In Defense of B Movies

I post on the message boards at IMDb, of course, because I love movies very much and like to discuss them. And I post frequently on the boards of bad B movies, because I am especially fond of those.
A couple of years ago I posted about Coleman Francis’ epic Red Zone Cuba that I wish they would release it on DVD. Francis only ever made three films, the oddly magnificent Beast of Yucca Flats, the slow-moving and ugly Skydivers (should have earned an Oscar for most ludicrously over-the-top use of stock footage), and this meaningless mess of a film. I wondered why they didn’t just release the three as a box set for bad movie fans everywhere.
Yesterday someone posted on my thread there, and I reprint their post and my reply here:

Jellyfish19: Why exactly do you buy crappy movies? Don't know where to spend your money? I don't understand people like you...

OgreVI: It isn’t all bad movies. Transformers, for example, I have no interest in. When someone has the money and the skilled crew and everything he needs to make a good movie and doesn’t, then that bothers me.
But these movies I’m talking about are different. They were made by people who had no money, no name, and (in some cases) no talent. There are and have been many filmmakers who weren’t part of the system for whatever reason, who had no resources. They just loved movies, and they had something to say, an idea that they wanted to share, and they struggled and connived and worked their fingers to the bone to get their visions put on film. In the case of someone like George Romero or Hal Hartley the final product can be magnificent. In the case of someone like Coleman Francis the final product turns out to be pretty lousy. But it’s entertaining in its ineptness, and also it is possible to respect the work and the desire that went into making it, even if they were poorly aimed, isn’t it?
So, when I talk about this movie, or Francis’ Beast of Yucca Flats, which in its way is a kind of bizarre triumph, or others like the mighty Plan 9 or Manos, I don’t think I’m really talking about the worst movies ever. I call them that ‘cause it makes sense to do so, but any of them is far superior to, say, Catwoman or Epic Movie, or even to many good big-budget studio films, because they are testaments to human will and determination, and because they were labors of love.

And that’s it, in case anyone was wondering.