“AAAAARRRGGGGHHH! Somebody do something already!!”
A couple of recent discussions has me wondering… Which movie sent by The Mads has the least/thinnest plot?
I’m not talking about The Castle of Fu Manchu, where things happen but not in any coherent way. Nor Colossus and the Headhunters, where there’s a decent plot, but our hero does nothing to advance it and the whole thing would make more sense if you just took him out of the script. I’d argue that Manos has a decent (if boilerplate) plot that’s just poorly filmed.
I mean The Bubble, The Starfighters, RADAR Secret Service, Fire Maidens From Outer Space, Ring of Terror, Monster A Go-Go, Cry Wildnernes… The ones where people sit around talking or wandering around in a sandstorm or rock climbing, but nothing happens.
I’m sure I’m leaving out some prime candidates, especially because these movies are so forgettable precisely because nothing happens. Perhaps some of the ones I’ve named have more plot than I’m giving them credit for. So I’m going to open the floor for nominations and then come back and edit in a poll in a few days. See how that goes. (I’m pretty sure Discourse will me do that.) Give me, say, your top 3 and I’ll collect the ones with the most nominations into a poll.
And, of course, while we’re at it, we can make some stone soup: Come together, make a whole meal out of nothing but a stone and some scraps, and have fun chewing it over.
Has to be Starfighters. There literally is no plot to that movie. Guys go to air force base. Guys get told about airplanes at air force base. Stock footage of planes doing stuff over air force base. Guys fly away to Europe from air force base. Literally the only other things that happen are (A) a couple of date encounters … (B) a storm forces some planes to divert and one to crash and … (C) a politician calls and hassles the base commander and his own son. There’s no plot at all.
All the other ones are also pretty light … but Starfighters has to come in at the absolute most featherweight of the lot.
Invasion of the Neptune Men is like Starfighters if it were cute Japanese Sci-Fi. In my book, that makes it better than Starfighters, but that big aerial showdown is quite a slog.
I’ve got to agree with Starfighters. So much nothing, but I do like corn detasseling. The Day Time Ended has to go on the list, too. Random stuff happening is not a plot!
Yeah the Day Time Ended is a rough one. Its a lot like The Bubble in a way. The movies give you the IMPRESSION that something is happening, and that there is a plot SOMEWHERE in all the crap that is going on. But when the movie limps to its conclusion it’s all just a bunch of random crap that’s linked together in only the most tenuous, gossamer way possible.
Movies like that which play-act that they have a plot but end in a meandering, inconclusive way generally irritate me more than just plain old “bad” movies. That may be why I’m more forgiving of Starfighters … which has zero plot at all … and more harsh to The Bubble. Starfighters is bad but seems to have a lazy honesty to itself. The Bubble lies to you for the entire movie and then pees on you as it flies away laughing.
The Beast Of Yucca Flats. It’s pretty much just Tor Johnson and others ambling about the desert while the Coleman Francis narration occasionally likes to pretend there’s a storyline when he’s not spewing random gibberish. “Flag on the moon- how’d it get there?”
I might also nominate films like Merlin’s Mystical Shop Of Wonders or Riding With Death which are two or more episodes of a TV series smushed together.
I forgot to mention that I think the collective serials should count for eligibility. RADAR Men From The Moon did have a plot, but Phantom Creeps simplified everything.