The New Worst Movie Ever Made

Those who know me know that I have in my time watched a lot of crap. Red Zone Cuba, Amityville 2, Yor, the Hunter From the Future, Outlaw of Gor, Armageddon, Ringmaster, Pearl Harbor, Manos: the Hands of Fate, Glitter, The Lonely Lady, Battlefield Earth--these and many many other horrors have left craters on my retinas at one time or another.

But I have never seen a film so bad, just so unutterably stupid, as Monster A-Go-Go.

Monster A-Go-Go is the story of...hmm. What is it the story of? There's no monster. There's no A-Go-Go, and notwithstanding the protestations of the narrator, there's no horror. What there's a lot of is dark. Indeed, the movie The Dark didn't have this much dark. There are long periods where the screen is literally blank. Sadly, these are the film's better moments.

Essentially, the film consists of a few randomly placed shots of a tall man with oatmeal on his face interspersed with...well...the mind rebels against calling them scenes where characters talk about...actually, it's never quite clear what they're talking about, because the sound guy apparently didn't think that the audience needed to hear the actors. (I'm not sure whether I should condemn or praise him for that.) Characters come and go inexplicably. We never miss them when they're gone. We never really notice when they're there. The activities of Quaker-Oats Man, which are allegedly horrifying, take place largely off-screen. It falls to the various random characters to stumble upon the aftermath of the monster's mayhem and break into indivdual discussion groups to compare findings, which we never hear. In the end, a parade of stock footage tells us that preparations are taking place for something having to do with the monster, but then the narrator informs us that there was never a monster at all! Fade out. The end.

As I said, I'm a crap veteran. I was sure that when it came to cinema, I'd been to the ninth circle of hell, where Satan's three mouths chew on the worst offenders in all of film history: Coleman Francis, Hal Warren, and Michael Bay. But no. The Inferno has a subbasement, where Monster A-Go-Go lives and rolls in the filth of its own wretchedness.

From what I understand, the producer got his mitts on some footage from a movie that ran out of money. He then decided to add some other footage, mix in some stock footage, and run the confection as the bottom half a double feature. I can guess how it went over. It's a wonder he's still alive.