 Hello everyone, my name is Sydney Britt and you're watching Sydney's Media Moment. I want to start a new series on this program of ours today where I go through the history of bad movies from the 1930s to the 2010s so that I can find the worst movie ever made. It's my goal. Now, I took a lot of time to prepare for this, all right? I watched a lot of bad movies. It wasn't easy. I had to train for days at a time and get stronger, better at movie going. But in the end, my hard work paid off. And all in all, I watched around, I don't know, 50 movies. So yeah, that's my cross to bear, but let's get into it. Today we're going to take a look at the 1930s and 40s, starting with the 30s, of course. What is there to say about the 30s? It's a decade filled with a large economic disaster, a little bit of imperialism, wars on the horizon, and there were a lot of bad movies. The first bad movie of the day is the 1934 exploitation film Maniac, directed by Dwayne Esper, a man famous for making exploitation films. An Esper directed movies such as Narcotic, Marijuana, Sex Madness, and How to Undress in Front of Your Husband. But back to Maniac, it was actually written by his wife, Hildegard Stady, as an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's Black Cat. It's an extremely loose adaptation. Really, I suppose we could say it's just that there's a cat and a body. Where to start? There's so much to say about this movie. It's ridiculous. It was also released under the name Sex Maniac on exploitation circuits. A lot of films had multiple names. But here's the kicker. It was advertised as a documentary film on mental health. That way they could get away with a name like Sex Maniac. Really, it just insert slides with questionable information on mental health throughout the film. The movie's been criticized ever since its initial release for excessive use of footage of undressing women and for ripping horror sequences from the 1922 video essay, Hoxen. Esper just took footage from Hoxen and put it over his own at like 60% opacity. It's great. The plot is confusing to say the least, but I'll try to summon up best I can. We have our protagonist, Don, and he's an assistant for a mad scientist. They bring a dead lady back to life. And then he kills his mad scientist boss and impersonates him. And while he's impersonating him, he treats a patient named Mr. Buckley. And he accidentally injects him with adrenaline, which causes him to go absolutely bonkers. And this man, Buckley, he ends up kidnapping the undead lady and ripping her clothes. And that is the last we see of that maniac. Buckley's wife finds the doctor's body in black male's Don. So Don ends up, you know, hiding the body in a wall, as you do. And he tricks Mrs. Buckley into fighting his estranged wife, who by the way came back because apparently he came into a lot of money. You never see that happen. And then when the two ladies are fighting, the coppers show up to break up the cat fight. And, you know, because there's a cat there that sniffed out the dead body, they find the dead body and Don is arrested. And that's it. That's the movie. It's not confusing because of the way I phrase it. It just is. I mentioned that this film was also released under the name Sex Maniac. Well, it was also released under the tag line he menaced women with his weird desires. But the scene with the maniac takes up, I kid you not, around a minute and 24 seconds. The acting and filming of this movie is awful. It's very cheesy and corny. And it's incredible. It's an incredible mess on the so bad it's good scale. I give it five out of 10 garbage cans with zero garbage cans being this movie is so bad, it's not even worth watching. And 10 garbage cans being, wow, this is so bad, you need to watch it. Now let's move on to our next film of the 30s. I'm bringing in the 1936 iconic exploitation film reefer madness. The story behind this film is incredible, amazing, iconic. The film was originally funded by a church group under the name Tell Your Children. So it's supposed to be a warning film, all right, to tell parents to tell their children about the dangers of marijuana. However, the one, the only, the great Duane Esper bought it and then he edited it, added in some new shots, and then put it on the exploitation circuit. The movie starts, like all good movies do, with a lecture. There's a man giving a lecture to a bunch of parents at the seemingly a school. And he's telling the parents that marijuana is quote a dangerous narcotic, which is worse than opium, black tar heroin, and morphine, which is very redundant. The sale of marijuana is even more difficult to detect and halt than the trafficking drugs such as opium, morphine, and heroin. And more vicious, more deadly, even than these so destroying drugs is the menace of marijuana. Okay, plot. So we meet this couple, all right, May and Jack, and they sell weed. They have some weed smoking friends that come over and hang out often. Their names are Blanche and Ralph. And we also have some kids, Mary and Bill, the pure innocent couple. They're not corrupt. And her little brother, Jimmy, he's a wily one. We got to corrupt these kids, right? All right, let's get into it. I'm a quickly go through what happens because so much happens. It's ridiculous. Starting off, all right, Jimmy and Bill try weed and get addicted immediately. Jimmy, while high on weed gets into a hit and run. Of course. And Bill, because he smokes weed now cheats on Mary with Blanche. Next, Mary is tricked by Ralph into smoking weed. And Ralph tries to kiss her while she is passed out because she because we does that. And Bill, who literally just came back from cheating on Mary sees Ralph and he hallucinates that Mary is actually the one kissing Ralph. And he goes wild bananas. All right. And he attacks Ralph. And then a tussle breaks out. Jack gets involved in the tussle. And he accidentally shoots and kills Mary. Oopsie daisy. And Bill is framed and imprisoned for murder. Ralph starts going crazy with guilt. And eventually, May, Jack, Ralph and Blanche are all arrested. May lets it slip that Jack's actually the one that killed Mary. All right. And then she jumps out a window to her death. And Ralph, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Ralph is declared incurably insane because of his addiction to marijuana. And he's put into a mental institution for the rest of his days. At the end, the teacher, we go back to the teacher and he points to the camera and he says, this could happen to your kids. Tell your kids. The plot is ridiculous. Even without the fact that it's trying to prove that marijuana is the epitome of evil. It's often cited as one of the worst movies of all time, if not the worst movie of all time, because of the terrible acting, directing, plot, you know, everything's garbage. And you know what? I love it. I give it seven out of 10 garbage counts. I know, I know, bold, bold. All right, the 40s, a wild time, you know, the world's been rocked by World War II and everyone's revving up for the Cold War at the end of it. A wild decade to be sure. But the year of 1948 was especially wild because it provided us with two horrendous films. And the first film we're going to talk about is the British gangster movie entitled No Orchids for Miss Blandish. It was panned by critics for having too much sex and violence by 1948 standards. So it's pretty tame in a world where Saw one through seven exist. Because it's a British gangster film, everyone's supposed to be American and from New York and no one sounds like they are. I'm certain I could remember just where God stones are. Yeah, you ain't gonna touch me. And the acting itself is awful. And the film is desperately trying to be a film noir, you know, classic. And it horrifically fails. It's trying to be like a Humphrey Bogart kind of gangster film. And it's just a mess. The term dough is thrown around a lot to highlight the fact that they're all gangsters. But there is an agonizingly long song and dance number. So at least we have that. As for pot, basically, there's an heiress named Miss Blandish. Alright, she gets kidnapped while she's out with her fiancé. And she ends up falling in love with the leader Slim because of Stockholm syndrome. That's not what they say. But that's what I say. And I'm right. Anyways, they plan to run away together because her father does not approve of her marrying this gangster and no one really approves of the relationship. And he gets shot dead. And she takes her own life at the end. It's just like Romeo and Juliet. Again, the film's clearly trying to be a film noir, gritty gangster tragedy. And it fails miserably. Slim's clearly supposed to be some Bogart character, you know, like in Casablanca. And I mean, it's so clear, it's not even funny. He owns his own club. And he even says to Blandish at the end of the film, you know, here's looking at you, kid. The film fills miserably at everything it tries to emulate. And it's not even so bad that it's hilarious. Like, oh, this is so bad, you have to watch it. It's really just bad. But it did have a plot that was discernible and relatively watchable. So I give it a four out of 10 garbage cans because it's just plain bad. That being said, the film was a huge success. Obviously, such a controversial film is going to bring everyone to the box office and it worked. It broke records in England. So who cares what I say? They made a ton of money. And lastly, we have a film with a seemingly unaffensive title, but don't be fooled. I'm talking about the Babe Ruth story. The film is a biopic based on Babe Ruth's autobiography and it's so ridiculous. So much of it is clearly made up and Babe Ruth has depicted as some lovable oaf. The movie follows Babe through his life as a baseball legend, obviously. What else are you going to talk about? His alcoholism? No. The plot's pretty cut and dry with some added stupid elements. He starts as a child and then he joins the Orioles. And then 16 minutes into the film, he's already on to his second team, the Red Sox. So everything's happening fast. Then he joins the Yankees. And after that, he marries his sweetheart Claire. And then he retires and eventually he ends up sick and dead. And then we see him heading into an experimental surgery. Yeah. The movie, because it worships Babe Ruth, says that Babe's not getting this experimental surgery for him. He's doing it so other people will have the option of it if it succeeds, because he's just such a giver. And that's it. We don't know if the procedure went well or not. We just know that he, well, well, in hindsight, we know it didn't work. I assume this is because the movie was made before he died and released the year of his death. So I think they just released it without his death because they were like, oh man, he's not dead yet. But I really want to get this out quickly. So let's just film it. Babe, as I mentioned earlier, is represented as a downturn half-wit, which is not even half of the truth. The movie left out his first marriage to Helen Woodford, his number of infidelities, the child he had outside of his marriage with Helen, his separation from Helen, and then the fact that he married Claire three months after Helen died in a fire. Oopsie daisy. And also neglected to include the fact that he partied all the time, fooled around with tons of women, and the fact that he drank so much one year that it impacted his 1922 season. Lastly, the film depicts Babe as the Jesus of baseball. 30 minutes into the movie. Babe is at practice and there's some kid watching. The kid's lying in a car, all right? He's lying, he can't, he can't get up. And then Babe's walking by and he waves to the kid and he says, hi, kid! And the kid is ecstatic and the kid starts standing up. And that's when we find out because the father starts just howling. This kid's never stood up in his life. He's an invalid. He can't stand up. Babe Ruth just saying hi cured his paralysis. Oh my God, he's baseball's Jesus. And of course, there's a story of the time that Babe hit a baseball for a kid who was sick. Uh, no one actually noticed that story is 100% true, but in this movie it is. And he hit a home run for that kid. And guess what? It cured that kid's cancer. Yup. Baseball's Jesus. I give this movie like 6.5 out of 10 garbage cans, because the plot's easy to follow. It's pretty funny seeing how they depict Babe Ruth as like again baseball's Jesus. And just how much they leave out of his life. Like, when you do some research on Babe Ruth, it's even more funny because of how much they neglected the show. Plus, I had fun watching it. I thought it was a charming movie. Yeah, it's bad. Yeah, it's dumb, but it was cute. It was funny. Uh, so yeah, 6 out of 10 garbage cans. Not a bad watch. Now, I feel like we've learned a lot about horrible filmmaking in the 30s and 40s. And upon looking for common ground, I found some. These films often have narrators, dope song and dance numbers, and uh, moral messages or lessons that are just shoved on your throat, you know? So if you're looking to emulate the fantastic filmmaking of the 1930s and 40s, I recommend you keep those tropes in mind. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you had as much fun as I did. And I'll see you next week for the 50s. Bye.