Compleat Hepcat Hermit Guide To What Makes Movies Good: Part One

These are the facts as we know them. We hold these truths to be completely idiosyncratic and based on personal preference.

Hepcat Hermits dig movies. What's more, most of the movies we dig, many of them, are what are referred to often as B Movies. B Movies are our A Movies. It is a fine appellation as it denotes a certain type of film, and for clarity's sake we appropriate it.

What seems a little more absurd is that often the movies we like are referred to as bad movies. This seems strange as we enjoy the movies. To call something that is enjoyed bad is a little odd.

This then is a guide to what factors are in a movie that make it good, at least to a student of the Dementia Way. Bear in mind a movie does not need to contain all these factors but often a combination of several is favoured. It usually takes some indefinable X Factor added by the creators to really make a Hepcat Hermit Classic, such as a Spider Baby or a Faster Pussycat...Kill! Kill! This quality is hard to define, but it exists somewhere in the realms of unbridled enthusiasm and charming naivete. However, any movie with a few of these elements will usually be enjoyable. So on with the list:

• Gorillas, preferably portrayed by people in gorilla costumes
• Burlesque dancing
• Robots, not too expensive looking, electronic voices preferred
  
• Go-Go dancing
• Mad scientists
• People who turn into monsters
  
• Laboratories
• Hallucinations and trippy dream sequences
  
• "Legit" actors playing a B role (ie Ray Milland in The Thing With Two Heads)
• Boris Karloff
• Vintage Vernacular (ie "dig")
• Bikinis
• Beefy, bulky, pre 1970's muscle men, probably with wavy hair, shiny skin, glittering teeth, and some sort of animal print garment.
• Talking brains in a jar, usually with a German accent.
  
• Nazis as villains or laughingstock, or both, post WWII (since if it's during WWII, that makes it simply a war movie)
• Horrible yet somehow hilarious deaths (dig these)
  
• Hot rod racing
• Midgets
• Torture chambers
• Tribal dances and rituals, generally involving hypnotic drumming, possibly snakes
  
• Bizarre camera angles, inexplicable close-ups and zooms
• Process shots (ie for surfing, driving, skiing)
• Inane rants and stern moralistic lectures (ie Scum of the Earth's celebrated "All you kids make me sick" tirade)
• Houses and castles that either are haunted, are supposed to be haunted, or at least look haunted
  
• Trap doors and secret passage ways in same
  
• Fad dances (ie the monkey, the twist)
• Fad dances while a rock band plays
• Overdubbing, for a foreign film, preferable to subtitles, which distract from the visuals, are less hilarious, and, contrary to popular opinion, are no more "accurate"
  
• Secret Agents, spies, agencies with acronyms for names
• Model sets
• Rampages of some kind, usually destroying model sets
• Inconclusive endings (see Monsters Crash the Pajama Party)

end of part one...

MORE TO COME