Land of Oz

Movies - B

By the B, I mean type of movies, not part B following my earlier entry. I tend to enjoy watching a lot of B movies. I’ve heard that B stands for babes, blondes. boobs and blood. I love the first three, and try to stay away from the last. It’s not only B movies. There’s a fine line in B movies that are bad and those that are really bad. A B movie can be so bad, it’s good, which can be the best ones to watch. What really ruins a B movie is when the makers of it don’t realize they’re making a B movie and they’re producing a real film. Those can be pretty pathetic. I don’t care for the gross slasher type flicks. I usually won’t even bother watching one of those. I also don’t like the B movies that think they’re still making a X movie. I like nudity, but not the crotch-spreading blatant stuff. Some of them have really good titles as well. One of my favorites is Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama - how can you help but not like a movie with that name?

Don’t get the idea that I only like trashy B stuff though. Right now I’m going through a Chinese Kung Fu movie phase. I love the period pieces that take place pre—20th century. Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li, Chingmy Yau, Bridgette Lin, Andy Leoh and Donnnie Yen are a few of my favorites. By the way, because these movies are done in Mandarin and Cantonese and then translated to English, not only the movie titles, but the cast names can vary wildly. I just finished Wing Chun with Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen – one of my very favorites.

U.S. movies from the 1930s and early 40s rank among some of the best. The gangster films with Cagney and Robinson, the Thin Man series with Myrna Loy and William Powell (at least until the censors sobered them up). Try My Man Godfrey or Arsenic and Old Lace for enduring comedy. One the other hand, I have yet to watch Gone With The Wind.

2fers: The Public Enemy and Michelle Bauer