Is awful sci-fi good?

Cheesy sci-fi movies. Why do we love them so much? Perhaps the best theory is advanced by The Book of the Subgenius, a contemporary Bible for pop-culture worshippers: "Each bad film gives us ... a single auteur ... struggling to get his vision of reality, however warped, to the screen unfettered by 'rational plotting' or 'convincing acting' or 'the making of sense,'... Beneath the thin veil of the plot the director's neuroses and all-too-human quirks are blatanlly obvious."

This is a valid point. In this age of slick, high-gloss splatter-fests at the local cinema, or bland romantic comedies, it is nice to see a film that looks like a human made it rather than a marketing committee. Personally, I like my edges rough; I like my backdrops rippling; I like my boom mikes obvious. If there are cliches, I want them delivered as woodenly as possible. I like actors with only two settings: stiff and lifeless, or excessive and melodramatic.

Bad films tap into some post-modern ironic need, to throw comments at the screen and make other people laugh. The institutionalization of this practice came with Mystery Science Theater 3000. MST3K somehow found the worst sci-fi films ever and gleefully skewered them. We like these movies because they make us feel superior. We laugh precisely because we feel we could do better than the director.

Then there is the moment in every MST3K episode, as in every bad film, where no comment is necessary. This is the pure moment of cheese. Think of the dwarves in Legend regarding the heroine and declaring, "She's so sweet, I could eat her brains like jam!" and almost anything Torgo does in Manos, the Hands of Fate.

In this regard, then, the epitome of a cheesy sci-fi film is the movie that wholeheartedly embraces its tackiness. By this criteria, Sam Ramis' Army of Darkness is the clear winner. Bruce Campbell alone is like a living parody and celebration of every rugged B-movie male actor, and you need not do anything but laugh when he starts shooting zombies with a shotgun attached to his arm. It's like Those Who Hunt Elves - Japanese anime at its finest - though without the nudity.

Army of Darkness works because Bruce Campbell is like the bad film director in The Book of the Subgenius: no matter what he does wrong, he does it with panache and gall. As Cambell said, "good... bad... I'm the guy with the gun." In its own way, making a bad sci-fi film is a lot like killing an army of skeletons. And when we as audience members do not want to watch that, you can call me a Martian. But please, keep Santa away from me.