Shades of Badness

My fiancee and I just watched "Shades of Darkness."

Before you view the trailer, please, read the reviews here or here. Do rent it on Netflix or, more likely, from your local run down video store in upstate NY, where the movie was filmed. It's definitely worth it. Without further delay, the trailer:


This horror movie, that Jess was actually in (sort of, but not really--she's on the cutting room floor, dressed as not a "zombie," but a "person filled with hate"...but her friends are in it, and so is her dance teacher[as the main character]), was so bad that it was good. By that I mean that I laughed so hard at the special effects and such that it became more like Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (here's an example) than an actual movie of its own merits. I loved it. It brought me back to the reason I started making fun of low-budge horror movies in the first place.

But then, in the haze of a post-laughter sigh, I started thinking: If this movie was actually made, the director/writer/producer/whatever had to have thought it was good. It had to have passed the screen of his family and close friends, who all told him it was wonderful. He had to have still thought it was good (or, at the very least, passable) through the making of the movie and through the special showing at "some random theater in Endicott, NY" (according to my fiancee). Through it all, there were people by his side saying, "yeah man, I'd wanna buy this DVD" and the like.

Such comments make a person actually believe their work is great. Then I wondered -- if for just the briefest of the boxer briefy moments -- if my writing, my book, was actually any good. If I would someday self-publish the novel equivalent of "Shades of Darkness." I shuddered.

Then I looked at the trailer again.