I’m watching a really crappy movie: 
It’s about a lengthy meteor event that only affects San Francisco. While death is raining down from the sky and millions are fleeing the city, a good-looking man who is 1) a colonel, 2) a disaster recovery specialist, 3) an intelligence agent, and 4) a missile specialist, rides around on a Harley rescuing random people.
Luckily I didn’t pay to watch this turkey. It’s on one of the free apps. The price is my willingness to view a series of Slim Jim ads.
What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen? I’ve seen so many awful films that I’m having trouble naming one.
Open thread!
ETA: OMFG! This movie really is making a play for all-time stupidest. These people know waves of meteors are about to strike, and yet they cross bridges, board elevators, conduct broadcasts in front of falling high rises (well, that guy got squashed), etc. So much concentrated dumb.
Gravenstone
Johnny Mnemonic. I was horrified when I finally recognized that it was from a short story that I’d read in Omni.
Zinsky
Atlas Shrugged – hands down. Vomitorium, here I come….
imdb.com/title/tt0480239/?ref_=nv_sr_6
phein55
Alien Apocalypse.
By far.
This is so horrendous, it ended Bruce Campbell’s cinematic career. Or should have.
It’s inexpressibly bad.
Have you ever smelled something so awful that you went to your friend and said, “Smell this”? This movie is that smell times 100, plus a recently run over family of skunks and three overflowing port-a-potties in the 100 degree heat of a Houston summer afternoon.
And I’ve watched all of the CS Lewis Narnia films, the Star Wars prequels, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, all of the Ed Woods oeuvre, the thrill killer movies, and Faster Pussycat, Kill!, Kill!
Alien Apocalypse is worse.
Joe Falco
Any movie made by the Insane Clown Posse, but if I had to pick one, I’d go with Big Money Hustlas.
geg6
Sorry to bring Trump into this thread but MSNBC has breaking news that obvious anagram Reince Preibus spent an hour on the phone with the Donald, begging him to “tone it down.”
Alex
Anything with Melanie Griffith. If I had to pick, Cherry 2000.
kindness
I had a couple of friends threaten me with violent actions after I took them to see John Watters/Divine’s Pink Flamingos. It was the 70’s. What can I say? I wouldn’t call it the worst myself. I laughed hard.
Noskilz
Alien Blood is a remarkably bad movie.
Keith G
The Golden Gate Bridge goes down more times than Bristol Palin.
moonbat
Van Helsing was dreadful. I am a narrative junkie and I could not get through it.
Cacti
The first Twilight film.
Worst…vampire fiction…ever.
Went because the missus wanted to see it.
geg6
Maybe not the worst movie I’ve ever seen but the most heinous movie I’ve ever seen is Gone With the Wind. Absolute shlock meant to whitewash the South’s love of treason and slavery. I remember wishing that Scarlett O’Hara would either be killed by some of Billy Sherman’s boys or in a slave uprising at Tara. Sickening and unwatchable.
geg6
@Cacti:
Good lord, why? If she read the book she had to know it was shit. Same with that stupid 50 Shades book/movie.
AliceBlue
The remake of “The Haunting” with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Shirley Jackson should have come back to haunt everyone involved in that travesty.
jl
‘ It’s about a lengthy meteor event that only affects San Francisco. ‘
Fine.
I’m going to look for a movie about hordes of space-alien hyper-intelligent telekinetic raccoons riding alligators that emerge from the Suwannee River and obliterate Tampa.
Amir Khalid
Reposted from football thread because it’s movie related-ish:
As you say, there’s a breed of bad low-budget movies whose titles no one will remember, and Meteor Storm seems to be one of them. But the shittiest movies I remember seeing had something to do with comics auteur Frank Miller: I remember one wretched The Shadow movie a few years ago, which featured Samuel Jackson in an SS officer’s uniform, and the 300 sequel.
Gin & Tonic
The only movie I’ve ever referred to as “obscene” was the Al Pacino version of “Scarface”. No redeeming social value whatsoever.
SatanicPanic
Whichever of the Austin Powers movies I had the misfortune of watching. God damn those movies were obnoxious.
Suzanne
I went to see “Breaking the Waves” by Von Trier, and it wasn’t the worst movie I ever saw, but the shaky camera caused me to have to vomit two-thirds of the way through. I remember just praying for the damn thing to end. Then came intermission.
I think “Avatar” is wretched. As is “Pompeii”. I kept wanting to tell him that he knew nothing.
Amir Khalid
I should add that my country’s censorship policy denied me the right to see 50 Shades of Grey. That might have made my worst-movies-I-ever-saw list.
Roger Moore
The worst movie I’ve ever seen was Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. They were showing it as part of a kids’ movie series at my local library when I was about 6 years old, and I thought it was obviously too juvenile.
BTW, wouldn’t this be the perfect post for the “Bring on the meteor” tag?
Tao of Nope
Battlefield Earth! Not even watchable for schlock value beyond first 15 min.
Apparently Church officials were intimately involved in the production process, from photography to editing. It shows.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Possibly Hotel New Hampshire. Weirdly, the ads portrayed it as a comedy instead of……whatever the heck it was.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: I actually enjoyed “Avatar.” The concept was kind of cool. And it gave us “unobtaineum,” the silliest damn fake element ever!
Botsplainer
There’s such a list.
Hot Rods to Hell, where a bunch of knock off Rebels Without a Clue harass a nice white Christian family on the open road. 1950s vintage
Panic in the Year Zero, another 50s movie, where the commies nuke the 5 biggest cities in the country, plus DC. White Christian family escapes LA for the countryside, dad beats up price gouging gas station owner over $3 a gallon gas, and they drive around looking for more nice white Christians to hang out with.
Who can ever forget the glory that was Skidoo, the ignoble ending to the career of Groucho Marx? Hippies, LSD, mobsters, Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing, singing.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: I thought it was offensively bad. So, so bad. And everyone else seemed to think it was JEENYUSS, which was so weird.
beltane
My son made me watch Birdemic, which hit all the right notes for a no-budget disaster movie. Terrible, but less tedious to watch than many crap films that aspired towards something better.
Tao of Nope
@Suzanne: Cameron has a gift for making cinematic turds that get acclaim while I scratch my head.
Titanic, for example. Takes a true genius to coax bad performances out of Winslet and DiCaprio.
I pardon him because of Aliens though.
opiejeanne
Seattle Superstorm.
Or maybe Bug! (1975)
AliceBlue
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
God, I had forgotten about that one. We were expecting a comedy too but when it was over we were “aahhhh, what??”
jl
Once I saw a (IIRC) Paul Newman movie on TV about some mad scientist doing some mad thing inside a volcano. It was a total mess. I guess enough people realized it was a total mess that I think they cut the production short.
Newman and the good guys (and the pretty lady) were starting their escape deep within the mad scientist’s lair. Then a jump cut to them all climbing out of hole in the ground in a meadow. They started walking through the meadow and Newman said “It’s OK now, It’s all over”. I broke up laughing. Yes I said to myself, this miserable thing is over isn’t it. Why did I keep watching it?
Amir Khalid
@Suzanne:
Avatar is a great technical feat of movie-making. As a story, though, it does leave much to be desired.
Heliopause
Of course the Official Worst Movie Ever is Plan 9 From Outer Space, but my personal feeling is that Worst Ever should be reserved for movies that are trying, not for stuff that is so bad it’s good. As such, my vote goes to Gone With the Wind. Entirely leaving aside all the race stuff that makes us uncomfortable nowadays, it’s a monumentally goddamned insipid soap opera, and that’s about the best thing I can say about it. Not that Hollywood hasn”t fed us a heapin’ helpin’ of that over the years, but if you’re advertised as one of the Greatest Films Ever, and in fact you’re just General Hospital with a reputation, you’ve got to be in the running for Worstest.
Hawes
Some Estevez/Sheen abomination. Men At Work, I think.
Only movie I walked out of the theater.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: actually, unobtainium has been around as a concept for a long time.
I liked Avatar a lot, and in 3D it was especially good.
Pogonip
@moonbat: Seconded.
Roger Moore
@Tao of Nope:
The Terminator was also pretty damn good. The director whose acclaim I don’t get is Quentin Tarantino. I just don’t care for his level of gratuitous violence.
Gene108
If A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is not on your list of bad movies, you do not know what you are missing.
Edit: IMDB has a better summary / more reviews. imdb.com/title/tt0102569/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Botsplainer
The trailer for Skidoo, promoted by that fucking idiot, Timothy Leary. Movie had Gleason, Channing, Avalon, Gorshin, Marx, Rooney, Constantine, Burgess Merdith.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=sd6OxYZigFU
Suzanne
@Tao of Nope: I remember sitting through Titanic, and just having to use all of my self-control not to yell SINK THE DAMN SHIP ALREADY.
Fact: it took longer for the thing to sink in the movie than in real life.
I agree about Cameron and Aliens. He needs to stick to sci-fi and action and stop taking himself so damn seriously.
moonbat
@Suzanne: Avatar was Dances with Wolves in outer space. White guy from dominant culture comes to “save” the natives while indulging in a little walk on the wild side with the local wimmens.
Pogonip
@AliceBlue: Thirded.
Randy P
@Betty Cracker: I’m afraid “unobtainium” had a long history as a science joke, decades before Avatar was ever made.
I have kind of a fondness for schlocky martial arts films, many of which are terrible. But you don’t watch them for the acting, you watch them for the talents of the martial artist at the center of the film. I just rewatched Enter the Ninja which starred Frank Nero as an American who for some reason is a ninja, and (of course) better than any of the actual Japanese ninjas. It’s pretty terrible. But the point of ninja movies is to see the ninja toys, and the movie also introduced Sho Kosugi, a Japanese guy who is the real thing. He only made a few movies but they’re all great fun to watch.
Kosugi also shows up (and loses) in another so-bad-it’s-good movie, Blind Fury featuring Rutger Hauer as a blind swordsman. As a matter of fact, Hauer has made a career of really terrible movies that are guilty pleasures for me (and at least one great one, Blade Runner)
Edit: A real stinker of a martial arts film, but which I would happily re-watch, was Breaker! Breaker! (Chuck Norris) which was at the height of a weird craze for CB radios and chatting in trucker lingo.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I lived in SF for five years. This would absolutely happen. It’s not like you could leave anyway; there’s 800,000 people there and there’s only one way out of town that doesn’t involve driving through at least 30 miles of adjacent cities, and that’s the 101 – Golden Gate bridge.
jl
@opiejeanne:
‘unobtanium’
Did someone say Illudium Phosdex?
Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century
youtube.com/watch?v=6M9Q1QDhqAU
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
Over 40 comments and no one mentioned Sharknado. Is was the best worst movie of all time! The commentary on twitter that night was comedy gold.
geg6
@Heliopause:
Great minds and all that. Shlockiest piece of shlock ever foisted upon us. And trying to tell me it’s the greatest movie ever made just tells me whoever is saying it should be ignored forevermore.
Villago Delenda Est
@Zinsky: Seconded and thirded.
I’ve seen Plan Nine from Outer Space and while it’s bad, it’s one of those “so bad it’s good” things. Best line in the entire movie: “Earthlings are stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
Tao of Nope
@Suzanne: @Roger Moore:
I forgot about Terminator. Stick with sci fi indeed.
Ah, another entry – Raise the Titanic! Jason Robards, Richard Jordan. The title is fairly self explanatory. They raise the wreck of the Titanic to recover a mystery element on board: Byzantium.
Botsplainer
Ah – I found the proof. The theme song, the piece de resistance – Carol Channing’s full rendition of the Skidoo theme.
dailymotion.com/video/xg463_skidoo-theme-song-carol-channing_news
Don’t hate me.
geg6
Sorry to take the conversation off shitty movies, but who the hell is Kasey Hunt and who put this stupid woman on my tv?
Lavocat
I’m fucking living in it.
Amir Khalid
@Randy P:
Rutger Hauer adlibbed his character’s haunting final soliloquy in Blade Runner. It’s the most memorable thing uttered in the film.
Gene108
@Roger Moore:
The MST3K version of Santa Clause Conquers the Martians on the other hand is watchable.
Waldo
Speaking of Cameron, Titanic is way worse than Avatar. Horrible on so many levels. I was totally rooting for the iceberg.
mclaren
@Amir Khalid:
That was not The Shadow. That was The Spirit.
Botsplainer
@geg6:
It IS a shitty entertainment thread.
Besides, I don’t know why the anagram is upset – Trump is simply capturing the base – they love him at FR.
sophronia
A few months ago my kid, who is obsessed with Animals Gone Wild TV shows, made me watch the disaster epic Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.
I didn’t even realize until I just now looked it up that the two scientists, Girl in Scanty White Dress and Girl in Scanty Black Dress, were played by Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Washed-up 1980s pop stars are truly the mark of quality cinema.
Amir Khalid
@mclaren:
I stand corrected.
Brachiator
The last worst movie I’ve seen was The Lone Ranger, with Johnny Depp. It had so many bad scenes that as the movie kept going, I would wonder, can it get any worse? And sure enough, it did. Amazingly, the studios are paying Depp to star in another Pirates movie. This is what I love about Hollywood. They never learn.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Tao of Nope:
I saw “Battlefield Earth” in the theater because the teacher of the screenwriting class I was taking at the time was a script doctor on it. IIRC, he may even have gotten a credit because he basically made every change Travolta demanded, including the ones that made no damn sense.
We were approached by a nice young lady after the film who was clearly hoping to evangelize us to Scientology, but we were still laughing too hard.
SatanicPanic
@moonbat: this is true, but how offended can you get on behalf of blue cat people? I just couldn’t bring myself to care
Also, it was really fun to watch
divF
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The situation you describe was pretty much what happened the evening of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.
mclaren
There are so many unspeakably bad movies out there… Deathbed: The Bed That Eats People (1977).
Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959).
Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula (1966).
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).
The Robot Vs. the Aztec Mummy (1958).
The Fantastic Argoman (1967).
Octa-Man (1970).
Varan the Unbelievable (1958).
The X From Outer Space (1967).
Latitude Zero (1969).
Message From Space (1978).
At a certain point of horribleness, your brain blanks out and you become unable to discern which movie is worst. And, yes, I have seen all of these. Credit a misspent youth…
SatanicPanic
@mclaren:
I felt that way about the prequels
Tao of Nope
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Hahahahahaha.
Apparently one Church official involved with production saw the finished product – as he watched people walk out, he asked aloud “Why didn’t anyone watch it before it was released?”
He was sent to the Hole for rehabilitation.
divF
How about “Kansas City Bomber” (1972)? Raquel Welch + Roller Derby.
ETA: I agree about “Battlefield Earth” – dreadful.
“Starship Troopers” has great production values, but is unwatchable.
jl
@geg6:
‘ Reince Preibus spent an hour on the phone with the Donald, begging him to “tone it down.” ‘
“Hey Rinse, don’ worry aboudit. I know the Latins, some a my best friends are the Latins, they love me. Yooll see. They like a bold guy, especially the women.”
beltane
@Botsplainer: Trump is incapable of toning it down. He must be having the time of his life right now.
sophronia
Also, when I was in high school, my brother and I once stayed up late watching the movie A Summer Place because my mother told us there were cannibals in it. By the end of that film we were begging for cannibals to eat those people. And they never did!
(I think she got it confused with Suddenly Last Summer.)
Botsplainer
@mclaren:
Saw it. Wretched.
tom
Having watched Meteor Storm, it actually gets even more stupid, right up to the very end and there’s probably spill over stupid into whatever you watch next.
For stupid but beyond awesome, watch the 30min short flick *Kung Fury* on youtube.
dedc79
Life is Beautiful and Titanic tie for top honors.
ETA: also Dune (And I loved that book)
PurpleGirl
@Alex: No… I think Cherry 2000 is so bad it’s good. I laughed a lot while watching it. I watched it as a video tape.
Botsplainer
@jl:
At some point, Reince was called “Loser”.
Kropadope
@SatanicPanic:
The prequels got the same “Meh” from me as the original 3. I guess “Empire Strikes Back” was good.
ETA: None of those would be the worst for me. The first movie I ever walked out of was “National Treasure,” so lame. My roomie says “Mystery Men.”
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Randy P:
Rutger Hauer is the modern-day Oliver Reed — the movie he’s in may be crap, but somehow his performance in it is compulsively watchable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hawes: No, Men at Work is so bad it’s good. Showgirls on the other hand….
Gene108
@sophronia:
Megapython vs. Gataroid is from the family of movies spawned by the super-awesome, should have wore the Oscar for best film evah, Megashark vs Giant Octopus, which also starred Debbie Gibson in an Oscar worthy performance, and will go down as one of the greatest Oscar snubs in history next to Adam Sandler in Little Nicky.
Peale
I just can’t get into bad movies and the cult that surrounds them. The only movie I’ve walked out of was Independence Day (just stupid). I wanted to leave Sunshine Cleaners and Wild Wild West, but my partner wouldn’t spare me.
divF
“Castle of the Living Dead” (1964). Donald Sutherland’s first movie, where he played a young soldier / old witch.
jl
Film buff claims to have found missing reel to Laurel and Hardy’s ‘The Battle of the Century’ epic pie fight movie. That will be way baaaadddd.
Cream Pies
lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/07/cream-pies
seaboogie
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: I really liked Hotel New Hampshire – but I also loved the book and the film was true to the book. Loves me some John Irving
SFAW
@Randy P:
Because Shintaro Katsu wasn’t available, of course.
And Tex Cobb as Darth Maul (well, the other way around, actually) is kinda weird.
p.a.
Point Break Philosophical surfer criminals and Keanu. That is all…
SatanicPanic
@Kropadope: But at what age did you see the originals?
Sasha
Kung Fury — greatest ’80s movie ever made.
Belafon
@moonbat: The white man didn’t really save them in Dances with Wolves, except that one gun fight. Otherwise, he was getting saved just as often, and at the end, all he could do was leave to try to reason with the government, which I believe was noted as failing.
Omnes Omnibus
There’s always Manos: The Hands of Fate.
sophronia
@Gene108:
Oh my god, there’s MORE of them? Please do not tell my kid. (He’s watching The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn right now, so his taste may still be redeemable.)
SFAW
@efgoldman:
I’m waiting for Trump’s opossum to challenge Rand Paul’s muskrat/weasel to a steel-cage death match.
gbear
I’ll second ‘Gone With The Wind’. I was hoping the worst for Scarlet too.
‘The Poseidon Adventure’.
‘Speed’.
‘A Dirty Shame’ by John Waters. It started out good but as it went along you could tell that there was no ending that wasn’t going to suck. And it did. Worse than I’d even imagined.
Kropadope
@SatanicPanic: I remember a little bit about my first viewing at age 3. First time I remember in detail at age 5. The first prequel came out when I was 16.
divF
@efgoldman:
For me growing up, it was the post theater at Ft. Belvoir outside of DC. A quarter each for me and my brother, and my parents got rid of us for Saturday afternoon. The only movie I remember was “The 300 Spartans” (1962). All-star cast, lavish production, and a real stinker. Of course, at 10 years old I lacked the ability to make finer distinctions, so it looked great to me at the time.
@gbear:
“Poseidon Adventure” and “Speed” definitely awful. I can’t say about GWTW, since I have steadfastly refused to watch it my entire life.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Heliopause:
Film critic Danny Peary argued in a couple of his “Cult Movies” books that Ed Wood can’t really be counted as the worst filmmaker because Wood actually did have some ambition to do social commentary — he was just so untalented that it didn’t come across. “Plan 9” is actually supposed to be a critique of American militarism, which is why the hero punches the alien immediately after the alien criticizes humans for being violent and impulsive. “Glen or Glenda” tries to make transvestites and transsexuals respectable citizens 15 years before Stonewall. Etc.
BTW, Peary has repackaged his essays into Kindle books for $3.99 each (grouped into mystery, sci-fi, midnight movies, etc). I noticed some errors, but they’re still pretty readable essays that may make you re-evaluate some films.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane:Speaking of Trump, someone sent this to me earlier today : How Donald Trump Sees the World. Warning: HuffPo link.
Gene108
Compenaros, a spaghetti Western, starring Jack Palance was awful. I bought on VHS from Woolworth’s for fift cents, just to get something from the store before it went out of business (my roommate at the time noticed it was going out of business well before turning me onto to it and actually got good deals on useful items).
It was awful.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Okay, here’s a question for the group — what was the first movie you remember watching as a kid and thinking, “This movie is bad”?
For me, it was the 1980 version of “Annie.” Just disappointing on every level, and I was only 11.
Old Dan and Little Anne
Gummo. My wife and I rented it in 1997 and it haunts us both to this day. The Corn Dog man was another doozy.
newdealfarmgrrrlll
The worst movie I ever saw was “The Last Rebel”, starting Joe Namath. It was soooo bad that the audience started cheering & clapping when the projectionist managed to put in the next reel upside down/backwards/whatever. It was an improvement. When the projectionist eventually caught on and corrected it, my boyfriend and I walked out because we were way past our tolerance level for close ups of Joe Namath batting his big blue eyes. *shudder*
cckids
@Heliopause:
SatanicPanic
@Kropadope: huh, well maybe there were cooler movies in the 80s? I honestly can’t imagine a kid not liking those.
divF
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
“Gidget goes Hawaiian”. I must have been around 10 or so, and realized that this was awful.
gbear
I thought Woodstock was really awful, but we were watching it at a drive in with a cheesy little speaker. Even so, it wasn’t a great movie at all.
SFAW
Based on scattered comments here over the years, I may be the only one who thinks Silverado was a piece of shit. Every overused Western/cowboy cliche, aided and abetted by a bunch of almost-A-list actors. I especially liked the Winchester (or whatever kind of rifle it was) flipping through the air directly into Costner’s or Scott Glenn’s or Kline’s hands, who promptly blows away one or more bad guys.
dexwood
Zappa’s 200 Motels. And, I’m a Zappa fan.
Kropadope
@SatanicPanic: Hmm, what did I like in the 80s? Nick at Nite (original line-up included Mr. Ed and Patty Duke, though they were at their best when they were airing Mary Tyler Moore and I Love Lucy and Bewitched, like early 90s), Ninja Turtles (watched the show all the time and the first movie was a gem), Transformers (though I remember the toys better than the shows), GAME SHOWS!!!, Disney, Disney, Disney
Felonius Monk
Killer Tomatoes from Outer Space — definitely not worth sitting tru Slim Jim ads for — who eats those things anyway?
Yatsuno
@Tao of Nope:
I read the book. I don’t recommend this even when intoxicated. There is zero way ANYONE could have made that into anything resembling a coherent film. Hubbard had no editor for the book. It shows.
Worst Movie. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I still spit at that to this day.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Old Dan and Little Anne:
I saw “Gummo” in a film class in grad school and the teacher got mad at me because I wouldn’t shut up about how much I hated it. I really, really hated it. I wanted to see the cast hold Harmony Korine down and pummel him with a rotting halibut, because it was so clearly presented as a freak show that was supposed to let middle-class filmgoers go home feeling smugly superior to the characters in the film.
moonbat
@Belafon: But it was sold as white guy who sympathizes with the natives and his woman survive so all is well or something like that….
divF
@dexwood:
I agree overall, but I think it has to be put in a separate category, kind of like Ed Wood’s films. It was designed to be watched while on hallucinogenic drugs.
(I’m also a Zappa fan).
Omnes Omnibus
@Felonius Monk: “I know I am going to miss her; a tomato ate my sister.”
gbear
@dexwood: I still haven’t been able to make it all the way through ‘Head’ by The Monkees. Zappa even showed up in that one to prove how hip it all was.
Worst music movie of all time is ‘Sgt. Pepper’ with Peter Frampton. I know a lot of people give it points for sheer gall, but everything about it is so completely terrible.
Kropadope
@Kropadope: Oh, how could I forget Batman? Before Fox made the animated version, the best cartoon ever, I loved the Adam West reruns.
Jparente
@geg6: My feelings exactly. I hated it.
dexwood
@divF:
Yea, well, I did watch it while tripping. Waste of good mushrooms, frankly.
moonbat
@Felonius Monk: Disagree. The scene where the guy infiltrating the tomatoes’ camp asks for ketchup was worth the price of admission.
satby
111 comments and no one mentioned Night of the Lepus??
You guys are slipping.
Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey
Bolero. Jesus God. Showgirls was an Ingmar Bergman film by comparison.
A Ghost To Most
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in ‘Joe Versus The Volcano’. Atrocious.
Belafon
Is anyone else paying attention to the South Carolina House debate on the flag? Want to see a lot of Republican weasels? I’m keeping up with it through this LGF page: littlegreenfootballs.com/article/44813_Watch_Live-_South_Carolina_House_of_Representatives_Debates_R….
Matt McIrvin
There’s this whole stratum of ‘Manos’ The Hands of Fate-type movies made by complete incompetents with no budget or sense. I once saw one called Outta Control made by some guy in Saugus, Massachusetts, which was about international terrorists attacking Saugus. I think. At one point the movie basically depicts the entire drive from Logan Airport to Saugus; driving scenes as padding are a mainstay of the genre.
About a half-step up, there are guys like Bill Rebane (Escape from Inner Earth, The Giant Spider Invasion) who seem to have a vague handle on how to make a movie but still don’t have access to luxuries like competent actors, production values or coherent writing. In The Giant Spider Invasion the giant spiders are played by Volkswagens with fuzz and legs glued on. They came to Earth from another dimension through a black hole, which is represented by a hole in the ground.
divF
@efgoldman:
then 25 cents for me in the early 60’s, then 50 cents for you in 68-69. The ravages of inflation, traced through the subsidized Armed Forces theaters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey: There are things that I have blanked out of my mind. I do not thank you, sir, for bringing those things back to my mind.
Mike J
@gbear: I love that movie.
satby
@Belafon: thank you, no. I’ll pass.
SatanicPanic
@Kropadope: I think Pee-Wee’s Play House was my favorite TV show of the 80s
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Are they going after the iron works?
Kropadope
@SatanicPanic: Oh, yeah, almost forgot. I’m probably actually missing a lot.
gbear
@Mike J: Which one?
I watched the video of Come Together by Aerosmith a couple weeks ago and it was even worse than I remembered.
PurpleGirl
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: I didn’t see the movie but I did read the book. I went through a period of reading John Irving so I knew it wasn’t a comedy per se but another of his weird takes on life. Actually I’ve not seen any of the movies made from his books.
divF
@dexwood:
At the intersection of Zappa and bad movies, there is “Cheepnis”, from Zappa’s live Roxy and Elsewhere album. His opening description of a really bad 50’s horror movie is great.
ETA: found a link.
youtube.com/watch?v=gzxa49fefq8
gbear
@Belafon: What a shitshow. I’ve been over at LGF too.
Omnes Omnibus
@gbear:
I had blanked that one out as well. The horror… The horror….
Mike J
@gbear: Head, written by Jack Nicholson.
Of course I’m also a big fan of Mike Nesmith’s solo stuff.
wasabi gasp
If this is a contest, I win…
Vase de Noces
…and also lose.
redshirt
There’s “Good” bad movies and then actually bad movies.
Big difference. Meteor Storm sounds like fun. Snap into it!
Omnes Omnibus
@wasabi gasp: I just googled that. My bad.
cmorenc
Blue Velvet. Amateurishly terrible acting, incoherent story line except Dennis Hopper is a psychotically weird dude. Check – just play yourself, Dennis.
PurpleGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: Friends did a double feature of bad but funny movies for a Friday night pizza and beer evening. Plan 9 from Outer Space was paired with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
gbear
@Mike J: I kind of agree with the people who said that the producers of ‘Head’ were murdering The Monkees’ brand so they could take the money and go make ‘Easy Rider’ (The Monkee’s brand being kind of a tenuous concept by then anyway). I’ve got it on DVD but I just haven’t been able to connect.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: The movie had Isabella Rossellini. ‘Nuff said.
gbear
@cmorenc: Oooh. That movie and Eraserhead both.
Cacti
@PurpleGirl:
Plan 9 from Outer Space is unintentionally funny and unintentionally awful. Ed Wood was trying to make his magnum opus.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, well, nobody was taking that one seriously.
divF
@Mike J:
Me too. And of his television work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Parts
Plus his mother invented Liquid Paper.
boatboy_srq
@efgoldman: I read comments like that and think of this.
Worst movie? The Walden prod of Prince Caspian. At least with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the franchise tried to stay in tune with the books. Caspian was a very, VERY thinly veiled anti-Catholic rant, and completely excised Bacchus, Silenus and the genuinely celebratory liberation of Narnia. I haven’t seen such thorough agenda-driven muck ever and I pity the kids who watch it before reading the books. I do want to see Dawn Treader – just for the effects, really – but I’m BLEEPed if I’ll buy it new, rent it, stream it or anything besides pick up a used copy.
cckids
@gbear:
Xanadu would like a word with you. Ugh. Poor, poor Gene Kelly
Zeecube
Taken 3. Wife would vote for Mulholland Drive.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@efgoldman:
I actually don’t think the teacher saw it as a good movie, just a controversial one that the class could debate. I had had the same teacher for a couple of other classes (both grad and undergrad) and she showed a lot of cool non-mainstream stuff, like films from Africa. She liked my argument that Rabbit-Proof Fence infantilized the main characters when it should have been a coming of age story.
Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s bad soft-core, there’s boring soft-core, and then there’s Bolero. I just remember feeling sad for George Kennedy.
Kropadope
@boatboy_srq: I liked Prince Caspian, though that was the book I remember the least, so it’s hard to judge against the original story for me.
Dawn Treader was just alright. It was my favorite book, but the book was too episodic and it showed in the movie, also much of the movie is out of order. Still I liked it. Supposedly they’re (finally) making Silver Chair. Fingers crossed for next year.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey:
And yet Bo Derek is 100 percent convinced that the reason she can’t get work is that she’s a Republican, and not because she can’t act her way out of a paper bag.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: Sometimes a movie can be do darn bad it is good.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Republicans are always victims.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: And Captain Obvious shows up…
Kropadope
@Tommy: “Hot Rod,” literally like a slow-motion train wreck. Awful, a crime against humanity, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: And good evening to you ……
Tommy
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Didn’t know she is a Republican. But as a kid it was nice to have her running around nude on my TV.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: Dear god. You watched more than 30 minutes of the first movie and you criticize the Star Wars series? I find it hard to take your critical opinions seriously in view of this.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@cckids:
My husband has fond memories of seeing Xanadu as a child. He remembers sitting there thinking that Olivia Newton-John was sooooo pretty, but who was that old guy?
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Wait, I hope you’re talking about Prince Caspian and not the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I thought Caspian was OK, but LW&W was one of the best movies of all time and definitely the best film telling of the story.
opiejeanne
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The Oakland Bay bridge, don’t forget that one.
Boudica
How to describe the 1985 clunker “Tomboy”?If “Flashdance” and “The Dukes of Hazzard” had a lovechild and had it homeschooled by Sarah Palin… Second worst movie has to be “Cyborg” with Jean-Claude Van Damme. I can never unsee that wig.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I am talking about the first one. And I read the books as a kid. I found each one more appalling than the last.
FlipYrWhig
@cckids: Can’t Stop the Music is worse.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: I shan’t click.
PurpleGirl
@Cacti: That’s kinda why they ended up paired for the double feature.
At my office one week a coworker and I wanted to promote office morale and we came up with a movie night — Two Ed Wood movies. We chose Plan 9 and paired it with Glen and Glenda. Only two people stayed to watch the movies but my co-worker and I had a blast.
heckblazer
The only film I’ve ever walked out of was Beverly Hills Ninja. And because my ride was inside still watching it, that meant I was staring at the wall in the lobby. The second worst I’ve seen in the theater was either Mission to Mars or Highlander II: the Quickening.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Next question: what’s the bad movie you find strangely irresistible? Not a movie that you think is actually good despite other people’s opinions, but the movie you know is bad but can’t help loving anyway?
I have an unreasoning fondness for the 1980s Flash Gordon. It was a little disconcerting to discover that Seth MacFarlane shares my affection for it.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: I read the books repeatedly at many ages and I find the movies fun adaptations. Dawn Treader had a lot of weaknesses, but LW&W was exciting and most changes from the book can be explained by “what works in a book doesn’t work in a movie.” This was one of few movies where I legitimately feared for the characters and the battle at the end was epic. Tilda Swinton was the only White Witch I’ve seen who was believable as warrior queen.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I’m not sure about _bad_, but I think I remember disappointment in both the Flash Gordon film from 1979 or 1980 and Clash of the Titans.
redshirt
Any Mansquito fans out there?
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne (tablet): DUDE I just posted about Flash Gordon! I saw a bit of it again recently. It’s SO LOUD both aurally and visually.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I hated the books but only finished the series because I am not a quitter. The Thomas Covenant series, Ayn Rand, and Proust are the exceptions.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@FlipYrWhig:
I love both of those (see above). Flash Gordon I know is bad, but Clash of the Titans is cheesy fun IMO. But as an animation fan, I love Ray Harryhausen, and Clash is probably the best-plotted of any movie he did.
Tommy
@heckblazer:
That is about the only movie I have walked out of. But then I don’t go see a lot of movies for many reasons. How you mess up a second The Highlander and “there can be only one” you have to try. Try hard!
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: See? You should’ve started with “I hated the books.” That would’ve let me know to disregard you sooner, though I really should have months ago.
divF
@Mnemosyne (tablet): @FlipYrWhig:
There is a certain elegant cheesiness about Flash Gordon – 70’s Camp. OTOH, Ming the Merciless is a role that Max Von Sydow will never live down.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, it’s bad. It’s so bad. But I just can’t help lovin’ dat Flash. Come on, it’s the movie that made Brian Blessed a meme!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Blessed is actually a very accomplished mountain climber.
heckblazer
@Tommy: Worse yet, II was my introduction to Highlander stuff. The friend who convinced me to go was a super die-hard fan; he was awkwardly silent when we left the theater.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I don’t watch it a lot but I do love me some Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Groucho48
Thinking of films that haven’t been covered, yet, I’d go with Ryan’s Daughter. Especially as it followed Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago, both of which I loved.
All of the Hobbit movies were awful. As was his version of King Kong…which might actually be worse than Ryan’s Daughter. Have to ponder that.
Surprised no one has mentioned The Matrix.
Hated Close Encounters
Hated The Shining
I actually liked Showgirls. Yes, it was corny, but, it moved along and didn’t pretend it was anything but what it was.
I thought Speed was a great action film.
SG
“Meteor Storm” has one saving grace: Michael Trucco, better known for playing Sam Anders, Starbuck’s Secret Cylon husband on Battlestar Galactica. I’ll overlook a lot if I can rest my eyes on the likes of Trucco.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m guessing that voice is very helpful in sending messages up and down the mountainside.
joel hanes
What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?
“Cave Dwellers”, the for-TV recut of “The Blademaster”/”Ator l’invincibile 2”
imdb.com/title/tt0086972/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Fortunately, Joel and the MST3K bots gave it the treatment, which converts it to humor
imdb.com/title/tt0655404/
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I am sorry that I did not comment in the exact way that you desired. I shall try to do better in the future. I am also sorry that my lack of fondness for badly written Christian propaganda upsets you.
Again, I promise to exerts efforts to do better in the future. Can we be friends again?
Tommy
@divF: I didn’t have cable or even a TV as a kid. I used to go do a friends house. Flash Gordon seemed to be on repeat on HBO. Beth and I watched it many times.
divF
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
He then took it to the next level as the character of Richard IV in Blackadder.
Mer-Man
@geg6: Some lazy history teacher showed us GWTW in middle school. Laid my head down, propped my middle finger up for the duration. I’m black, wasn’t particularly political yet but knew enough to say fuck this fucking bullshit and anyone whose cockles are warmed by it. Of course the film is too long for one school period so I get to do this for 2-3 days. I later saw Barb Wire in the theater but that was def. my worst experience sitting in the vicinity of a movie.
Mike E
Tarzan The Ape Man would like a word, also. Too. Bo Derek nekkid to no avail.
Green Berets.
Coming Home, I believe, is the film asked about earlier.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): It could cause landslides.
wasabi gasp
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Times Square
Brachiator
@p.a.:
The remake is set to be released this Christmas.
@Mnemosyne (tablet) :
I felt much the same way about American Beauty.
Interesting idea, but I can’t buy it because Wood had no talent for making movies. Ambition and good intentions are not enough. Not even a good start.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, while the Christian metaphors in those books will hit you over the head, there are subtle inter-religious threads of thought I picked up on as an adult. I don’t remember well enough for a cite, but during my last read I picked up on strains of thought that seemed somewhat Buddhist in origin. Then there’s Aslan’s speech in the last book which includes the principle (I’m paraphrasing) whatever good someone does, it doesn’t matter which god’s name he does it in. Not exactly a heavy-handed Christian sentiment, is it?
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne (tablet): A bad movie I find irresistible? Oddly, for years, I would have said Gone With The Wind. I watched it a lot in junior high and high school. The politics are bad, but Gable and Leigh are very sexy and the look of the production is beautiful. I don’t get to watch a lot these days, but I do have a begrudging affection for Sneakers with Redford and Kingsley. Not a bad movie, but I love it more than it probably merits. So fun.
I own Attack of the Killer Tomatoes on VHS. Because FUCK YEAH.
Suzanne
Yanno, I forgot about another movie I hate: The English Patient. FUCK. It is about the boringest movie EVAR. How it won the Best Picture Oscar I will never understand. I think I would rather stand in the closet and hit my head with a hammer than watch it again.
A movie I love with some of the same actors: Gosford Park.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
Gummo is a way freakier freak show than American Beauty, but I know what you mean. I had a distinct “What did you tell me this stupid story for, grandpa?” feeling at the end of AB.
If I can compress Peary’s argument down, he basically gives one (1) point to Wood for at least trying to make movies with a message, even if Wood had zero talent and it all went horribly awry. Basically, Wood gets one point from Peary for not being cynical.
cckids
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Independence Day. I’ll leave it on whenever it is on TV.
For my spouse, it is (I hide in shame) – Battleship.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: After being hit over the head with the Christianist crap, I was a bit too concussed to notice any vaguely Buddhist head nods. YMMV and obviously does.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Either Journey to the Center of the Earth (the one with Pat Boone), or one from the 1950s I can’t quite remember the name of, something like Jungle Heat or White Jungle or something. A white woman lives in the African jungle, in the trees mostly. She is discovered by white men, some nasty stuff happens to the hero, sort of thing that is used as a test of manhood in NA tribes, but we are in Africa. The natives turn on her and the jungle is set on fire to burn out the white people including her, and the hero is dragged away before he can find her, and thinks she’s dead. At the end she is shown to be alive and there’s a somewhat happy ending. Jungle Goddess? I saw it at the drive in when my parents used to take us to the movies in our pjs, hoping we’d fall asleep after the cartoon.
NotMax
Made sure to read the entire thread so as not to repeat titles.
Leaving aside cult films, made for TV fare, train wrecks one continues watching only to see how much worse they can get* and movies which so surpass bad that they are camp or else irredeemably reside in some nether realm beyond description (those made by Ed Wood or Doris Wishman**, for example), three instantly leap to mind as complete dogs which have been as yet unmentioned.
Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie
Wrecking Crew (1942, not the Matt Helm or other versions with similar titles). As it is in the public domain , one can experience the fullness of badosity here for free.
Ishtar
* examples: The Black Hole, Event Horizon
** Nude on the Moon screams right past bad from the very first scene
NotMax
Dang it. Bad l,ink coding. Fixed.
Made sure to read the entire thread so as not to repeat titles.
Leaving aside cult films, made for TV fare, train wrecks one continues watching only to see how much worse they can get* and movies which so surpass bad that they are camp or else irredeemably reside in some nether realm beyond description (those made by Ed Wood or Doris Wishman**, for example), three instantly leap to mind as complete dogs which have been as yet unmentioned.
Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie
Wrecking Crew (1942, not the Matt Helm or other versions with similar titles). As it is in the public domain , one can experience the fullness of badosity here for free.
Ishtar
* examples: The Black Hole, Event Horizon
** Nude on the Moon screams right past bad from the very first scene
Suzanne
I was reflecting recently on that crazy movie Willow with Warwick Davis. I think my Spawns would like it, but I don’t remember if it’s crazy or not. Some of the stuff I liked as a kid back in the eighties is now so very clearly batshit.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
Willow is one of my favorite movies even now.
Billy Barty is fooking wonderful as the Nelwyn shaman:
“The bones tell me … nothing”
Even Val Kilmer turns in a great performance.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I have the Narnia books to thank for my long-standing love of fantasy literature and reading generally. It was the first series of novels I ever read and will always hold a special place in my
heartbookshelf.Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne: She?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: Yeah, well, I had read LOTR before I encountered the Narnia stuff.
Culture of Truth
“Gymkata”
NotMax
@divF
If you’ve never seen it, gotta watch Brian Blessed turning himself up past 11 when he guest hosted a British quiz program.
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: Zabriskie Point. Dear God, I wish I had my money and time back. Saw it in an art house in Riverside, in the old Fox theater downtown.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Particularly when compared to modern-day Christianists, Lewis’s Narnia books are quite mild and inclusive. There’s also some sly stuff that was slipped in — I realized upon re-reading the books as an adult that the faddish alternative religion that Eustace’s parents have adopted is Mormonism since there’s a snarky reference to their special undergarments.
If you want badly written, thinly disguised Christianist tracts from Lewis, there’s his adult SF series about Perelandra. Now THAT was crap.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus: I recently watched Blessed in an episode of the tv show, The Avengers, “The Superlative Seven.” Almost didn’t recognize him at first. But the voice, unmistakable.
@efgoldman :
Teachers who pitch crap like this should be slapped. Hard. They are actually enemies of art.
I had a junior high school teacher who would tell us that Shakespeare was great, and if we didn’t appreciate him (based solely on the tragedies), then we were obviously ignorant heathens. And I resisted Shakespeare until college, thanks to a professor who made the plays come alive. Then, looking back, I realized that my earlier teacher was a fraud. She was regurgitating the idea that Shakespeare was great because someone told her that he was a giant of literature, and she was over awed by his top spot in the Western canon. But she was incapable of teaching Shakespeare (or much else) because she didn’t understand him or feel art in her bones. She didn’t have a sense of humor, either.
Origuy
I bought Druids (aka The Gaul or Vercingetorix) on DVD and couldn’t watch it. The worst movie I’ve sat through in a theater recently was The Devil Inside, a 2012 exorcism movie. I was on a date.
ETA: OMG I forgot about Zabriske Point.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I read the Narnia books when I was around 7 or 8 — I was an early reader, but they’re also definitely aimed at pre-teens.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: I only read the Hobbit. One of the few books I finished in HS, still wasn’t enthralled. Narnia’s worth a read as an adult, do yourself a favor. They’re short.
NotMax
Oh, two more.
The She-Creature (1956)
Calling it awful would be a high compliment.
The Crawling Eye
joel hanes
Related :
nytimes.com/2015/07/12/movies/comedys-sweet-weapon-the-cream-pie.html
KS in MA
@cmorenc:
Agreed re: “Blue Velvet.” And lots of people said that was genius, or something.
I watched “Reservation Road” tonight on one of the movie channels. Not pretentious, but awful.
I would vote for “Mogambo” as one of the worst ever.
wasabi gasp
@opiejeanne:
Haven’t seen the movie, but I have the soundtrack on vinyl because…Pink Floyd. The album More is the soundtrack to another apparent snoozer. Great album though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I think not. Something I found overly preachy as a child is unlikely to redefine itself to me as an adult.
NotMax
@KS in MA
Mogambo is a remake of Red Dust, in which Clark Gable had also starred 20 years before.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization, but, hey, your life choice.
Culture of Truth
I saw some movie where they not only found the wreck of the Titanic after 85 years, but they found survivors – and their descendants – still living on the sunken ship, and I said, “oh, now I HAVE to see how they explain THIS.”
Timurid
Since Crawling Eye just came up…
Fiend Without a Face… disembodied brains that slither around and eat… other people’s brains.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
The aphorism ascribed to Samuel Goldwyn come to mind:
Some people think that Billy Wilder was cynical. Maybe so, but he delivered some blisteringly brilliant films.
Even if an artist wants to deliver a message, she or he has got to master the craft of story telling. Otherwise, very basically, the audience gets distracted, or bored, or laughs at the ineptitude, and then miss or dismiss the message. Ed Wood may have been a quirky, interesting person. But a terrible filmmaker. Also, I don’t like the implication that art is just an essay in an aesthetic wrapper.
opiejeanne
@cckids: Both Independence Day and 2012 are great fun even if they’re not good movies. I like the actors in Independence Day and the aliens are just nasty enough.
In 2012 I love the drive through LA in the limo while the high-rises topple around them and monstrous huge holes in the earth yawn open. It’s really two movies glued together in the middle, but I own it and haul it out for a good laugh every now and then.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I am sorry? I said I found it overly preachy. You didn’t. Fine. Stepping beyond that, which you just did, is a bit uncalled for,.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator:
That sounds clever, but what do you mean?
Brachiator
@KS in MA:
I quite liked it. But then again, I loved Eraserhead.
opiejeanne
@joel hanes: I like that one, especially the nasty little pixies who fall into the beer.
Krull is kind of similar in feel, although the world of Krull is really underpopulated. Francesca Annis plays the Widow in the Web. It’s a very small part which is a little disappointing.
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: No, but I thought you’d hit it at first. I saw it around 1956 or 57, I think, and it was a new movie then.
opiejeanne
Attack of the Mushroom People. I saw it on late night tv and remember nothing about it other than that we laughed hysterically but had to shut it off before it ended.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Jesus Christina, take a joke.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s simple. I had teachers through high school who treated literature as though it was a nut to be cracked, and from which you would extract the “Meaning.” They were blind to or ignored what makes art fun, beautiful, compelling. And any art which did not have “great meaning” was dismissed. So we always had to write papers about underlying themes, meaning,significance.
I see variations of this in teachers, critics and moviegoers who cannot enjoy a science fiction movie unless they can see it as an allegory about current events and extract or impose some political commentary.
And, true story, I spoke with a friend over the holidays who now wants to see the new Pixar film Inside Out because she listened to a therapist in an interview who says that the movie is “really about teen mental illness.” Searching for meaning tames art, makes it safe for consumption.
But one of the best books about literature deliberately countered the the idea of “what does it mean” in its title. John Ciardi’s How Does A Poem mean. The best art is performance, not argument.
Sorry if this is too much. You asked.
sharl
@dexwood: I’ve never seen Zappa’s 200 Motels in its entirety, but I’ve seen enough of it to agree with you regarding its awfulness. But there is one scene in that movie that I think captures the vibe of troubled, run down Rust Belt towns quite well. To paraphrase a couple lines:
I’m guessing Zappa and his band (and a lot of touring musicians in general) must have worked a few places like that.
I wonder if that would be a decent idea for a future post: Good or at least memorable scenes in otherwise bad movies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: Sorry, if you cultivate a prissy, humorless persona, one tends to take you that way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Might wanna reflect a little there, bub.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
And sometimes a pipe is not a pipe.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I am pretty comfortable with who I am on line. And humor, snark and irony happen to pop up in my comments. If those things are beyond you, well, I don’t really care.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: I didn’t say that they didn’t. You did about mine. I don’t know what bug you have up your ass about me, but it’s becoming tiresome.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: Then ignore me or pie me.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: I’d rather work on understanding it. At least that will give me something of a project to work on.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Bullets Over Broadway. I’m still pissed off at myself that I didn’t walk out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: Which part of anything I said was confusing?
ETA: I guess I might learn in the morning. Cheers.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Nothing you said is confusing. Your behavior is.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: ???
craigie
I’m late to the party, but Jack and Jill is, bar none, the worst movie ever made. Ever. By anyone. Worse than those 8-hour black and white Russian silent films where you just watch an apple on a tree. Just awful.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t understand why you go out of your way to insult me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I don’t. I just disagree with you on a number of things. When and if I go out of my way to insult you, it will be obvious.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
I had teachers in high school who encoursged me to read and write about PG Wodehouse, so we obviously had very different experiences when it came to learning about what is and is not great literature, or great art.
I tend to think that art has two purposes: (a) to be aesthetically pleasing on some level or (b) to make a philosophical statement. Really great art can do both, but you don’t actually need both to have a good or even great piece of art.
A work that at least attempts either (a) or (b) gets one point to set it slightly above completely cynical dreck made to turn a quick buck. If that’s too much elitism for you, them’s the breaks.
Oh, and Blue Velvet is shallow aesthetics tarted up as art to try and avoid the criticism it deserved. There’s no there there, just cynicism and a deep conviction that Lynch is smarter than the rubes who pay to see his films.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne (tablet): We saw Blue Velvet. I agree that there was no there there.
The cafe where the cherry pie was served in Twin Peaks is not very far from where I live. It looks like a dump on the outside. I’ve had pie there; I make better pie.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Oh, well. Looks like the computer ate my reply and I have to go. I think I like Lynch and Blue Velvet more than you do. Oh, well.
moderateindy
@craigie: Just barely beat me to the abortion that was Jack and Jill.
Worst movie with a good cast, Monkeybone
Zardoz….. the weird outfit that Connery sports in it has to be seen to be believed. Go to IMDB and enter Zardoz then check out the pics.
Liquid Sky….there is not enough acid on planet earth to make that watchable
Cckids
@opiejeanne: ah! A kindred spirit! I have a sneaky liking for cheesy disaster flicks; the whole first hour of 2012 is fun. I watch thru the Vegas sequence to point & laugh at how wrong they get the local geography, but that’s it. The airplane ride- ships- end? Don’t care.
I ‘m ashamed to admit I want to see San Andreas. Just because.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I think Lewis’s “Space Trilogy” has a gradient to it. The first one, Out of the Silent Planet, I actually found charming: an exploration of the science-fictional consequences of a sort of alternate version of Christianity, which I could suspend disbelief about for the length of a book. In Perelandra, he starts sort of trying to shame the reader into believing that the stuff he’s saying is true, and gets irritating. And That Hideous Strength I haven’t read all the way through; it has the effect that if I open it and try to read any one or two selected pages, I want to throw the book across the room.
Matt McIrvin
@Timurid: I actually have to kind of respect Fiend Without A Face. 90% of the movie is just filler, a boring, talky Fifties horror flick in which little happens. But the whole movie really exists for the basis of the effects sequence at the climax with FLYING KILLER BRAINS EVERYWHERE! There’s a level of gross-out display that you rarely see in movies from that era, and the stop-motion effects are actually pretty good.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Even if I agreed with you about what art is for, which I don’t think I do, here’s the thing: there’s essentially no way to take that delight and transport you experience _and write about it_. It’s going to turn into that SNL sketch “The Chris Farley Show,” where he keeps saying “remember when you did that? That was awesome.” At any rate, writers absolutely do start with The Meaning (themes, patterns, big ideas about big issues) and make it into a story with characters. I’d argue that it wasn’t until the 20th century that anyone ever attempted anything else.
Tokyokie
@Gene108: Hey! That’s one of my favorite Sergio Corbucci spaghetti westerns! Of course, the version you got at Woolworth’s is probably missing 20-30 minutes, so it made even less sense than the Italian version. And don’t get it confused with Corbucci’s Il Mercenario, in which Franco Nero plays a Polish (rather than Swedish) mercenary in Mexico, and Jack Palance plays a flamboyantly gay gunman (rather than a gange-toking gunman who’s had a hand replaced with a gun). (Tony Musante has the Tomas Milian role in Il Mercenario, which gives my nod to Vamos a matar, compañeros.) And Vamos a matar, compañeros features a classic Ennio Morricone soundtrack. I’ll readily admit goofy spaghetti westerns are an acquired taste, but Corbucci himself made lots of movies worse than it.
As for all-time worst movie, I think movies should be judged on a sliding budget scale. A lot of the movies that have been labeled as among the all-time worst had such tiny budgets that they were condemned to crapulence. So with that in mind, my view of worst movie ever is the first Star Wars prequel. Lucas had all the money in the world and still produced something that failed at every level. But the only movie I ever walked out on was a lame Nixon spoof called The Way He Was, that is so obscure that it’s not on imdb. The makeup on the guy playing Nixon was literally dripping off his face from the heat of the klieg lights, and Haldeman, Erlichman and Mitchell were portrayed as the Three Stooges, except the guys playing them didn’t look like the Nixon advisers or Moe, Larry and Curly. The theater manager was understanding when we asked for our money back and let us go to another movie at the multiplex.
Tokyokie
@Mnemosyne (tablet): For me, it was The Green Berets. Even at the age of 14, I realized that when the movie didn’t end with George Takei’s heroic death in the defense of the firebase, it was because the storyline was so weak a second plot involving infiltrating into enemy territory had to be tacked on. (Like John Wayne was going to sneak up on anybody in the jungle.) It wasn’t until much later that I realized the movie ends with the sun setting in the east.
chopper
The Core. ugh.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I don’t actually know what my first “this movie is bad” experience was… it was often more like “this movie isn’t satisfying me, and I don’t know why, maybe I’m missing something.”
I do remember the first time I realized that watching cheesy movies could be fun: it was seeing the 1962 King Kong vs. Godzilla on TV. In hindsight, that was also pretty much the turning point in the original Godzilla series in which the movies turned into deliberately lighter monster romps aimed primarily at kids; in that sense, it’s not a bad movie at all, since it’s doing what it set out to do and doing it well. (Now, what I saw was also the version heavily altered for US markets, which didn’t do it any favors.)
After that, I think the first really bad one that I enjoyed on an ironic level was Larry Buchanan’s Zontar, The Thing from Venus, a lower-quality TV remake of Roger Corman’s It Conquered The World, which was already a major-league cheeser. “He learned too late that Man is a feeling creature…”
FortGeek
The only movie I’ve ever tried to leave was “Jaws,” which I saw in a New Orleans theater in 1975. I was 7. Had nightmares for months after.
“Worst movie” is a hard one to answer. “Scalps”…actually most ’80s slasher flicks. I know there are more, but I’m too tired to think and the thread’ll die while I sleep. “Scalps” really sucked, though.
Snarki, child of Loki
Luckily I didn’t pay to watch this turkey. It’s on one of the free apps. The price is my willingness to view a series of Slim Jim ads.
Late to the party, Betty…but when did you get shot up to The Satellite of Love?
And how are Crow and Tom Servo doing these days?
Don’t worry, NASA has a rescue mission planned. It’ll just take 3 or 4 seasons on Comedy Central before launch date. Good luck!
Laertes
@Culture of Truth:
Seconded. Gymkata is the worst movie of all time.
Some friends of mine and I were going to go to the movies. I wanted to see Defcon 4. They wanted to see Gymkata. They went along with my plan, and Defcon 4 was so bad that I apologized and we went right on to see Gymkata, which was even worse.
Anyway, that’s how I remember, to this day, that those two now-forgotten movies launched at more or less the same time.
BrianM
@Matt McIrvin: I agree about Fiend Without a Face. There’s something about the crawling brains that’s legitimately creepy.
Joel
Failed art-y movies are generally pretty bad.
I include self-aware camp in that category.
So, I’ll nominate “Office Killer”, a terrible farce starring Carol Kane and a pre-Sopranos Michael Imperioli. The only purpose of this movie, as far as I can tell, was to extend Molly Ringwald’s career a few more years.
Patricia Kayden
Hubby and I regrettably watched The Killer Inside Me. Usually, Casey Affleck is a great actor but the story was awful, misogynistic, and ultra violent. Only finished it because I wanted to see his character die.
shell
Hands down, ;Regarding Henry; (1991) A movie that puts forth the theory that all you have to do to become a good person, and decent father and husband is to get shot in the head and have your IQ drop to Forrest Gump levels.
boatboy_srq
@Kropadope: Lewis’ Telmarines were South Sea pirates, shipwrecked and marooned – until they found a portal to Narnia. Think Fletcher Christian and the Bounty. Walden Media’s Telmarines were Conquistadores, complete with dark complexions and phony accents and bad 16th century costuming. On one hand the film allowed some great cameos from otherwise-unknown-to-US-audiences Spanish, Italian and Latino actors; on the other it was a twist on classic Blaxploitation, and a very obvious dig at Catholicism in general and 15th-18th century Catholic colonization in particular. Losing the entire campaign Aslan took Susan and Lucy on to free Narnia behind the lines was a major misstep for anyone interested in the books – but “play” and “alcohol” and other subjects that Xtians view as taboo would have had to be discarded to stay “on message.”
Hunter
I don’t know about worst, but the only movie I ever walked out of was Sebastiani, a story about the life of St. Sebastian, directed by Fellini’s former cameraman, and it was horribly inept.
And about the stupidity: have you ever noticed how many horror movies and murder mysteries hinge on people doing stupid things? As in, “I’m on foot and this guy’s chasing me in his car, so I’m going to run down the middle of the road.”
shell
Talk about product placement. : Looks like flaming Slim Jims raining down in that poster.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig: Is this thing still on?
Yeah, we disagree here, and I think there are centuries of great arts criticism that communicates much about experiencing art.
No. This is the nonsense, which Farley nailed, in which people simply reel off a synopsis of a story or scene, and then gush about it. Despite the glories of the Internets, which permits all kinds of conversations, some of the lamest discussion about movies, tv shows, etc, too often comes down to “Wow, I really liked that!” or “that sucked!”
Just not true at all. There are too many examples of writers actually discussing their craft that easily contradicts you here.
I doubt that this is true. And the further back you go, the less likely you are going to find anything in which an artist leaves any information about ideas and work habits.
yodecat
Two of the worst movies I’ve ever seen: Robot Monster, featuring a guy in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet on his head and Play Dead, featuring a scene with me as a stand-in for Yvonne DeCarlo. I’m not kidding. Really.
bjacques
I don’t know if these were my worst, but they spring to mind.
Doom Generation was a turd of nihilism, and I like nihilism. This one just sucked the joy out of life.
Fearless Frank (1967), which I saw on late night TV in the early seventies. Starred Jon Voight. The DVD promotes it as “The Midnight Cowboy Rides Again” though this predates it by two years. IMDB lists Severn Darden, who I like. Nelson Algren (!), Saul Steinberg, and Ken Nordine as “The Stranger.” What I most remember about that movie, aside from the stilted camera work, come to think of it, was the narration, which was probably by Nordine, who was famous for word jazz (and classic ’70s Levi’s commercials).
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Brachiator:
I have heard heard multiple psych types say that the movie gets a lot of things right about basic psychology, and you can tell the movie is riffing off of somebody’s Ph.D. dissertation, But to claim it’s about “teen mental illness”…ugh. Riley isn’t any more mentally ill than any other 11-year-old in a similar situation, she’s just having coping issues. But it’s an interesting (and funny and incredibly sad) visualization of those coping issues.
This is one of those rare family movies where the grownups get more out of it than the kids.
feebog
I couldn’t remember the name of this turd last night, but it came to me this morning; Because of the Cats, an English movie made in 1973. Absolutely the worst.
Bitter Scribe
“The Betsy” (1978). The only redeeming feature was that a now-forgotten starlet named Kathleen Beller, whom I had a mad crush on at the time, did a nude scene. (She was later quoted as saying, “I really don’t like to act.” I’m sure she had this movie in mind.)
Also, “Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video” (1979). I rushed out to see it without waiting for reviews because I admired Michael O’Donoghue’s work in the National Lampoon so much. Big mistake. He could he funny as hell, but when he whiffed, he really whiffed.
Cpl. Cam
What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?” is a damn hard question. But the one that really stands out for me recently was “Pacific Rim.” Lots of people apparently loved this pile of garbage but it’s gotta be up there as far as “stupidest concepts ever fleshed out into big budget movies.” The execution may not have been as poor as classic choices like “Troll 2” or even “Battleship” but every second of the movie felt designed to insult my intelligence. I couldn’t finish it but that’s not saying a lot, I bail on a lot of movies.
richard crews
@Old Dan and Little Anne: I think you misunderstand what “bad” means. Gummo meant to impact you, and it did, I call that a success. Likewise, “Erasurehead” affected me, and I would NEVER recommend it to anyone; I don’t want me to be linked to their experience. But that movie meant to do that. So neither are “bad”.
Gummo could very well be a true reflection of a part of our society.
richard crews
as for recent movies, I nominate James Franco’s “Palo Alto” as a pointless tasteless waste of time. energy, film, and everything about it.
Steve A
Worst movie recently: “Whiplash”. This film did for jazz what “Mahler” did for classical music.
EthylEster
@Amir Khalid: Sir, I have often admired your contributions to this blog. But your disrespect toward Blade Runner has greatly increased my admiration! I thought I was the only person in the world who thought it was completely forgettable.
Barney
‘Inseminoid’ (released, apparently minus some of the more explicit scenes, in the US as ‘Horror Planet’):
somethingawful.com/movie-reviews/inseminoid-second-look/1/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inseminoid
The dialogue is truly appalling (though some of the actors are reasonably well known – Judy Geeson, Stephanie Beacham and Victoria Tennant) – perhaps not surprising since it was written by a husband-and-wife team who mainly did special effects. However, the special effects are atrocious too – no budget, I guess. The plot is a rip-off of Alien, but with, as the British title implies, alien insemination involved. I find it hard to believe the Wikipedia claim that “initial box office reception was positive both in the United Kingdom and overseas”. It would have been ripe for MST3K, but the underlying plot of a woman getting raped by an alien is just too unpleasant to make jokes over.
SFAW
@Steve A:
Watched it last night. I don’t have the hate for it that you do, but I thought the ending was utter bullshit, in multiple senses of the word. But J.K. Rowling’s performance was pretty good, although not what one would call nuanced. Rowling did a great job masking the Brit accent, and shaving her head and everything. I certainly wouldn’t have recognized her, without hearing about it before.
eyelessgame
@Kropadope:
Won’t comment on you and Omni flirting – though Christ get a room, you two – but Narnia.
I read the books as a kid. Loved Dawn Treader, was a sucker for anything “epic” so I liked the first and sixth (prequel) and seventh. More recently: I tried to get my kids to read LtWatW, but the setting was just too alien for them (Not Narnia, that was fine – I mean the Professor’s house in England). But a couple things about the series as an adult:
– Right at the beginning of the first book, the Professor’s absolutely fall-down hilarious abuse of the “Lord, Liar, Lunatic” trilemma (which is Lewis’ apparently sincere invention) to “prove” Lucy is telling the truth (and that therefore the back of the closet really does lead to another world) has to be the best unintentional disproof of the trilemma I’ve ever read. (The Professor, of course, is massively cheating, since he knows very well what’s going on, and is trying to bullshit the children with bad logic.)
– The horrifically cruel and misogynistic treatment of Susan in the last book – which I was put off by even when I read the books at age eleven – precludes any enjoyment of the series for me today.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Santa Claus vs. the Martians.
mclaren
@opiejeanne:
The movie you are thinking of is Green Mansions, 1959, starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima the Jungle Girl, Anthony Perkins as the heroic Caucasian hero, and Lee J. Cobb.
Still hasn’t been released on DVD, but it shows up from time to time on Turner Movie Classics. Not as good as the original Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forests (1904) by William Henry Hudson, but worth watching withal.
Peter VE
@efgoldman: Heaven’s Gate, and it’s cousin Ishtar (neither of which i have seen). I vote for the worst I’ve seen is the Poseidon Adventure, for balance between budget and inanity. I’ve seen Plan 9, but dollar for production dollar, it’s better than many others.
SFAW
@mclaren:
“Conquers,” not “vs.”
With the added bonus of having Pia Zadora in a quasi-lead role.
SFAW
@Peter VE:
I don’t know, Shelley Winters swimming underwater for three miles (more or less), to save the rest of the gang, may have been the best piece of cinema since Charlie Chaplin eating his shoe, or the Union-Station-steps part from Battleship Potemkin.
SFAW
@eyelessgame:
Best not. Little Boots will get jealous.
BowdoinGuy
I know I am ridiculously late to the party here, but ‘Nothing But Trouble’, with some big names (Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, John Candy) is probably my vote for the worst truly-wretched-no-redeeming-qualities film I have ever seen. I’ve made myself sit down and try to rewatch parts of it when I am channel surfing on cable and come across it (blessedly very infrequently), and the experience honestly makes me kind of queasy – Just one totally misconceived, whatever in the hell were they thinking, movies…
BowdoinGuy
Oh, and Joe vs. the Volcano totally rocks… :)