I Love B-Movies

I love B-movies.  Since my first encounter with some over sized thing wandering out of the ocean and laying waste to what ever was around, I have been addicted.  My summers were spent laid out on the couch in front of WPGH channel 53 - back when UHF wasn’t just a Weird Al movie, it was my Sunday ticket to the fantastic.  Mind you, I didn’t have cable.  I didn’t have a VCR.  But I did have a slew of schlock thanks to channel 53.  And oh how I fell in love with the craptaculus.

Then my parents bought a VCR and with it came the discovery of direct to video B-movies.  Surf Nazi’s Must Die! The Toxic Avenger! Red Eye! anything that had a whacked out cover and insanity on magnetic tape straddling two black plastic reels.  Way back then, it was our version of movies on demand.  As long as I could convince my parents (or more likely a friend’s parent) to rent it, I could watch a B-movie almost at anytime.  And my best friend and I would hole up and watch the worst of the worst.

The day I discovered MST3K, I coined the phrase, “WTF”.  Words to express my joy were coming too slowly.  Only the swiftness of letters could convey my impressed surprise.  Here were people so passionate about B-movies, they made a living watching them.  Yes, they were making fun of them too, but really, you can’t go 8+ seasons over 2 networks and 2 hosts and not just absolutely love the material you’re working with.  Even in jest.

As I grew so did my love for B-movies.  I began seeing them as more than title confusion money grabs.  Or poor imitations of the real thing.  I started to see the risks one could take with a B-movie.  The genre splicing.  The ridiculous fun because no one really gave a fuck about it.  And a lot of people cut their teeth on with B-movies. It was a first rung of the Hollywood shoots and ladder game.  But mostly B-movies are the outsiders, the underdogs, the nerds of the Industry insider party.  And I get that.  B-movies are having fun being who they are and I love them for that.