachers Garbage Pail Kids. After the teachers informed us they would consider it we were told no, it was inappropriate, and we were forced to watch Indiana Jones with its Nazi’s and melting faces.

An interesting fact is that John Carl Buechler, the man responsible for Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and Troll was considered to direct the film, and his version of the story was going to be a straight up horror film, in which the Garbage Pail Kids would have spawned from radioactive sludge that had found its way to a garbage can filled with broken dolls, turning them into serial killers.

It’s a film that when I watch now I gasp at the concepts, like a state home for ugly people, and breaking into a store and stealing whilst singing a happy song. It’s so insanely wrong that I wonder if the producers realised this at the time.

I’m not saying this is a great film, it’s not even a good film, but I do like it, and know in part that comes down to nostalgia. Nostalgia or not, I can now laugh at the truly awful acting, something I didn’t realise as a kid.

This was the punk film for a child of the 80’s. Parents hated it and kids loved it all the more as a result. For the kid that sat in that stuffy television room at school being forced to watch Indiana Jones Garbage Pail Kids was my escape card and one I have enjoyed revisiting ever since.

Written by Richard Alan Long