5 Fake Movies I’d Actually Watch

Here are 5 fake movies that I would actually watch!

We all love movies. I’m going to assume that’s the case if you’re on this website and reading my articles. According to this statistic I found off of google, the average person in America sees about 1,250 movies in their lifetime. We will of course never see all of them but to make matters worse we have a bunch of fake films that we’d watch in a hot second and this is a salute to the best ones. Ground rules are, I’m skipping the fake trailers from “Grindhouse” and “Tropic Thunder.” Two reasons are, one because they’d take up most if not all of the list. And two because I think they’ve been pretty well covered across the internet and I doubt I’d be able to add much. The other rule is this isn’t JUST for the best or funniest fake trailers, these are all movies that I legitimately want to watch. If a filmmaker was like, “I’m going to film this as an actual movie,” I’d be all for it. Let’s get started.

Honorable Mention: Jaws 19

This is one of the first fake movies that I ever saw in another film; “Back To The Future: Part II” to be exact. I felt for that reason I had to at least mention it. It’s not part of the list because after seeing the actual sequels to “Jaws” (if they really made that many)… I don’t know if I could really deal with it. It works better as a gag is essentially what I’m saying. But for one of the best uses of this gag…

5. See You Next Wednesday

This may be something you sort of recognize, it’s certainly been in enough movies. It’s one of the longest running gags across the most amount of movies I am aware of. Director John Landis has snuck this into a bunch of his movies. “Schlock,” “Kentucky Fried Movie,” “The Blues Brothers,” “An American Werewolf in London,” “Trading Places,” and “Coming To America” just to name a few but it appears in more Landis films. And it’s not just limited to his movies, other directors have put this fake movie into their’s like, Guillermo del Toro in “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” “Amazon Women on the Moon” (Video Pirates segment (a non-John Landis sketch)), and even video games like “Deus Ex.” This is the biggest of the fake movies, mostly seen in posters and theater marquees however in “An American Werewolf in London” we get to see a bit of it.

BE WARNED! There is slight frontal nudity in this scene below!

Why do I want to see this? Well first off let’s talk about this reoccurring gag; each time we see the poster for “See You Next Wednesday” it seems to indicate a completely different film. In “An American Werewolf in London” it appears to be a porno, a typical porno except instead of the jealous husband trying to kill the lovers or joining in with them (this is an orgy night according to the outside of the theater) it turns out he has the wrong room and quietly leaves after realizing his mistake. You know I kinda want to see a porno that goes in that direction. However in my own personal head-cannon I like to think that all of these totally different posters are still in fact for the same film; an apparently really hard to define film so the marketing department decided to do multiple different ad campaigns in a vain attempt to sell it. In “The Blues Brothers” it appears to be a movie about a giant ape starring Donald Sutherland, in “Kentucky Fried Movie” it’s a drama, etc. Yeah I really want to see a movie that changes genre, cast, and even director throughout, just to see the insanity that would obviously entail.

4. Arnold’s Hamlet

Do I even need to explain this? It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger doing William Shakespeare! The explanation is done! If you can read that previous sentence and still don’t get it then… we can’t be friends. Okay but in all seriousness, especially if you’re wondering where this comes from, it comes from the film “Last Action Hero.” Now personally I really like the movie but it has… not the best reputation. However I know I’m not alone in enjoying this. I do honestly get into the satire of this film. It’s so good that they did it again in “Lost World: Jurassic Park” with a fake poster with Arnold in “King Lear.” In the movie the main character named Danny is obsessed with the Jack Slater films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. While watching the famous Laurence Olivier version of “Hamlet” in school (Fun Fact: the teacher is played by Joan Plowright who was Olivier’s wife in real life), Danny begins to daydream and creates… THE MOST AWESOME SHAKESPEARE FILM EVER!

Why do I want to see this? Come on if Keanu Reeves can be in “Much Ado About Nothing” (1993) or Gerard Butler in “Coriolanus” (2011) then I think we can have Arnold in Shakespeare. Let’s face it, we’re probably never going to see Arnold give an Oscar acceptance speech. However I always thought Arnold was fine as an actor. Yes he’s an action star with not the greatest amount of range but for the films that he makes, he’s good in them. That’s the kind of performance you want in those sorts of movies. Another thing about him, he’s got a charming persona; you’d want to hangout with him. He’s got good comic timing that he shows off in movies like “Twins,” “Kindergarten Cop,” or even in “Last Action Hero.”

But about what we get to see, this is apparently a super stylistic action film. It looks sort of like “Pleasantville” with the black and white photography and splashes of color in specific spots and this was 1993 which was 5 years before “Pleasantville.” Also for some reason machine guns exist in what looks like a traditional medieval ages time period. You get the best of “Conan the Barbarian” and something like “Commando.” Just to get answers like that is enough to make this a gotta-see-movie. And of course the one liners. We all nkow William Shakespeare is somewhat well known for his writing and some of his stuff has stood the test of time. Combine that with the brilliance and the genius of Arnold’s comebacks and we could have something that could help Shakespeare from the threat of being forgotten.

Click to the NEXT PAGE for the final 3 fake movies!

3. Angels With Filthy Souls

This is the first fake movie I ever saw and I didn’t even realize it. For years watching “Home Alone” as a kid I just assumed this was a real movie. I was planning to try and rent it from the video store when I was old enough. I even acted out with my toys what I imagined the story of the film to be. I can’t quite remember when or how I realized it was fake (I probably tried googling it or something). So it’s a 1930s era gangster film about a mobster named Johnny who shoots people down. That’s about as much as we can glean as we only see Kevin McCallister watching one scene. But man what a scene!

Why do I want to see this? Here’s the thing, what still really impresses me after all these years is just how authentic it looks. I mentioned this in my review of Mr. Holmes that recreating films from this era is challenging and many times it doesn’t really look real. It helps that the actors in this scene don’t seem to have gone on to other stuff plus they all really get that old style of acting down perfectly. However it’s not just the acting; the cinematography is pitch perfect, the over-lit lighting, the sorta fuzzy look of the visuals (it looks like some fog was added to the inside of this office), the locked down camera, and even the shots chosen all look perfect. Chris Columbus gets a lot of crap for the visual look of his films not being the strongest and that’s not completely without merit. But who would have thought that he’d be able to capture the visual look so absolutely right. And the best part, there’s apparently a sequel.

2. Mant!

“Part Man, Part Ant, all Mant!” I freaking love this fake tagline! It is everything great, cheesy, and wonderful about the films of this period. Being able to talk about this was what made me want to do this entire list. If you haven’t seen it, “Matinee” (1993) is a very good movie by Joe Dante that completely captures the magic of that time period of movies. It also contains my favorite quote about the experience of going to see a movie in the theaters. Anyways it’s about a famous B-movie director who is showing his new movie in a small town during the Cuban missile crisis. “Mant!” is the film being shown throughout.

Why do I want to see this? This looks like a fun, cheesy sci-fi flick. Like a mixture between “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “Them!,” and “The Fly” (1958). Like with “Angels With Filthy Souls,” one of the main reasons I want to see this is how successfully they make this seem like a movie that could exist by recreating the style. The actors all seem right at home in this 50s acting. It makes me forget that I’ve totally seen Cathy Moriarty in other modern films. However it doesn’t recreate things as well as that. The camera moves are a little too modern for this kind of film in the 50s, the Mant makeup and giant Mant puppet are too advanced to be in this film. However according to Joe Dante, this was all on purpose. He said he did this to try and help 90s kids better understand what these kids in the 50s saw in these kinds of movies. The other main reason is that John Goodman’s character is heavily inspired by William Castle who made movies that had theater going gimmicks like a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on a string flying over head of the audiences seeing “House on Haunted Hill” or back-vibrators being installed in theater seats for “The Tingler” and it’s one of the items on my bucket list to see one of these old movies in a theater with the gimmicks throughout. So of course I’d like to see this movie in the theater in ATOMO vision!

1. Shining

I HAD to put this on the list! I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. There are a ton of really good, brilliant fake or re-edited trailers for fake movies on the internet. However for me they are just a fun distraction. I don’t find myself actually wanting to see it. This is the first one I found on the internet and in my opinion it’s still the best. You know Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining?” The film about a family trapped in a haunted hotel during the winter as the father goes crazy (possibly through the influence of ghosts) and then tries to kill his wife and son. Didn’t that always seem like there was another genre that it could fit into… like romantic comedy?

Why do I want to see this? More than anything it’s truly amazing how this feels like it could be a real movie and I want to see this story of an author and his wife adopting a child and the trials that come from that. It’s great how they utilize just footage and audio from the movie itself (with the exception of one line from “About Schmidt”) but it feels new even though anyone who knows the movie knows what they really mean. One of the best examples is the “I do anything for him” sounds all noble, but if you’ve seen the movie you know it means the exact opposite coming from one of the creepiest scene in the movie. Finish it off with my favorite song ever, Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” and it’s a movie I’m still waiting to see.

What fake movies would you watch if you could? Add them in the comments.