Who says a great movie has to be any good?

The other night, I flipped past that SEINFELD episode where Elaine suffered for the fact that she hated THE ENGLISH PATIENT. I love that episode -- because, like Elaine, I hated it, too.

Hated.

This got me to thinking about movies, and why people like certain ones -- and why they might SAY they like certain ones because they think they SHOULD. For instance, tell someone that you hated E.T. (which I did), and people will look at you like you just kicked their grandmother in the stomach. (I'd love to kick E.T. in the stomach.)

Anyway, back to that sorry THE ENGLISH PATIENT. I went to a party not too long after it came out, and one of Raleigh's film critics was there. (How many do we have, come to think of it?) We were introduced: "You two both like movies a lot..." We got to talking movies, and quickly found that we were coming at cinema from two completely different directions.

Not only was it obvious we didn't like the same films -- aside from THE WAGES OF FEAR, I think -- but we didn't like each other, either. He was pretentious and went on and on and on, a lot like the movies he dug. Me, I prefer simpler, shorter films: westerns (7 MEN FROM NOW), crime films (FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE), stuff with people in rubber suits tearing stuff up (THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON). Good, solid genre pictures.

Seeing that it would be easy, and a helluva lotta fun, to really get under this guy's skin, I cooked up a diatribe that I'm still quite proud of:

Movies are entertainment. You give up your money and a couple hours of your time, and hopefully you get something in return. With THE ENGLISH PATIENT, I looked at my watch a lot, wished the bastard would hurry up and conk out, and for days bitched about my lost six bucks.

But take something like ORGY OF THE DEAD, a piece of nudie junk written by Ed Wood back in 1965 or so: I laughed, my friends laughed, and we backed it up and watched a couple parts of it again. And we still talk about it -- years later.

As I see it, that makes ORGY OF THE DEAD a better movie than THE ENGLISH PATIENT.

The guy just walked away.

That's Ed Wood up top. He was a total loser of the variety only Hollywood can chew up and spit out. God bless him.

(By the way, I also hated PLATOON, JURASSIC PARK and TITANIC.)

I love this.

Here's a piece by hot rod lowbrow pin-up sticker artist Coop. As he says on his blog, "click to embiggen." Hope he doesn't mind that I boosted it.

There's an EASY RIDER-ness to it that makes me want to hang it over my mantle. If I had a mantle.

You Can't Make Up Stuff Like This.

"Louisiana Men Claim Buffet Eatery Banned Them"

HOUMA, La. (AP) -- A 265-pound man says a restaurant overcharged him for his trips to the buffet, then banned him and a relative because of how much they consumed during their visits.

Ricky Labit, a 6-foot-3 disabled offshore worker (That's Ricky in the photo), said he had been a regular at the Manchuria Restaurant, eating there as often as three times a week. But on his most recent visit, he said a waitress gave him and his wife's cousin, Michael Borrelli, a bill for $46.40, roughly double the buffet price for two adults.

"She says, 'Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much,'" Labit said.

Labit and Borrelli said they felt discriminated against because of their size.

"I was stunned, that somebody would say something like that. I ain't that fat, I only weigh 277," Borrelli said.

Accountant Thomas Campo, who spoke for the restaurant because the owner's English is limited, said the men were charged an extra $10 each on Dec. 21 because they made a habit of dining exclusively on the more expensive seafood dishes, including crab legs and frog legs.

"We have a lot of big people there," Campo said. "We don't discriminate."

The argument over the bill grew heated, and police were called. The police report states that the disagreement was settled when the restaurant said the bill was a mistake and, to appease Labit, the meal was complimentary.

Labit said he insisted on paying but was told not to come back. He complained that when seafood on the buffet line runs out, the restaurant only grudgingly cooks more. Campo said the proprietress tries to reduce waste of quality food.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. (Ooops, sorry!)

I gotta get my priorities straight.

I used to be all over the stuff coming out on laserdisc and DVD and CD. A widescreen transfer of GOLDFINGER on laserdisc? How many William Castle movies are available on DVD? Can you get the mono mix of THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS by The Byrds on CD? It was all a big fat piece of cake. And it mattered.

Nowdays, I'm not so well-versed. Or up-to-date. Or whatever. Or maybe it's that I got to much reality impacting around here these days. Who knows.

It turns out that one of my all-time favorite movies, BEDAZZLED -- the 1967 Peter Cook/Dudley Moore one, not that sorry lame putrid remake thing -- has been out on DVD since April. And I had no idea.

Of course, to most people out there, it's no big deal. So what? Go order one and shut up. But us collector-loser-freaks, we want it right away, or at the very least we want to know the damn thing is coming out. Guess it's all part of wanting to be an Expert. It's required to earn your Geek merit badge.

So, anyway, BEDAZZLED is out. It's one of the funniest movies ever made. It's got Dudley Moore in a nun outfit jumping on a trampoline. It's got a great score (by Moore). And it's got that hip, mod 1967 Technicolor Panavision thing in spades, courtesy of director Stanley Donen.

Oh, and it's got Raquel Welch (as Lust) go-go dancing while Moore, still in his nun get-up, gets drunk. And ain't that why the motion picture was invented in the first place?