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Post by mrsphyllistorgo on Apr 20, 2013 13:25:07 GMT -5
One of the best parts of any MST experiment is, of course, the myriad versions of terrible thespianism on display. Wooden, histrionic, accents fading in and out, the inability to change facial expression; they're all there!
But occasionally, a wonderful thing happens--the meeting of a certain type of bad acting and bad role, that explodes in a chemical reaction of perfection and emerges as a perfectly fitted symbiote. You absolutely can't imagine this particular part with any other actor, or this actor playing any other part.
My current favorite is the lovely and untalented Mary Smith from The Sinister Urge, played by Jeanne Willardson. Mary is supposed to be a naive actress who shows up in Hollywood with starry eyes and empty head, and is then lured into the world of the "smut picture racket." She is taken in by Johnny Ride, smut producer, ensnared with several generous "loans", and "forced" into making a dirty movie. She's then halfheartedly stabbed by local psycho Dirk and sinks slowly into a duck pond.
I don't know what desperate for a handout demon Ed Wood made a deal with to land Jeanne, but it paid off in spades. She is playing, to the tiniest degree, herself. She's sweet, awkward, and can't deliver a line like "Nice to meet you" in a remotely believable fashion. (You are thankful Ed met her before the real pornographers of Hollywood did--Jeanne would certainly have ended up in donkey show in Tiajuana without knowing what happened if he hadn't.) It truly feels like Ed just followed her around with a camera during a typical week of her life and then fashioned the rest of the film around it, a la the octopus footage in Bride of the Monster.
Who is your favorite so bad it's perfect actor, in which role? There's so many out there, don't be shy! As Gloria Henderson says, let's see those legs from your toes right up to your hat!
I memorized that thing from Hamelet!
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Post by Mr. Atari on Apr 20, 2013 14:46:36 GMT -5
Immediately upon reading the thread title I thought, "He didn't steal no bike, neither!"
I think John Allen "R"elson and Thom Christopher from Deathstalker fit the bill nicely. What a wonderful pairing of awful acting in awfully written roles for both the protagonist and antagonist.
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Post by Monophylos on Apr 20, 2013 16:01:55 GMT -5
My current favorite is the lovely and untalented Mary Smith from The Sinister Urge, played by Jeanne Willardson. Oh, a perfect choice from one of my favorite sequences in any MST3K movie because it's just a perfect storm of awful, mercilessly riffed. You're right, Willardson's total lack of visible talent fits the role perfectly, but equally important to the success of the whole sequence is the equally terrible performance of Carl Anthony as Johnny Ryde. I've said it before but I'll say it again: Anthony fascinates me. I'm not entirely convinced he's human; he acts more like a robot or alien with an imperfect mastery of human language, so-he-care-ful-ly-speaks-ev-er-y-syl-la-ble in a mechanical, staccato fashion. (Occasionally he even adds syllables that aren't there, as with his bizarre pronunciation of "Yeah" as "Yah-aw" in Plan 9.) As played by Anthony, Johnny Ryde couldn't be any less convincing--and as played by Willardson, only "Mary Smith" could be so dumb and gullible as to be taken in by Ryde's act. ("Sure, sure.") Hm. Perfect bad performance...I'm going to go with one that I think is somewhat overlooked and that's the performance of James Ryan as the traitorous McPherson in Space Mutiny. Everyone focuses on Reb Brown's shrill, screaming action hero antics and John Phillip Law's cackling bad guy, for good reason. But Ryan is quietly there, gritting his teeth with barely suppressed rage through every scene as if he's thirsting for vengeance against the entire world ("the law of the Universe, the law of the Galaxy!") It's a one-note performance without a shred of nuance and it's perfect. The edits made for the show removed some of McPherson's scenes, I know, which is too bad; he's entertaining. But what's left is enough: the guy is seriously pissed off at something and we really don't need to know what. (Not that the cut material really explains it either...) |
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Apr 20, 2013 22:12:29 GMT -5
...Hm. Perfect bad performance...I'm going to go with one that I think is somewhat overlooked and that's the performance of James Ryan as the traitorous McPherson in Space Mutiny. Everyone focuses on Reb Brown's shrill, screaming action hero antics and John Phillip Law's cackling bad guy, for good reason. But Ryan is quietly there, gritting his teeth with barely suppressed rage through every scene as if he's thirsting for vengeance against the entire world... Oh, man, yeah. RIght on, there. Reb Brown and John Phillip Law tear it up so bad that Ryan's stellar performance goes practically unnoticed. It's as if he's in need of a long stay in the Royal Hospital For Overacting, like in that old Monty Python sketch. I think Ryan's best scene is in the meeting room, where he skewers that one guy with his walking stick, and then starts snarling and hissing as he asks if there's anyone else who confuses freedom with treason, or whatever the hell he asks in that scene. You can almost hear the enamel cracking off his perpetually-grinding teeth, and the veins stand out in his neck so much you'd think that if he were any more tensed out he'd give himself an embolism or something. He doesn't just chew the scenery in that scene, but he spits it out in your face when he's done with it. Reb Brown's and John Phillip Law's interpretations of their respective roles are remarkably subtle and nuanced compared to James Ryan's bloodvessel-busting performance. |
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Apr 20, 2013 22:33:15 GMT -5
Well, since Reb Brown, John Phillip Law and James Ryan have already been raked over the coals here, the next one I can think of right offhand would be Ken Clark in Attack Of The Giant Leeches and 12 To The Moon. I can't think of any other "B" horror/sci-fi fixture who's so perfectly, sublimely wooden and stiff. The guy's obviously coasting on his looks, and the producer of every flick I've seen him in seemed entirely aware of it.
John Emery in Rocketship XM also springs to mind. As Crow puts it so beautifully, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting one of his lame speeches in that picture. It doesn't help that he plays his part as if his character's s*%t doesn't stink. Man, does he ever lay on the smarm. There are points in that flick where I just want to reach into the screen and smack him around.
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Post by Monophylos on Apr 22, 2013 20:23:46 GMT -5
Trying to think of bad actors whose bad performance was essential to the appeal of the movie, I suddenly remembered Aldo Farnese as Krasker in The Dead Talk Back. Everything about him looks and sounds so utterly phony: the Reed Richards hair that looks too big for his head, his nasal lecturing voice, his stiff and mannered performance, and of course all his silly equipment. Who better to lead us through one of the shaggiest of shaggy dog stories? It adds to the general weirdness of the whole movie that despite Krasker's ridiculousness and artificiality he's treated with deference by everybody, even the cops.
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Apr 23, 2013 15:36:23 GMT -5
Trying to think of bad actors whose bad performance was essential to the appeal of the movie, I suddenly remembered Aldo Farnese as Krasker in The Dead Talk Back. Everything about him looks and sounds so utterly phony: the Reed Richards hair that looks too big for his head, his nasal lecturing voice, his stiff and mannered performance, and of course all his silly equipment. Who better to lead us through one of the shaggiest of shaggy dog stories? It adds to the general weirdness of the whole movie that despite Krasker's ridiculousness and artificiality he's treated with deference by everybody, even the cops. I loved Nelson's riff in that one scene where Krasker is meeting with the detectives, and the chief detective mentions how long and well he's known Krasker, and Nelson retorts "...and not kneeing you in the groin is a constant struggle!" Pretty much summed up what I was thinking right then. |
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Apr 30, 2013 21:16:51 GMT -5
While it's not necessarily strictly within the MST3K "universe" -- except, perhaps, by reference -- I'd have to say that in terms of Bad Acting Meeting The Perfect Role, the gold standard has to be Gene Roddenberry's casting of William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. Yeah, sure, the guy was a glazed, smoke-cured ham, but the role of Kirk was pretty much made for him. To viewers in our era, he may appear to be the poster boy for brash, swaggering machismo, but before you judge The Shat too harshly, check out the original two-part pilot for the original Star Trek, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. Kirk seems like Picard by comparison.
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Post by fathermushroom on Jul 1, 2013 13:08:24 GMT -5
I immediately thought of J.C. from "The Sidehackers." I hated his every moment in that film, but I guess you'd have to say that no one else could have done it the same way.
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