Cru Jones Society

There is an endless supply of terrible movies. Most can be easily avoided by judging them by their cover, synopsis, or trailer. Sometimes these things are deceiving and it takes you about 20 minutes to realize it sucks and stop watching. Sometimes situations arise where you’re stuck watching the entire train wreck from movie studio logo to the end credits.

This week’s responses to the Question of the Week, which we will be henceforth know as Monday Confessional, covers the worst movies we have sat all the way through and why we had to sit all the way through them. Read on and heed the advice of you fellow CJS readers lest you make the same mistake.

Senor Limon: There are many honorable mentions when it comes to terrible movies, but when it comes down to it, most of the truly bad movies I’ve seen I either gave up on, or at the very least had someone else nearby to go all MST3K with and at least make the movie bearable that way. That said, I’m left with movies that I’ve seen in the theaters, where common decency prevents me from making fun of the movie out loud, and the ever escalating price of admission makes me unlikely to walk out.

My Choice: Cold Creek Manor. I went and saw this one afternoon with a couple friends on a whim. I didn’t know much about the movie, and wasn’t particularly interested in seeing it, but I also didn’t have any negative preconceptions going in. Unfortunately for me this movie sucked hardcore without the aid of my preconceived notions. Cold Creek Manor centers around a young couple who move into an old house with a sinister past in a small town where the grocery store doubles as the town bar. It isn’t long before the house’s former owner played by Stephen Dorff shows up and starts being creepy. Short of wearing a large neon sign around his neck that flashes the words “Psycho Killer” over and over again, I’m not sure what else this movie could possibly do to alleviate any mystery or suspense about who the killer might be.

This movie sucked to the point that I may have entertained the notion of walking out despite the price of admission, but I held hope that the mysterious person terrorizing the young and annoying couple wouldn’t, in fact be Stephen Dorff who is hanging around for no particular reason, and who was fondling the pig slaughtering instruments so lovingly early on in the movie, but in fact some other person in a bizarre and movie-saving plot twist. Although, I have no idea who it may have been, since there are only like 4 characters with more than one line in the entire movie. One of them being Juliette Lewis who should by all accounts have been left out of the movie entirely.

The movie ends after the killer gets killed by the hero, and the credits roll to puffy faced Juliette Lewis, leaving flowers and weeping over the grave of her departed psycho killer boyfriend despite the fact that earlier in the movie he brutally murdered her paraplegic sister and quite recently beat the shit out of her in a dispute arising from an incident surrounding a half gallon of milk.

This movie was a stupid piece of shit.

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E Dagger: Part of me is tempted to say Trainspotting because I was in high school and trying to get laid while watching this. And not only was the vacuous bitch I was trying to diddle annoying the piss out of me and my buddy who was trying to nail her friend, but watching a guy climb out of a toilet and spit diarrhea all over the floor is probably the worst aphrodisiac ever. I’ve since seen this movie again, and it’s actually pretty good, so it gets a pass.

I had fantasies of making like Eminem and murdering my girlfriend (this was pre-Lady E) when she forced me to sit through Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood on her birthday, and I was trapped on a 25-hour bus ride while the utterly reprehensible Patch Adams was playing, but the winner of this award has to be Mrs. Winterbourne starring that paragon of modern cinema, Ricki Lake.

I was 14 when this movie came out and the girl I was dating didn’t want to see Primal Fear, The Quest and whatever the hell else was playing at our shitty small town 4-plex, so we had to see this piece of crap where she promised I could touch her boob during the movie. Alas, there were too many people in there where she became self-conscious and withdrew the offer. So I sat and watched this syrupy, god-awful mistaken identity While You Were Sleeping rip-off and wanted to claw my own skin off. It’s fucking terrible on just about every level imaginable and Brendan Fraser should make Encino Man 2 to apologize to me for having to think about this goddamn movie again. The night was only saved by my going home and watching softcore porn on Cinemax, although the girl broke up with me about a week later probably due in no small part to me shitting on the film the whole way through. That, and she got into meth.

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Lee S. Hart: You, Me, and Dupree. This movie is much like Meet the Parents, I had a hard time feeling any sympathy, or well feeling anything towards Matt Dillion’s character. He was never established and it was a shitty plot all together. Owen Wilson is supposed to be Matt Dillion’s best friend, yet he does things that I would hope none of my friends would do, let alone my best friend. Dupree is a dick.

I watched this whole movie for the same reason I do a lot of things, for a girl. It was our second date and she picked it. She turned out to be a bitch. So I don’t know if the movie is really as bad as I remember or if I have come to associate it with her and therefore it sucks by association.

I was almost sucked into watching another bad movie in the same way. An ex wanted me to watch Harry [Butthole Pussy] Potter with her. I proceeded to comment and make fun of the movie so much that she shut it off after 15 minutes. Disaster avoided!

Well there are several movies that could have had their own Things We Hate post. Now let’s find out what movies you all were subjected to sit through.

Dagger and Hart are not the only ones watching crap because a girl is involved

Deuce: Message in a Bottle. I have seen more than my fair share of romantic dramas. But this one was by far the most cliché and the least entertaining, ever. I had to endure the entire movie because I was seeing it while on a date on Valentine’s Day. I may have hated that movie, but I wasn’t going to walk out on a date with a nice girl.

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Sometimes we make mistakes by the cast list, or the director, or the cover. And sometimes we think Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott will be really funny together.

Dollar: Elizabethtown, which I usually refer to as “two hours of my life that I will never get back.”  I kept watching because I was convinced it HAD to get better and be at least a decent movie.  It’s written and directed by Cameron Crowe, the man behind both Almost Famous and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  It stars Kirsten Dunst, Orlando Bloom, Susan Sarandon, and Alec Baldwin.  I love those guys!  It’s about going home to your whacked out southern family, and how it ends up feeling so much more like home than you expected, something I know a thing or two about.  The soundtrack is awesome and was handpicked by Crowe.  How could a movie with this much going for it be THAT BAD?  I don’t know, but it was, and then some.

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Jitterrawks: The worst movie I ever sat through was called Whatever.  It was freshman year, and my turn to pick a movie from the rental place.  I took a chance…the cover made it seem cool…in a time of just say no, they said yes.  It wasn’t that.  It was like a Groundhog Day without the humor or any likeable characters.  It involved some asshat teens waking up, skipping school, drinking, lying, then starting all over again.  We actually left the room at one point to have a cigarette, only to come back to a girl with a black eye.  We thought there had been some action, but no.  We suffered through the 112 minutes hoping it would get better.  It didn’t.  I lost video rental privileges for two months due to that one.

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Ferris: I sat through Doom Generation. I saw it when I was in high school at the time it was really disturbing. Looking back I think it was probably pretty funny it had Rose McGowan, Parker Posey and that dude that used to be married to Christina Applegate, Jonathan Schaech. At the time I think I was too stunned to leave also I didn’t drive and we saw the movie at the Mayan it would have been a long walk back to Aurora.

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Conor: Dude Where’s My Car

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Then sometimes you try to salvage your hard earn money hoping that it’ll get better or you don’t want to ditch your friend.

Brad: I sat all the way through House of the Dead in the theater just because I wanted squeeze what little value there was left from that shitty movie in return for my wasted money, which I spent with full warning of how terrible it would be. Luckily, I was more discerning of the sequel. Yes, some asshole thought a sequel was warranted.

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Keithage: The Day After Tomorrow. Having a pretty good idea this wasn’t going to be good; Dagger and I pounded several beers until we were nice and drunk. The movie was so awful that I wanted to leave, but Dagger had fallen asleep so I was stuck there. Two god-awful hours later I woke him up and left the theater in anger. Thanks, ass!

This is quite the list of crappy movies. When these movies make it to television they’ll only be found late at night or on Sunday mornings. Much like infomercials. But infomercials are more entertaining and a hell of a lot more tempting. Just think about how alluring a set of Ginzu steak knives have appeared during a channel surfing bout of insomnia, or the promise of flat abs by doing nothing more than strapping on a belt of electrodes. There’s a lot of them out there so for the next Monday Confessional answer this: What current infomercial product are you most tempted to buy (or maybe you bought it) and why? Maybe you want the Shoes Under to store you collection of shoes, or maybe you ordered the Snuggie to keep your arms free while you keep yourself warm. Whatever it is we want to hear about it. Send your response to staff@crujonessociety.com . We promise we’ll post it, and if the product sounds cool we might ask to borrow it.

Hart, Limon, and Dagger

staff@crujonessociety.com