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Ransom Riggs
Archives of Crap: the World’s Worst Videos
by Ransom Riggs - May 6, 2009 - 12:09 PM

We’ve had fun with ridiculous videos here on the blog before (notably with this terrible music videos post), but I’m clearly not the only one out there trolling YouTube and my home video collection for nuggets of retro cheez. Everything is Terrible is a blog devoted to mining and exposing the worst of the worst (and the weirdest of the worst): scenes from obscure and awful films, instructional videos and infomercials that never should’ve seen the light of day, kids shows you wish you could unsee. (You run out of superlatives pretty quickly.) Here are some of my favorite selections from the more than 200 videos on EIT’s blog.

One thing EIT does well — besides simply curating these profoundly bad videos — is to edit them slightly, in ways that highlight their strangeness to great effect. For instance, replacing the original soundtrack to this Rejuvanique facemask infomercial with “You Are So Beautiful” takes what might’ve been mildly creepy and instantly makes it the stuff of nightmares:

Sometimes, just a clip taken out of context is sufficiently weird, and no editing is needed.

80s cheez is a deep, deep well. Check out these kool kidz!

There’s nothing like a rap song to make kids want to eat their vegetables. Presenting “the Vegaboogie!”

Had enough creepy adults? How about a creepy Scottish kid:

The perfect toy for your creepy kid: the Pimp doll! Pimp even “comes with his very own dagger for administering quick street justice!”

Sometimes ultra-short clips are the best. For instance:

Eccentric personalities always make great videos. This is from my own YouTube “favorites” collection — it’s the opera lady! Warning: a few NSFW outbursts near the end.

And that’s your daily dose of retro surreality.

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Comments (13)

  1. Is the 6th woman in the Before & After video Mindy Cohn from Facts of Life.
    And if it is, why do I know that?

    posted by PhillyFrog on 5-6-2009 at 12:33 pm

  2. Yes!! Thank you, I thought I was the only one who noticed that.

    posted by CanesFan on 5-6-2009 at 1:32 pm

  3. That Face mask clip is really disturbing. Even without the music added in I think it would be disturbing. Imgaine coming home and finding your roommate sitting in the living room wearing that? Creepy.

    posted by Jenny on 5-6-2009 at 1:52 pm

  4. That Jim Gillette guy used to have a series of ‘metal method – vocal power’ instructional audiotapes. I will in no way admit to how I know that. You can’t prove anything.

    posted by EV on 5-6-2009 at 1:53 pm

  5. I thought Mindy Cohn, too.

    And I have that same kilt–just larger! Love that tartan, since my own tartan looks like a piece of crap.

    posted by Anne on 5-6-2009 at 3:09 pm

  6. I could watch everything but that freaking vegetable thing.
    Sheesh. Those kids are scarred!

    posted by broccoli on 5-6-2009 at 4:39 pm

  7. Am I the only one who was impressed by that scream? I mean, the guy isn’t Rob Halford, but he’s got some pipes.

    posted by Joe Maz on 5-6-2009 at 5:19 pm

  8. I too was wowed by Jim’s scream. Horns up!

    posted by Johnny Cat on 5-6-2009 at 5:52 pm

  9. I’m friends with the creators of the site, and went to college with them.

    posted by Lewis on 5-6-2009 at 6:25 pm

  10. WOW!!! I will never purchase that piece of poop unless I am suicidal; and it is October

    posted by Renee Lillian on 5-6-2009 at 6:27 pm

  11. Jim Gillette was (is?) one incredible singer. His range is HUGE. I know about that metal vocal training course because I bought it. Funny thing, it worked. I added almost an octave to my upper range and learned to switch from my regular voice to my falsetto like he does in that clip. Pretty amazing stuff, actually.

    posted by Big Don on 5-7-2009 at 6:29 am

  12. Hey, MF! Do you guys now that if you click the shirt sale banner at the bottom of this article, it takes you not to the store, but to an article titled, “Archives of Crap”??

    Just checking.

    posted by Denise on 12-3-2009 at 11:27 am

  13. Sorry, I forgot I was still ON “Archives of Crap”. If you click the banner from *any* article (near as I can tell), it brings you here.

    posted by Denise on 12-3-2009 at 11:28 am

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