The Good, The Bad, The Weird of NHOIT part 1 - The Bad

It’s been such a journey these 185+ episodes of The Never Heard Of It Podcast. We started this podcast to talk about bad movies. We quickly learned that not all the movies we watched were bad though! Some were just hidden gems buried in a sea of garbage. There are a lot of very talented filmmakers out there making movies on shoestring budgets. Some have nice shoestrings, some velcro, but either way, their films should be seen! Of course, once you put your art out there it’s open for criticism and that’s where we come in.

We’ve decided to write up our top 5 best and top 5 worst movies we’ve ever watched for the show. All are in no particular order, aside from the order in which we remembered them.

Let’s start with the worst, because why not? Be sure to check out our next post about the top 5 best movies we’ve watched!

1. Wolves (Ep. 134)

We unfortunately brought along our friend, Director and Writer Micah Azam Khan, for this terrible ride of a movie. In all fairness, on paper it didn't seem like this movie was going to be bad. It was written and directed by David Hayter, who wrote The Watchmen and X-Men 2 movie screenplays and starred Jason Momoa as a werewolf. Like, how can this be bad? Jason Momoa basically is a werewolf.

The official plot from IMDb: “A boy is trying to find out about his family history and stumbles upon a town of lycans.”

The biggest issue with this film is its insanely racist undertones. It reeked of “heritage” and “bloodline” tropes. And while these are often seen in lycanthropic films, this one paints it in more of a hierarchy and not a lineage way. There even is a scene showcasing a family tree which is right out of the “three letter assface club” playbook.

All that being said, removing the racist and misogynistic tropes (because they couldn’t just pick one atrocity) the story itself is wrought with plot holes and dead end sub plots. The inconsistency in the characters made no one interesting enough to care what happened to them.

This is a formal apology to Micah and an official invite to come back for a much better movie (we’ve heard Reign of Fire is your favorite).

2. Weedwolf (Ep. 137)

Why. Someone wrote this, multiple drafts (or more likely not), raised money, hired actors, crew, the whole deal. Edited it, put music and effects, screened it and was like “Yup, this is the one!”

Again, make your art, we encourage you all to do it. But Jesus Christ, at least TRY.

The official plot from IMDb: “In Weedwolf, the outrageous residents of small-town Normal, Texas, find their partying ways threatened by a mysterious werewolf who likes to eat stoners. All that stands in the way of total mayhem (or maybe the cause of it) is Grass County Sheriff Hardwood, his "gifted" man-scout son, Bumper, and his "illegal" deputy, Rodriguez. They'll find some help from Mary Jane, and her Uncle Junebug, the drunken talk show host and his nympho co-anchor, Indian wanna-be hippies, a survivalists, hot lesbian lovers, and the one-and-only "Willie", and even a Sasquatch.”

This is one of those movies that was designed to just be all over the place. Obviously, given the plot, it was made for stoners. However it lacks any sort of coherency that you’ve seen in some of the more notable stoner-type movies. Luckily I’ve blocked most of this movie out of my brain - honestly should’ve smoked a lot of weed just to forget the rest. The biggest thing I remember from this movie is that it just wasn’t fun. It teetered from unintelligent and weak humor to poor attempts at shock humor.

3. An American Carol (Aired July 1st, 2018)

This is another one of those films that seems like it’d be great on paper. This brings back the duo of David Zucker and Leslie Nielsen (Airplane, Naked Gun films) and adds in a Kelsey Grammar for good measure. Ordinarily, we tend to steer away from politically charged films. We thought this was going to be schlocky “patriotic” fun. Instead, it was straight right-wing propaganda in disguise.

The official plot from IMDb: “An anti-American filmmaker who's out to abolish the July Fourth holiday is visited by three ghosts who try to change his perception of the country.”

This whole film is filled with absurd parodies of all sorts of figures, including a Michael Moore-esque filmmaker who is described as “anti-American”. We had hoped this would be a little more on the Naked Gun or Airplane side being heavy on the satire but instead it went full on CPAC leaflet. The most disappointing part, aside from the propaganda, was the cast of great comedic actors stumbling through poorly written shots at anyone not full on GOP. Look, I’m all for making fun of everyone, but you have to at least be clever about it and point out real things. All in all this was just gross. I felt bad for Leslie Nielsen and Kelsey Grammar. Also note this starred Chris Farley’s brother, Kevin Farley, which also sad he didn’t inherit his brothers comedic timing or humor sense.

4. This Is Not A Movie (Aired January 13th, 2019)

Not to be confused with the biopic This Is Not A Movie about the acclaimed foreign correspondent and author Robert Fisk. No, no. Why would we watch THAT movie? Nah, instead we watched this absolutely insane acid trip of a movie starring Edward Furlong (Terminator 2) and scored by Slash (yeah, that Slash).

We went into this movie knowing full well it was going to be quite the trip, and be more of an experimental art piece and less of a standard story. But man, we didn’t expect it to be as interpretive as it was. Jammed full of vague imagery and over the top metaphors (what they were metaphors for is not entirely made apparent). We still aren’t exactly sure what this movie was about. It had some moments of the idea of a man obsessed with pop-culture with paranoid delusions, but what exactly he was paranoid of was still kept up in the air, sometimes literally. Quick cuts to very odd and seemingly unrelated parody commercials or interstitials made this film even more of a mess to keep track of what was happening or how we should feel. It felt like there should’ve been some form of social commentary, but it was so frantic it’s hard to truly figure out what that exactly was.

The official plot from IMDb: “Twisted, apocalyptic satire, THIS IS NOT A MOVIE envisions the end of the world through the bi-polar mind of a strung-out pop-culture addict. Starring Edward Furlong and Peter Coyote, with a jagged, atmospheric score from Slash.”

5. Sexsquatch (Aired June 24th, 2018)

Yeah.

The official plot from IMDb: ”A group of friends having a "deflowering" party for their friend are being stalked by a horny Sexsquatch named Stink Fist and his sidekick that smells of marmalade.”

Right off the bat if you are at all squeamish or prudish this is NOT the film for you. If you dig random ska breaks, you might be ok with this one. What sexsquatch offers is a mess of shock and shlock akin to some of the more underground Troma films. Namely, what IMDb leaves out is Sexsquatch kills these people by anally raping them. The characters are full on over the top parodies of hicks. Trucker hats and incest in all. While the plot follows that of any typical slasher the characters are so grotesque it becomes hard to watch. This film was definitely made to be a “bad movie”. They knew exactly what it was they were after. And while the comedy was immature, a mix of young and unrefined, the makers definitely looked like they were having fun. At least someone was while being around this film.

DISCLAIMER: We attempted to do a watch-along with this film, but it failed. So the episode for this is merely us talking about how to do that watch-along.

Want more of the worst films we’ve ever reviewed? Check out this collection below! It will be updated as we explore the world of streaming movies!

Michael Fight is the host of Never Heard Of It and The Storyteller Series. You can also follow him Twitter.

Third Shift - the Night Shift Media blog