The Turkish Diplomatswas born when a group of friends found that if they pooled their money together, they could afford a case of beer, a bag of day-old potato logs, and any movie on the $0.49 shelf of their local Jr. Food Mart. The movies were so bad they were good, or we were so drunk they were good. After a time, we started to search out these bad films. Each member in out happy group of friends trying to present a movie even worse than the last, looking for the ultimate bad movie. What we do? We are still on that quest today.
A big dynamic of The Turkish Diplomats is that we all have to agree after watching the subject film (or sometimes five minutes into watching it) that it transcends bad and slides headfirst into godawful.
No one involved in the production can escape blame. The scriptwriters, actors, producers, gaffers, grips, PA’s, AD’s, accountants, and anyone else working on these pictures are guilty of the sin of allowing the shooting to continue.
To qualify, the movie should be so bad that it is compelling to watch. The three of us, and whomever we wrangle into these torture sessions, stare at the poorly arranged images onscreen, unable to turn away, much like six-year-olds staring at a newly formed scab. Yes, it may be ugly and incomprehensible, but we see accidental beauty in amazing failure.
1. The film must be devoid of coolness and charm, except the coolness and charm due to its being so godawful.
2. It should inspire some sense of anger in normal people, the kind of anger that can only be deadened by alcohol.
3. It should be cast with people who clearly are not professional actors. At least some of the cast must be such bad actors that the question is raised as to whether they have ever seen a film.
4. All special effects should be laughable. It isn’t enough to merely use a string to lift the rocket…you should be able to see that the SFX person was too lazy to cut away the excess.
5. All aspects of the production should appear to be done by amateurs. It should arouse the belief that cameras and lights were handed to chimpanzees hopped up on Mountain Dew.
6. If the producers try to show a moral to the film, it should benefit no one. If anything, you might be a worse person for having watched it.
7. There must be moments in the movie that are so bad that the video must be stopped and rewound to confirm how bad the scene was. In some cases, no amount of review will relieve the disbelief.
8. At the end of the movie, the viewer should feel emotionally damaged. The way to measure that damage is to see how long it takes the viewer to look at a clock or watch to determine how much of their life was just wasted.
My choices are: Torture Dungeon, Monster-a-Go-Go, Vampire Cavemen of the Lost Planet I have always differed with you and Calvin, in that I felt “Monster-a- Go-Go” is actually worse than “Torture Dungeon.” At least flubbed lines and entire scenes were not IMMEDIATELY REPEATED ON FILM without edits. However, I think it did achieve sentimental favorite among us. We have all felt perversely proud of finding that piece of crap.