The awful 1987 movie nobody likes except Quentin Tarantino: “I was, like, knocked out”
For someone who seems determined to end their career on the highest possible note so that scholars and cinephiles can look back on their filmography with amazement and awe for generations to come, Quentin Tarantino doesn’t half enjoy some shitty movies.
If he wasn’t so obsessed with preserving his artistic integrity and drawing a line under his big-screen adventures at ten films, Tarantino’s back catalogue has indicated that he could easily have at least another classic or two up his sleeve. Instead, he’s only got one more left in him, and the pressure is on.
For such a studious and self-proclaimed cinephile, the man’s got some weird taste. A lot of people think that modern cinema isn’t as great as it was back in the day, but when he’s out there calling Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s The Rip the pinnacle, you’ve got to scratch your head. It’s a decent action thriller, but at the end of the day, it’s not even the best action thriller you can find on Netflix.
For the most part, though, you’ll find folk who agree with his more outlandish opinions. Jason X is an objectively crap movie, but it’s got some cheesy, kitsch appeal. The Lone Ranger is a bloated turd of a blockbuster, but the two-time Academy Award winner isn’t wrong in saying the climactic action sequence is impressive, but he can fuck right off when it comes to praising the shot-for-shot Psycho remake.
However, even by Tarantino’s questionable standards, there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. In 1987, a standalone sequel to a hit comedy that was released two years earlier arrived in cinemas, and it was awful. Almost 40 years later, it’s still regarded as one of the worst sequels ever made, and at no point has it threatened to be reappraised through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.
That film would be Christopher Leitch’s Teen Wolf Too, led by a young Jason Bateman, who has subsequently and frequently described it as the nadir of his career. “Horrendous” and “shit” are just two of the superlatives he’s used to sum up the picture over the years, but when he was asked if he’d ever in his life met anybody who unironically thought it was good, there was only one.
“He didn’t say it changed his life, but Quentin Tarantino, I was out in the city drinking once, years and years and years and years ago, and he came up to me and introduced himself,” Bateman revealed. “I was like, knocked out. He was like, ‘You know what I just saw yesterday? Teen Wolf Too. Great movie.”
As he tends to do whenever he talks to anyone about anything, Tarantino “started going on” about his love for Teen Wolf Too in front of Bateman, who thinks it’s shite. “But it just goes to show you there’s something in every film for everybody,” he added. “I’m sure he would not put it on his top ten all-time favourites, but it was very nice of him.”
Of course Tarantino likes Teen Wolf Too; he carries the look of somebody who would. He’s wrong, obviously, because it’s a dreadful piece of work, but it underlines the point that even the most heinous crimes against cinema can often have at least one person willing to defend them.
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