A while back someone suggested the first “Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles” for Eric’s Bad Movies, and I thought, “Didn’t I already do that one? I distinctly remember doing that one.” But I looked through the EBM archives and found no sign of it. Turns out what I had written was a “review,” but it was one of those “reviews” that was really more like an Eric’s Bad Movies column.
Then I remembered that I did a whole batch of those “reviews” of bad movies several years ago. It’s when I was writing for eFilmCritic, and we had a contest among the critics to see who could write the best review, as judged by our readers. We had to choose from a pre-selected list of films, and I went for the ones I knew would be terrible, since those were most likely to yield reviews that would entertain the readers. I don’t remember the outcome of the contest — it was done as a tournament — but I remember making it to the finals, at least.
Here are the reviews I wrote at that time. They’re all precursors to Eric’s Bad Movies and could be considered honorary entries in the EBM canon.
“Child’s Play”
“Cop and a Half”
“Krippendorf’s Tribe”
“Mortal Kombat”
“Richie Rich”
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”
It was around the same time that I took it upon myself to watch and review all of the “Friday the 13th” and “Halloween” movies. My friend Smacky assisted me in this. It became a tradition for us. When a new “Friday the 13th” movie came out in 2002, we had just finished watching the previous ones and were able to see it together. A year later, when “Freddy vs. Jason” was released, we went to EXTRAORDINARY lengths to make sure Smacky could attend the press screening with me. It was unthinkable that I should watch a “Friday the 13th” or “Halloween” film without him.
Here are those reviews. Like the others, they tend toward the funny and less toward the fair review-style appraisal.
“Halloween”
“Halloween II”
“Halloween III: Season of the Witch”
“Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers”
“Halloween 5”
“Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers”
“Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”
“Friday the 13th”
“Friday the 13th Part 2”
“Friday the 13th Part III”
“Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter”
“Friday the 13th: A New Beginning”
“Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI”
“Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood”
“Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan”
“Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday”
(P.S. We talked about doing the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, too, but then we got busy with other things, and I moved away, and he got married, and you know how it goes.)
