Double Feature Double Dates

or Making The Most of a Crappy Economy

Let's face it: the economy sucks. Sucks to the point that suddenly, spending $12 for a ticket, $8 for parking, $15 for snacks, and $wayTooMuch for dinner has ceased to be an impulse night out has evolved into a major financial consideration. It's in times like these that video rentals and libraries become all the more important, and really, what better way is there to take our minds off an awful reality than with a couple of awful movies? To that end, I present my list of bad movie double features - one a week should keep you going well into blockbuster season, by which point hopefully you'll have saved enough for a night out.

Paul Verhoeven Misogyny Night (Total Recall and Showgirls)
Ah, the 90s - when nihilism was in and feminism was a dirty word. Sharon Stone basically treated her role in Total Recall as a warm-up for the more-coherant Basic Instinct, and Showgirls is...well, Showgirls. (Note: get the VIP edition if possible - the pop-up trivia track alone is worth the price of admission.)

Movie Monster Smackdown Night (King Kong vs Godzilla and Freddy vs Jason)
Icons will be icons, after all, whether they be the rubber-suited behemoths of the 60s or the latex-makeup goremeisters of the 80s. Just be careful you don't get both of these discs going at once, as I'm fairly certain a Fatal Fourway matchup between these titans would rip a whole in the fabric of spacetime.

Mass Media Will Kill You Night (Videodrome and Death Race 2000)
When you think about it, it isn't that big a leap from a UHF channel showing snuff films to a government-endorsed national obsession with gladitorial road rallies. This is the ultimate in meta message - TV won't just rot your brain, it will turn your very dismemberment into entertainment. Toss in the Max Headroom pilot (or better still the original BBC teleplay) as an appetiser if you can track down a copy.

Let's Sing About Eating Each Other Night (Sweeney Todd and Cannibal! The Musical)
It'd be a close vote as to whether Tim Burton or the creators of South Park are more divorced from what the rest of us call reality, and nowhere is that simple fact put on better display. That said, I dare you not to hum "Shpadoinkle" after all is said and done.

Road Trips From Hell Night (House of 1,000 Corpses and The Doom Generation)
You'd think it wouldn't take a genius to figure out that entering an off-the-beaten-path hillbilly hovel adjacent to a museum of serial killers might not be wise. Meanwhile, the next time you discover that every purcahse you make at a convenience store costs $6.66? Just turn around and go home. Even if you're hanging out with naked Rose McGowan.

The Bard Is Spinning In His Grave Night (Tromeo & Juliet and Strange Brew)
Shakespeare will serve as inspiration for new movies forever due to one simple fact: he's public domain. That said, it takes especially twisted minds to turn Romeo & Juliet into a lesbian-infused, Manhattan based Hatfield/McCoy feud - let alone to turn MacBeth into a Bob & Doug Macenzie brewery wet dream.

Can't Sleep, Doll Will Kill Me Night (Dead Silence and Child's Play)
All modern killer sculpture movies, of course, owe an inestimable debt to the classic Twilight Zone episode The Dummy. But each of these takes is a classic in its own way. For a lighter chaser, see the Buffy season 1 episode The Puppet Show.

Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance, Gotta Throw Shit At the Screen Night (The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
If you watch these alone in your living room, you're a loser. Yet if you spend countless hours to perfect a costume and hairdo, memorize ritualized call-and-response lines that sync to a years old script, and get together with a bunch of ther similarly-afflicted afficinados, you're part of a countercultural movement. Go figure.

Bonus, not-actually-bad-but-campy-as-hell theme:
Witty Dialogue-Based Comedy Night (Clue and The Princess Bride)
Campy, guilty pleasures at best, but I'll lay dollars to donuts that between them, these two movies account for most of the catchphrases spouted by any self-described movie buff under the age of 35. An entire generation of snarkers can't all be wrong, can they?

— Tovarich