It used to be easy to be on the Uwe Boll hate bandwagon. ‘Hey, this guy makes terrible movies! Let’s bemoan it endlessly!’ But then awareness creeped in: who cares that Uwe Boll makes terrible movies*? Not only is no one making you see Dr. Boll’s movies, he’s making films that are adaptations of properties that you have to be mildly touched to care about in the first place. You mean he ruined Bloodrayne? Oh noes.
The other thing that makes the Dr. Boll hate hard to understand is that he gets it. He didn’t always – he used to rage about his image – but lately he’s been playing it up. The guy understands that he won’t get people into his movies based on their quality, so he’s turned into a professional wrestling version of Ed Wood, a guy who takes it to the haters, sometimes physically (by the way, the event where Boll beats on critics is documented in the film Heckler**, and some of the guys he takes on in the ring haven’t even seen Boll’s films. The guy is a meme, not a filmmaker. I love that). Now he’s told FearNet that a petition asking him to stop making movies – which has 18,000 signatures -will not be successful until 1 million people sign it.
I implore you not to sign this petition! Dr. Boll is one of the shining lights of the genre world right now, a guy who is more fun to read about than his terrible, terrible movies. Boll is, without a doubt, a completely incompetent filmmaker but since when has that ever stopped us? What if the internet was around in the 50s – would there be a petition begging Ed Wood to stop? In the 60s would people have been imploring Roger Corman to cut it out with the cheapies and rip offs? Here’s the thing: you don’t have to wait twenty years to enjoy something that’s bad. And Dr. Boll is making it easy for you.
So to the other web guys out there: lay of Dr. Boll’s back. He’s out there busting his butt to make us laugh. And since most of his movies don’t get press screenings, there’s really no reason for you to care about him other than as a terrific kook.
* Dave Parker cares, but he’s one of the only people legitimately allowed to feel that way.
** Which has an extraordinarily handsome cast.