Modern Movies Are Still Rubbish (Well, Some of Them...)

Just why are modern low budget genre films so bad?  I know that this a familiar refrain from me, but having endured some more examples of contemporary 'poverty row' product, I was struck again by exactly how faceless and devoid of any kind of character, let alone suspense, dramatic tension, production values or anything approaching coherent scripts these things are, particularly when compared to their equivalents from the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies and even eighties.  At this point, it is important to say that I don't think that all modern day low budget fare is bad, but there seems to be a vast number of truly shitty products being released into the market these days.  You know the sort of thing I'm referring to - those minuscule budgeted horror and science fiction films that get released direct to streaming, all shot digitally and exhibiting no apparent cinematic style.  I sat through the entirety of Monsters of War (2021), a UK produced example of the genre, the other day.  It pretty much encapsulated everything that is wrong with such films.  It teases the viewer in with the promise of tale of various monsters, both prehistoric and mythical, suddenly returning to the earth and threatening the existence of mankind,  Now, it does give us some rather jerky CGI monsters, but confines most of the action to a remote hostel, where the various characters seek shelter, and some adjoining woods.  The occasional creature turns up now and again to sniff around the exterior and eat any character foolish enough to venture outside, but most of the 'action' consists of a group of highly dislikeable stereotypes, played by excruciatingly bad actors, arguing with each other in stilted and poorly written dialogue.

We're told that the military are battling the monsters, who are devastating cities, but the only evidence of the army's existence we see are a pair of stray soldiers, who appear to be armed with anachronistic Winchester rifles which never fire.  Perhaps the props department was the local toy store.  But what am I saying?  Most toy departments sell squirt guns and water pistols that look more contemporary and realistic, (in my local B&M store the other day, for instance, they had on sale a water gun that was a near full-sized replica of an M16, complete with M203 grenade launcher - don't take it near any extreme right-wing political rallies in Pennsylvania, kids).  Which encapsulates what is wrong with this sort of production: a complete lack of resources and imagination.  Worst of all, Monsters of War, like every other one of these type of films I've seen is utterly bland - no style in the camerawork or sound design, no imagination in the production design, (it is simply shot on location, with no set dressing, rudimentary lighting, no studio re-recording of dialogue and using what are clearly non-professional actors).  I caught the end of another such, film, this time from the US recently - My Deadly Playmate (2018) - and was left thankful that I hadn't endured the whole thing.  This appeared to be a home movie version of Child's Play, with the cast consisting of the director's friends and family.  OK, the way the end titles were styled, it seemed pretty obvious that it had been intended as a parody of the Child's Play films, although why anyone thought there was any point in parodying a series of films which effectively parodied themselves in later entries is beyond me, but that didn't stop it being utterly shit.

Both these films had the disadvantage that, of late, I've been catching up with a number of schlock movies from the 'Golden Age' - made between the forties and eighties - to which they compare very poorly.  These also were films made with tiny budgets, but which still managed to employ half decent actors and script writers and appeared to be made by people with an understanding of how film-making works.  Sure, many of these films, especially in the forties and fifties, were studio produced B-pictures, so could at least draw upon the resources (sets, props, technicians etc) on hand at the studio, (even if it was a poverty row outfit like PRC or Monogram/Allied Artists), but they were still being made on absolute shoe-strings, budget wise. In the sixties and seventies, times had changed and low budget genre movies were increasing made by independent producers, on even lower budgets - but they still looked better than the stuff turned out by today's 'poverty row'.  Possibly because they were still being made by people who were, in the main, industry professionals.  Which is where we come to David L Hewitt's Wizard of Mars (1968), which I caught again after that awful Child's Play knock off.  Hewitt could never be described as a big budget film maker - he specialised in turning out exploitation movies on the lowest possible budgets, often using borrowed props and costumes.  He was so cheap that he couldn't even pay the lab processing bill on one of his films (The Lucifer Complex), so it ended up being sold, incomplete, to someone else, who actually released it.  Incredibly, he even managed to sometimes get 'name. actors to appear in these movies.

But to get back to Wizard of Mars, it struck me while watching it that, cheap and shoddy thought it might be, it was actually reasonably well shot, with professional looking camerawork, sound and lighting.  Oh, and it actually had sets!  Sets that showed some imagination in terms of their design.  While its special effects were variable and decidedly on the shonky side, they were quaintly effective.  That, of course, is the big difference between 'classic' low budget movies and their contemporary equivalents - these older movies were clearly made by professional film makers.  Stuff like Monsters of War give the impression that the director might have been to film school and knew the theory of film making, but no practical experience - aside, perhaps, for the odd music video or maybe a commercial.  They've doubtless seen the classic B-movies and want to emulate them, but seem to have no idea of how actually to do that.  To be absolutely fair, the film making landscape has changed since those halcyon days of B-movie production.  Back them, even the likes of Hewitt had access to actual studio space, (he had a small studio that did process work and special effects for other people's films and TV commercials).  Nowadays, it is far more difficult for the independent low budget producer to get this sort of access, let alone serve an apprenticeship in the industry.  That said, I can think of plenty of instances of film-makers who put together enjoyable and very watchable direct-to-video releases in the eighties with next to no resources - Cliff Twemlow and Michael Murphy come to mind, for instance.  It all comes back to that paucity of, well, vision, though, in the modern product - B-movies don't necessarily have to be original in terms of content, but some imagination and originality in execution would be welcome.