Fad: The Movie!

Cool As Ice (1991) The Bobby Brown hat.

Within the glorious tradition of awful, no budget movies from the 80's there is a sub genre that may be the single most embarrassing and awesome category of film ever made.

The fad movie.

Unlike other bad movies, fad movies are less the result of some fun ambition to make a movie with no money, skill or talent, and more the simple desire to profit on some pop culture trend, like rollerskating or whatever.

Greats among the fad genre include Rollerboogie (1979) starring Linda Blair.  This movie stone cold sucks.  Imagine how bad Linda Blair's career must have been for her to take a leading roll in this stinker.  This is what happens when you hire agents from a mental hospital.

The two people who like fad cinema agree, the more obscure, ridiculous the fad the more delicious the fad movie.  Paintball is one of those obscure fads and Gotcha! (1985) was made to get in on the paintball money train.  Gotcha! is the flat tire thriller based on the idea that being the best in a campus paintball game is proof of all the skill one needs to be an elusive international spy.  Sure.  I had a lobotomy.  This is possible.

Some trends inspire multiple fad movies.  Rollerboogie (1979) wasn't the only fad flick to go after roller skating money.  Xanadu (1980) is a musical on wheels.  Imagine a romantic ballad sung by two people rolling on roller skates.  Can you afford to live without watching this?

Saturday Night Fever is one of several disco fad movies, and one of many, many dance fad movies.  Does anyone remember the moment when "the Lambada" (the forbidden dance) was somehow a topic?  Unlike the "macarena" dance which I think actually existed, there is no actual "lambada" dance!  Lambada (1990) is a movie about a dance fad that they invented. And, there isn't actually a "lambada" dance in the entire movie.  Does it get better/stupider than that?  Of course.

Can't Stop the Music (1980) was one lucky producers last minute attempt to cash in on disco with the musical story of the Village People's rise to stardom starring Steve Guttenberg as New York City's hottest up and coming DJ and dance music producer, imagine that!  He actually dances in the movie.  Unfortunately for the producer, disco was entirely dead by the time the movie was released and is regarded as one of the single biggest busts in movie history.

Airborne (1993) Rollerblade fad movie

Other fad movie flops include the epically lame skateboarding movie Thrashin' (1986) in which fully padded skateboarders have gang fights on their skateboards!  Gladiator battles on skateboards remains integral to skateboarding's popularity and explains why skateboarders had no interest in this cheese buffet.

Breakin' (1984) and Beat Street (1984) may be the absolute most Jergensberfer flicks ever made.  While Breakin' is like breakdancing re-imagined by the producers of Barney and the Wiggles, Beat Street has even less of what made hip hop so impressive at the time.  How do you do that?  How do you make a movie about something as cool as hip hop and have it be THAT lame?

The producers of Cool As Ice (1991) starring Vanilla Ice know the answer to that question.  Cool As Ice was aimed at both Vanilla Ice dollars and the guido motorcycle fad.  Which brings us to another fad movie, the Fast And the Furious (2001) series.

Unlike traditional art of the last four thousand years in which the goal was to produce something that most people can relate to, fad movies pass that up to get in the pockets of very specific crowds.

Today, you don't see as many overt fad movies the way you did in the past, the way California van culture inspired the making of the best film ever made, The Van (1977).  Instead, today, you see that almost all the movies are fad movies of some kind.  Today they make movies based strictly on popularity.  Popular themes, actors, story lines, jokes are repeated over and over in movie after movie (see Martin Lawrence.) Whereas the old fad movies were laughable knock offs of things other than themselves like rollerskating and custom van culture, modern movies are all knock offs of themselves.