Ghastly Beyond Belief! The Screen Trembles in Ecstasy! Madness Incarnate! The Truth About Love Fearlessly Told!Despite their ballyhoo and exploitation, hundreds, if not thousands, of wonderfully outlandish, terrifically subversive films have slipped into obscurity, unhailed and overlooked. Indifferent to convention, a challenge to acceptable taste, what some might call trash cinema exists along the mocking margins of mainstream culture, attracting more ire than admiration.Often these films are marked by paltry budgets, raggedy film technique, and a disregard for normality. But what really sets them apart is a ferocious eccentricity. There's no denying that these mangy movies are the product of living, breathing oddballs, unschooled and unfettered though they may be. Elegantly economical, these (com)motion pictures are the result of a quirky self-reliance that thrives, for the most part, outside the studio system. Resolute kooks, the filmmakers shun restraint, good sense, and focus groups in favor of the bizarre, unique, or impulsive inspiration. When such movies do emerge from a studio setting they seem just that much stranger for having circumvented the safeguards. Not necessarily artful, but not artless either, trash cinema is also a source of great pleasure. Despite the wretched acting, the inconceivable concepts, the perforated plotlines, the rude craft, there is an enormous effort to entertain, to bemuse, arouse, or horrify. Born to Be Bad features imperfect filmmakers making perfectly strange films that stay lodged in the mind forever.It's Beyond Your Imagination!Steve Seid, PFA Video Curator Notes by Steve Seid WednesdayJuly 11, 2001
