I have a Confession

I’ve had company for a couple of days, and am hurting for recent blog fodder. I updated the signature line in my email form, and that isn’t enough to carry a blog post. People who I exchange email with will get easy access to my Amazon author page and my blog.

So my confession is…I watch bad movies on purpose. You know the kind, they’re on the SyFy channel every weekend. I enjoy laughing at how bad they are. I also enjoy finding the story and plot errors in them.

If nothing else, they may help me avoid some of the common things these movies do wrong when I write my own stories. The one tonight had characters I didn’t particularly care for making absurd decisions that served the plot, but not the character.

Two people, a child and a blind babysitter, left the safety of a secure house to run into a cornfield when the killer wasps showed up. It was the BLIND babysitter’s idea. The only exterminator in town blows up his vehicle full of pesticide (on purpose) to stop a small swarm of killer wasps. Never-mind that it had decent extermination equipment in it, or that it was their only ride out of town. Makes me wonder why they didn’t just drive away and let the authorities deal with it.

The little girl winds up eating a magic peach that makes her become the wasp queen. (The peach was injected with something that bothered the wasps.) She didn’t turn into a wasp. She didn’t gain control of the wasps. It didn’t do anything except make her attractive to the wasps. (Major letdown. A queen ought to be good for something.) The wasps sealed her in a hive and apparently had no more use for her. (Okay, the wasp zombies took her to the hive. Yeah, the wasps made zombies out of the people they attacked.) In other words, instant victim, just add water. (Or peach juice as the case may be.) Heroes always come across better if there is a victim to rescue.

There was a mad scientist character behind all this. Robert Englund, of Freddie Krueger fame, got this job. The government forced him to make military grade wasps. Turns out he wasn’t sicking the wasps on the town. He was trying to find a way to get rid of the wasps.

When it came time to rescue the little girl, Robert Englund simply walked up without obstruction, tore open the hive, and pulled her out. (Without his fancy fingernails.) What a letdown. That’s it. Of course the government showed up and shot him whilst blowing the wasp nest to hell with helicopters.

Most of these movies have one good idea behind them. Military grade wasps as a biological weapon is a decent idea. They’d be more useful as a weapon without the zombie residue. If someone had spent a little time on it, there could have been a decent story here.

I like to laugh at how bad some of these movies really are. I also think there’s a value in learning what not to do. Does anyone else watch these things? They must, or they wouldn’t keep airing them.

Bring on Sharknado II.