It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of bad movies. Or at least, clearly it’s not a secret any more, not after typing the previous sentence. So I’m proud to say that this weekend, my friends and I attended (and voted in) the 27th Annual Razzie Awards.

I left sorely disappointed. You can get just as emotionally invested in rooting for a loser to lose than the more conventional form of “rooting.” But more about that later.

Bad movies, cinematic train-wrecks, from camp classics to curiosities of ineptitude, require a special kind of palate to appreciate. It can be trained, like a wine-taster’s palate, and through the fine efforts of my comrades in the Bunkdance Film Festival, I think I’ve become pretty good at identifying the fetid aromas and screeching top-notes of truly awful movies. So here’s a run-down of this year’s nominees for Worst Picture, all of which I’ve seen, and all of which are truly worth your time if you’re looking for something that is completely unworthy of your time:

BloodRayne: Take Ed Wood and remove the charm and some of the cinematic skills, and you’d have director Uwe Boll. He’s a specialist in bringing videogame franchises to the screen and leeching the drama and humanity from their original, computer-generated forms. “BloodRayne” is the story of a half-vampire vampire hunter. It makes absolutely no sense and it is almost completely unmemorable… except for a parade of mismatched accents and its villain, Sir Ben Kingsley, who peers out from underneath what appears to be a roadkill toupee (squirrel?) towards the wings, where I’d imagine he’s looking for the lady with his big bag of money.

To me, a good terrible movie has to be memorable, and “BloodRayne” has the same “mental Olestra” quality of 2005’s “Alone in the Dark.” Which was also directed by Boll and also based on a videogame. So though it may have been technically the worst movie of the year, it didn’t get my vote.

Little Man: When you base a feature film on a seven-minute cartoon, you’re just making things too easy on reviewers looking for a quick punchline or two. Remember Bugs Bunny and that baby-faced gangster who pretended to be a baby? That’s the plot of “Little Man.” The Wayans brothers add in a parade of excrement gags, dick jokes, and a singularly creepy central effect: Marlon Wayan’s face digitally superimposed on a little person’s body. The movie’s biggest surprise is how many times various characters get kicked, hit, batted, and buffeted in the balls. Honestly, it’s geniunely surprising, because you’re thinking, “Wow, they’ve already ’surprised’ us with a blow to the testicles 25 seconds ago, they can’t possibly be gearing up to do it again.” They are.

Awful, but somewhat conventionally awful. I didn’t really think about voting for it.

Lady in the Water: I wouldn’t have nominated this one. Oh, it’s not good, mind you. In fact, it’s utterly ridiculous. But like any movie by M. Night Shyamalan, it looks and sounds and feels great. Spooky and weird and oddly majestic. But this got nominated, I think, for the length of Shyamalan’s fall from “The Sixth Sense” to here. It was a long way down.

You have to give M. credit for making a film (partly) about how truly soulless and awful critics are and how their system stifles true genius… and then giving those critics something to truly tear apart. Also, when you cast yourself as the Jesus-like writer who’s destined to be slaughtered but only after writing something that changes the world… well, you’d better hope you have an airtight script and at least a little bit of acting ability. Or else people are going to laugh at you.

People laughed. Surprisingly, people didn’t laugh (publicly) at Paul Giamatti, the star. I suppose our massive general affection for Giamatti allows us to believe that he was Only Following Orders in collaborating on this particular atrocity.

Basic Instinct 2: Wow, this one’s bad.

If you’re looking for some readily recognizable unintentional humor, you can’t go wrong with this. Sharon Stone, now pushing 50, returns as the psychotic sexual thrill-seeking novelist Catherine Tramell. She’s crazy, manipulative, murderous, vampish, and irresistab- [car-tires-screeching sound effect.]

That’s the beauty of this movie (beyond the awful script and leaden directing): Sharon Stone vamps around in various states of undress, and the combination of age, make-up, slightly hunched shoulders, bizarrely asymmetrically breasts, and (one assumes) plastic surgery makes her… not just unappealing, but genuinely weird. Like if your grandmother killed a showgirl and then donned her skin (I don’t know why your grandmother would do that, but that’s not my business). Honestly, your eyes repeatedly focus and unfocus as you try to decide, for instance, whether you’re watching a predatory sexual slink with a hint of madness or a geriatric creep with the hint of a dowager’s hump. And it’s not just her physical attributes that shine unnaturally - her one-note breathy-and-evil performance and the glint of a completely different kind of vacant madness in her eyes make this a true treat.

The basic formula for any and every scene in “BI2″ is as follows: Someone (usually David Thewlis) accuses Sharon Stone of being an insane murderous seductress. Sharon sheds an article of clothing and creakily saunters towards the complainant, mouth open. She says something ever-so-subtly suggestive (usually something like “You really want to fuck me right now, don’t you?”). The man in question then either rebuffs or succumbs to her. Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you have a teenage girl who needs to be scared away from believing in all the Sexy Seductress stereotypes in movies, this is the movie for her.

But to me, by far, the most amazingly bad movie of the year was:

The Wicker Man -
Based on the 1973 classic, “The Wicker Man” enters that rare company of unintentional masterpieces. I don’t say that lightly. It is completely, sublimely hilarious, and it doesn’t mean to be. I cannot tell you how amazingly bad “The Wicker Man” is. But I’ll try. It’s a new classic of bad cinema, right up there with “Showgirls,” but for completely different reasons.

It’s sort of like three comedy sketches wrapped around each other. But the best? Remember the Jon Lovitz/Phil Hartman “Saturday Night Live” sketch with the clueless washed-up actor (”What’s the word on the street?”)? This is THAT, the story of a man who can’t see what he is clearly being told again and again. And it’s so much more.

Nicholas Cage chews the scenery as the worst cop in history, a guy who is simply unable to understand the creepy island he’s “investigating,” even though everyone pretty much TELLS him what’s going on. Honestly. He almost turns out to be too dumb to fall for the bludgeoningly obvious trap the cultists on this island are trying to lead him into. Almost.

And there’s a lot more fun along the way. For instance, at one point, Inspector Cage accidentally bumbles into a beehive and then, fleeing, tumbles down a mountain side. And it’s not supposed to be funny. Really. Clousseau-worthy, but meant to be a horror movie.

Did I mention that the creepy women on this island he’s investigated have set up a matriarchy structured like a beehive? And that they occasionally dress their little girls in bee costumes and farm honey and cut out their men-folk’s tongues and that Nicholas Cage doesn’t notice any of it? And that Cage’s character is also allergic to bees?

It’s true.

Eventually, after punching several women in the face, the screaming, frothing, flailing Inspector Cage believes he is infiltrating the bee-women’s pagan, honey-oriented sacrificial ceremony… by putting on a bear costume that has been conveniently left near him. And attending the ceremony…

I’ll say no more. By the time Cage put on the bear suit and headed off to the ceremony, all of us were literally howling with laughter, and it did not abate until the credits rolled. Just writing this makes me want to see it again.

—–

… and the Razzie went to… “Basic Instinct 2.” Cage didn’t even win Worst Actor.
The travesty here is that although Basic Instinct 2 is terrible, it cannot hold a candle to the literal conflagration that is “The Wicker Man.” Even in the theater, the night of the awards, it was clear that just about all of the cheering was for Wicker. My friends and I concluded that many of the voters, scattered around this great land of ours, simply didn’t do their homework this year, and voted without having watched Nicholas Cage’s triumphant performance. “BI2″ was the obvious, on-paper choice, I think.

See? Even anti-awards have real award show-type controversies.

After the ceremony, my friends and I groused outside for a bit. The results of said grousing can be found towards the end of this article.