From: chil@fraser.sfu.ca (Keith Lim)
Subject: Re: Most Embarassing Movie
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 05:45:19 GMT

First off, Top Secret, Prospero's Books, Hardware, The People Under The
Stairs, Spaceballs, and Batman Returns are all movies that I enjoyed very
much, and would happily see again.

Now, some embarrassing movies.

Jaws IV. I read the book before I saw the movie, and I *still* thought
the movie stunk. The book, believe it or not, is *worse* than the movie.

Crawlspace. Klaus Kinski as a landlord who rents out a house to nubile
young girls. The *whole* movie is about him planning, and setting out,
various traps around the house, then crawling about between the walls
(the crawlspace of the title), picking off his prey one by one in
picturesque ways. This is a movie that can't decide whether it wants to
be a slasher, a vanilla horror, a suspense drama, or a lush piece of
surrealism; it tries to be all and fails on all counts.

Some others that I did not see in a move theatre (or, if I did, I
did not pay to see them) but which I would be embarrassed had I done so.

Little Shop of Horrors (with Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, etc.)
Wild Orchid
Father of the Bride (with Steve Martin)
Spiderman
Supergirl
Only the Lonely (with John Candy)
...there's a story that goes with this one.

I saw this one in a theatre all right, but I didn't pay for it, so it
doesn't really count, but anyway... (Actually I did pay for it, just not
at the door. It was showing at SFU's Student Society-run cinema, which
is subsidised to the tune of approx. $3.25/student/semester, taken out
of the mandatory Activity Fee...but I digress.)

The movie was showing on February 13--one day before Valentine's Day, so
(of course) all the movies scheduled for that weekend were of the mushy,
gushy variety. I wasn't intending to see any of them, but that Friday,
I happened to have been asked by a lovely young lady if I wanted to see
the movie with her. She was bored. So was I. Hey, we figured, a John
Candy movie can't be *that* bad, can it.

Wrong.

The two of use were moaning throughout (at the badness of the movie, for
all you smart-alecks.) At other times, she laughed out loud at particularly
bad lines. I didn't laugh; my reaction at those times was to choke. Anyway,
after enduring about an hour, my companion asked if I wanted to leave,
because she certainly did. I felt like leaving too, but--in the hope that
the movie would improve--said no.

Bad choice.

It didn't get better. Then suddenly, there was a plot twist, which seemed
to bring the story to a natural, if somewhat surprising, close. Oh good,
we said to each other, it's finally ending.

--Not!

The twist turned out to be a cliched, tacked-on crisis, which, as the
film dragged its dreary way forward, was overcome by the characters, in
the (we should have guessed) inevitable "love-overcomes-insurmountable-
odds" fashion that eventually--eventually--led to the now-very-predictable
ending: "...and they lived happily ever after."

We left the theatre.

She apologised for asking me along to the movie.

I apologised for not leaving when she asked me to.

Then I asked her if she'd like to go for a walk with me. She turned down
the invitation; the mood wasn't right. I had to agree.

So we went back home, made ourselves dinner, etc., and to this day, have
never mentioned the movie in all our subsequent hours of conversation. I
had all but forgotten it...
...until now. (Sigh.)

And I do apologise for this core dump, but it feels good to get it off
my chest. 

-- 
Keith_Lim@sfu.ca   Simon Fraser University, Burnaby B.C., V5A 1S6, Canada
Forum (Cog Sci); Senate; CDSU; ASC. ...but all opinions are my own only.

"Adults lie because they've built entire lives on sham and illusion,
 which they try to maintain by kidding themselves and everyone around them."
                                             --Matt Groening, "Life in Hell"