What is your "Guilty Pleasure"?

[Ed Gordon]

There are so many movies I have watched that qualify for this designation, it is hard to pick just one. Last night I watched a reel contender:

I submit the following evidence:

The film is sometimes called "An RKO Radioactive Picture". It was filmed near an active nuclear test site in Utah, where 11 tests had reportedly been carried out in the year before the production landed there. The set was contaminated by nuclear fallout, but the Atomic Energy Commission assured Howard Hughes and the local population that the area was completely safe. Photographs exist of John Wayne holding a Geiger counter that reportedly made so much noise that he thought it was broken. After location shooting, Hughes had tons of contaminated soil transported back to Hollywood in order to match interior shooting done there. Over the next 30 years, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members developed cancer. Forty-six died, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz (who shot himself soon after learning he had terminal cancer), Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, and director Dick Powell. Lee Van Cleef had throat cancer, but died of a heart attack. The count did not include several hundred local Native Americans who played extras, or relatives of the cast and crew who visited the set, including John Wayne's son Michael Wayne. A "People" article quoted the reaction of a scientist from the Pentagon's Defense Nuclear Agency to the news, "Please, God, don't let us have killed John Wayne".

Source: IMDB

Reportedly, Hughes felt guilty about his decisions regarding the film's production, particularly over the decision to film at a hazardous site. He bought every print of the film for $12 million and kept it out of circulation for many years until Universal Pictures purchased the film from his estate in 1979. The Conqueror, along with Ice Station Zebra, is said to be one of the films Hughes watched endlessly during his last years.

Source: Wikipedia

The Conqueror is available on Bluray.

Which piece of crap would you recommend? Remember, to qualify as a guilty pleasure, you must have watched it from start to finish, and may watch it again!

[Steve Klare]

Mine is an interesting one: the concert feature "Bill Cosby Himself"

-back maybe 15 years ago this was a DVD you could show to anybody: it's clean comedy, with one very minor curse-word the whole show. It is also spectacularly funny!

It is feature length of maybe the greatest stand-up comedy I have ever seen: one man in a suit with one cheap office chair doing unbelievable scenes of the regrets of somebody who has had a few too many alone in the bar restroom waiting for the inevitable, the Dentist's office, childbirth, his son giving himself a really bad haircut, a Dad forced to improvise breakfast for his children and the chaos of nightly bath time in a house with five children.

This didn't start off a guilty pleasure at all. What made it that way was what Bill Cosby was doing off-camera and the consequences it brought him later.

A lot of people will not watch it anymore, and I can't blame them: how far can you separate artworks from their artist?

-but once or twice a year my son and I will big screen it, maybe try to remember what it was like before Bill Cosby tainted it.

[Mike Newell]

[QUOTE=Ed Gordon;n65751]

There are so many movies I have watched that qualify for this designation, it is hard to pick just one. Last night I watched a reel contender:

The Conqueror is available on Bluray.

Which piece of crap would you recommend? Remember, to qualify as a guilty pleasure, you must have watched it from start to finish, and may watch it again!

Funny, I’ve always had a soft spot for The Conqueror. It not as bad as a few others. Jet Pilot comes to mind . It didn’t help the role was tailored for Marlon Brando and the wordy dialogue was inherited by John Wayne when he took over the trove desperate for money af
to pay for his 2nd divorce.

There was a documentary on television that explored the cancer connection. Pilar Wayne his last 3rd wife was on location all the time of shooting and said most of the cast were heavy smokers and that’s why lots of them developed cancer. She’s still alive at 94.

Apparently, they shipped a lot of red St George’s sand back to the RKO backlot for internal shots and when it was tested 50 years later it still registered as radioactive ☢️ It would be ironic that they were safe on location but in the enclosed spaces they were radiated.

4-6 weeks is enough for asbestos exposure so maybe radiation works in similar manner.

Another title, I had full feature on Super 8 think it was Universal 8 . When I had it there was good colour although there was pinkish tints way back then or was it radiation.

[Chip Gelmini]

Anything with Diana Dors who in many ways resembled Marylyn Monroe.

on super 8 I own 3 of her features

Tread Softly Stranger
The Amorous Milkman
The Blue Movie

[Ken Finch]

My collection of Bing Crosby films on DVDs and film dating back to his early shorts. It is because my mother was a fanatic and spent much of my formative years at the local Odeon cinemas where one had to go to see the Paramount productions. That’s my excuse anyway! Ken Finch.

[Paul Suchy]

My favorite bad movies are:
Airport (1970), Mame (1974), Why Would I Lie? (1980), Valley of the Dolls (1967), Earthquake (1974).

[Rob Young]

Without a doubt, it's "Con Air".

One of my closest friends sadly passed away this year and we both shared a love of this, let's face it, pretty darn cheesy and pretty awful Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

But every time it appeared on TV we would both text each other to say that we had started to watch it and enjoyed every indulgent moment of it.

Terrible movie? Probably a big YES! Enjoyable? Oh boy yeah!

[Douglas Meltzer]

I like a number of truly bad films and I don't feel too guilty about them. Embarrassing? Maybe Love, Actually. It really is an incoherent mess and would be much better if a few of the intertwined stories were edited out and more time given to the less reprehensible characters. But.....I watch it every Christmas!

[Steve Klare]

Has anybody ever seen Snakes on a Plane?

It just seems born to make this list!

[Mike Newell]

I don’t have any guilt about my pleasures but Bride of Frankenstein always makes me happy. Films they are my only weakness. Always feel sad about Robert Shaw running about around so much in Black Sunday no wonder the guy had a heart attack. It’s a long movie but fascinating to watch.

The Quiet Man “Hibernian fantasy” from John Ford. Now they have finally a decent print on Blu ray you can lose yourself in a soft wonderful comedy. 70 years young this year.