I’ll let you in on a secret, it’s a big one…ready? Ok, here it is. I few years ago I found it, the most awesome bad movie ever. Forget “Tremors”, forget Ed Wood, don’t even mention that Asylum crap, the most awesome bad movie ever is Jon Amiel’s “The Core”. Let me explain why.
You know the story, it’s basically “Armageddon” in the other direction. Yes, that’s the whole plot of the movie. Earth is in danger, let’s fix it by going down to the core. Let’s build a vessel that can dig a tunnel to the core, let’s blow up some nukes to make the core spin again, let’s loose some people on the way to make it (mildly) exciting and (ok, this is not in Armageddon) let’s have this whole government conspiracy thing going, where the government is responsible for creating the problem by (and here it gets absolutely bonkers) building an earthquake machine. Yes, I’m not kidding, let this one think in nice and slow…the US government built an earthquake machine. Before you ask, no, Dr. Evil is not part of the plot.
So why is this movie so awesomely bad. Well, somehow nobody realized that the story is so completely bonkers and the played it totally straight. Nothing to indicate that they know what a turd they have, nothing. Everybody treats the material like Shakespeare. It is totally awesome. But before we delve deeper (see what I did here?) into the movie let’s have a look at the trailer.
Awesome, isn’t it? It’s not so much how totally silly it looks, it’s the fact that everybody plays it totally straight. They look really serious doing all that crap. It’s just beautifully bad.
What strikes me as odd, is the fact that we have a great cast but a premise straight from an Asylum movie paired with a decent budget. It’s hilarious too me that someone thought this would be good idea. I can see how they wanted to emulate other disaster movies but how can you fail to see that the premise, or (to be more exact) this premise paired with this execution is a perfect recipe for a disaster movie.
They could have gone another way. Picture it looking like an Ed Wood movie. Bad effects, wooden acting (even more than there is now) and bad (you don’t have to change too much here) dialogue. For additional points, let the composer go wild and let him use strange instruments from the fifties and maybe you could throw in a few German or Russian scientists and your set for an awesome experience. But I’m getting sidetracked, after all this post was about how awesome “The Core” is right now, in his state of “perpetual mindfuckness” (Is that even a word? I think it should be.)
So, what m I trying to say here? Well, get yourself a copy of “The Core” and enjoy it, preferably with some friends. I promise it’s worth it.