29th June 2009.

Forget “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn” (from GONE WITH THE WIND, 1939) or “Fasten your seatbelts it’s going to be a bumpy night” (ALL ABOUT EVE, 1950). Those famous warhorse lines from classic movies are all very well but they are repeated ad nauseum in Hollywood documentaries and by trashy drag queens looking for easy laughs. No, my all-time-favourite lines of dialogue come from the Bad Movies I Love. And to my mind you will never beat,  “Why do you think you’re such a smoky something when you’re just nothing painted blue?” Uttered by Ann-Marget in the camp classic KITTEN WITH A WHIP (1964). It used to be John Lazar as Ronnie ‘Z-Man’ Barzell screaming above pop rock muzak “This is my happening and it freaks me out” from BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970). Until nasty Mike Myers commandeered it for the first AUSTIN POWERS (1997) spy comedy completely blowing wide open its Go-Go homage niche. So it was time to look for more ultra quotable lines of C movie drivel that you can’t believe any sane writer would actually come up with. Like “Once they were men. Now they are land crabs”, ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957), “A bird may love a fish, signore, but where will they live?” EVER AFTER (1998), “We were just playing a game called ‘Photography’ – you turn out the lights and see what develops’, PEYTON PLACE (1957). “I’m a dynamite fisher-person. I just can’t put the wormy on the hooky”, RAISE THE TITANIC (1980) and “It’s a long time since I’ve smelled beautiful”, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004). Or that infamous X-MEN (2000) howler, “Do you know what happens to a toad when it’s struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else!” Talk about a Storm warning! What’s the most fabulously surreal declaration ever? Has to be everyone’s preferred sexy Eurostar Edwige Fenech in EXCITE ME (1972) purring, “Hey hot potato, got any cream in that tricycle?” Then there’s the incongruous line of dialogue. Who can forget Sylva Koscina waving goodbye to Steve Reeves as HERCULES (1958) saying she’s off to the shops. Or the Hebrew in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956) yelling, “We’re going to the Land of Milk and Honey. Anybody know the way?” That sort of unintentionally funny line is always a winner. To this day the memory of mad scientist Lance Henriksen in MAN’S BEST FRIEND (1993) going to the LAPD asking “Have you found my missing dog yet? Any leads?” still cracks me up. The pointlessly banal line just to give a diva star something to say is worth spotting too. Look for the likes of Faye Dunaway in THE TEMP (1993) spouting the non-starter, “The media is radio and television”. Wow, thanks for clearing that one up. And the reason I even thought of this whole guilty pleasure subject matter again is courtesy of TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009) which commits that most delicious of dialogue blunders. Making a character verbalise what the whole audience is truly thinking and supplying gleeful critics with an apt quote for their sarcastic reviews. In this instance, and please let me know your favourites, its when the Autobot proclaims, “I’m too old for this crap”. But, hey, “It’s not the purpose of modern cinema to entertain. We use our cameras today as a surgeon uses his scalpel”. Hear, hear, Orson Welles, THE VIPS (1963).

Until next time.

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