150 Movies You Should Die Before You See

by Steve Miller

Sure, you've seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Maybe you've even sat all the way through Satan's Little Helper and The Wasp Woman. But as you'll find out in this shockingly tasteless collection of great awful movies, there's so much more to the world of truly bad film. Dive right into the steaming swamp of such disastrously delicious movies as: Zombies on Broadway Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory Nudist Colony of the Dead Killer Klowns from Outer Space Cannibal Holocaust Return to Horror High Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter For each movie, film buff and reviewer Steve Miller includes a list of principal cast, director, and producer, a plot overview, why the movie sucked, a rating, choice quotes, interesting trivia, and a quiz.

If you've ever enjoyed awful movies, this is the book to have next to you on the couch, along with the popcorn, as the opening credits flash on the screen for Rockabilly Vampire in a double bill with Satanic Yuppies.

Genres: Film, Humor, Nonfiction, Media Tie In

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 6, 2010

About the author

From 1995 to 1999, Steve worked on Dragonlance meta-story direction and specific print products, along with Doug Niles, Harold Johnson, Stan!, Sue Cook and Miranda Horner. When Wizards of the Coast aquired TSR, the influential Dragonlance authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman once again took charge of Dragonlance story direction, and Steve soon moved onto other things.

Reviews

[Bobby]

This was a mostly very fun, interesting, and informative read. It's quite clear that Mr. Steve Miller really does love bad films, and the research put in is exhaustive. However, there are times were he sees a film with films, and claims it to be bad, as opposed to simply being flawed, which was a tad frustrating for me.

[Jillian]

I take issue with the statement the author writes in the introduction: “We, the lovers of bad movies, dig through piles of trash, looking for those shining gems of pure cinematic magic. We prefer that quest over the blandness and uniformity of the ‘good movie.’” No we don’t. I love bad movies as much as the next Tom Servo, but I also love good movies, as do many bad movie lovers. We love movies in general.

Content-wise, I thought the book was cursory, talked way too much about boobs, and used the word “retarded” more times than appropriate for a book published in 2010. I did glean a few titles for my to-watch list, though.

[Artur Coelho]

Confesso que gosto deste tipo de livros por a) me pouparem o visionamento de obras sofríveis mas por isso divertidas, b) serem escritos num tom jocoso que arranca sempre um sorriso inesperado. Esta obra não escapa a esta regras. Apresenta cento e cinquenta dos discutíveis piores filmes de sempre - uma classificação que depende de gostos, é certo, mas há obras perfeitamente inenarráveis que até têm estatuto de cinema comercial. Miller é particularmente agressivo com argumentos incoerentes e desempenhos de envergonhar os piores amadores, embora muitas vezes o absurdo está logo na premissa do filme. É com alguma pena que noto que boa parte dos maus filmes são de terror, mas isso talvez se deva ao carácter de curiosidade. Um mau filme de terror tem sempre algo de divertido. Um mau filme de outro género... é que nem há paciência para ver mais do que uns minutos. Essencialmente, estes são filmes que nos levam a pensar em como é que alguém os escreveu, produziu, filmou e desempenhou papeis em tão grandes monumentos de incompetência, se bem que isto seja característica comum a boa parte da cultura popular comercial (liguem a rádio ou a televisão e têm mais exemplos deste algoritmo cultural). É daquelas coisas que deixam o mais comum dos mortais estonteado pela falta de capacidade cerebral.

[Amy]

This book is an enjoyable quick read, as long as you don't take it too seriously. He includes a lot of horror and sci-fi films, some deserved (like "Hobgoblins" and "Battlefield Earth") and some not so much ("Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Re-Animator"). But this is all opinion, and for one entire chapter he blast some fantastic films simply because they are supposed adaptations of literature but stray too far from the source material (such as the fantastic Karloff and Lugosi "The Black Cat").

I do wish Miller had spent a little more time on each film. The synopsis and the "Why It Sucks" sections were very short, which is fine if you've seen the films but may not capture the true suckitude of a film you've never seen. This can lead the reader to think, "Oh, it can't be that bad" and cause him to actually watch the film and then spend his life regretting that he can never get that 90 minutes back ("Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter" anyone?).

The only thing that really bugged me was Miller's apparent ethnocentrism. At various points he goes off about hopping vampires (the hopping ghost is a staple of Chinese mythology) and the very Gaelic name "Una." He also refers to Val Lewton's masterpiece "I Walked with a Zombie" by pointing out nobody has ever seen it. Sorry, Steve, but just because you've never heard of these things doesn't mean they are stupid.

[Emmy]

This was an excellent collection of some truly horrible movies! There were several on the list that I really wanted to see, but plenty more that I know I will never bother to look up (either because they're too graphic or too stupid). Miller did a wonderful job compiling this selection, and I appreciated the trivia, the cheesy quotes from each film, and the reasoning behind his selections. It was clear that this was a labor of love (or at the very least, a labor!) and I enjoyed this book very much.

Still, I was surprised to see some of my favorites included here, such as The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

[Andrey Sudarikov]

This was a very enjoyable read. It is fast, spontaneous, a little bit over the top. The movies featured in the book are not only the unknown shelf-bound exhibits, but quite a few rather famous ones. Author's style is very agile and bright. And the best thing is - you can open the book on any page and it'll work!

[Ale...]

The only good thing i found in this book is the title.
It mixes in his cauldron horrible movies with classics or cult movies and it's full of errors: Coppola directed a Frankenstein movie in 1994?!? H.P. Lovecraft create the Arkham Asylum? and so on...

[Glen Hannah]

Amusing, fun read for lovers or bad movies or those who just like to read about them. Read if you liked Golden Turkey Awards or Roger Ebert books like Your Movie Sucks & I Hated Hated Hated your movie.

[dave]

took me about 3 hours to get through. it had some good entries, though i was saddened to see kung fu hustle in there, i love that movie. over all tho it was a fun read, kinda sad how many of these movies ive seen.

[Julia]

This is hilarious! And awful. There are movies out there... Man.
Did you know there's a movie called "Monsturd". About A LIVING TURD THAT KILLS PEOPLE! I can't get over that one.

[Fakher]

makes you want to watch awful movies

[Ashleigh]

Second time reading it. Loved it both times.

[Nick]

Entertaining read for the most part as a reference to bad movies. At times the book was a bit boring. But overall I would recommend it if you are a horror movie fan.