by hilzoy
Over at Crooked Timber they’re having a discussion of Movies To Avoid Watching Before You Die. The discussion there leads me to three conclusions about the commenters:
(1) They are, for the most part, young, as witness their focus on movies like Starship Troopers. If they were more antiquated, as I am, they could not possibly have failed to mention the worst movie of all time: Endless Love. The full plot summary, from IMDB:
“Two young kids fall in love with each other. But the passion is too consuming for the parents of Jade. The parents try to stop them from seeing each other. But when this doesn’t work David burns down the house and is sent away. This doesn’t stop him from seeing her. When he gets out he goes to look for her. But in the end the passion for his first love is too strong and she has to leave or this love will kill both of them.”
In addition to burning her house down and stalking her, David is partly responsible for the death of Jade’s father, and her mother tries to seduce him. (She saw the two of them making love, and realized wistfully how empty her own life was. So she decided to seduce her daughter’s boyfriend. Or something.) At the end, Jade says: “But mother, no one will ever love me like that again.” Inexplicably, she seems to think this is a bad thing, and the movie is set up in such a way as to make her seem right.
The only reason ever to watch this movie is if you find yourself wondering: gosh, I wonder why there is such a thing as feminism? Then again, how many people are truly in the dark on that one?
Oh, and did I mention that Jade is played by Brooke Shields? *Shudders.*
(2) The commenters at Crooked Timber never dated a movie critic. If, like me, they had, they might have seen a lot more truly bad movies. The one that sticks out in my mind is Leave It To Beaver. If, like most sane adults, you missed it, you can read the plot summary here and count your blessings.
Best line: Ward, who is sitting with Beaver inside an enormous golden teacup where Beaver has hidden: “You know what ‘unconditional love’ means, don’t you, Beav?”
(3) The commenters at Crooked Timber have never been conscripted into a movie while on kibbutz. I was. For one day, our work assignment was to be extras in a party scene shot in a building all covered with black cloth so that it would appear to be night. In Galilee. In July. Hahaha. One of the actors was supposed to play a guitar, but he couldn’t; I was playing it during the many, many interminable breaks, and at one point they turned on the cameras unexpectedly, shoved the guitar at me, and said “Play something!” For some reason that I have never been able to understand, the only thing that leapt to mind was Joni Mitchell’s ‘Circle Game’, and that’s how I, age 22, came to be immortalized on screen singing that particular song.
If the commenters at Crooked Timber had been in our party scene, they would not have nominated pikers like Starship Troopers or Vanilla Sky. They would have gone with Stigma, the 1981 Israeli movie whose party scene it was.
(If anyone knows how to get a copy of Stigma, please email me. I had the worst haircut of all time in that movie: I’m a complete sucker for inadvertent humor, and I was unable to resist the idea of getting my hair cut in a place with a sign that said: “Barber Saloon”, because it was so wonderful. During the party scene, I was still living with the results.)
Open thread.
If anyone knows how to get a copy of Stigma, please email me too. Before Hilzoy.
Lost In Space
Starship Troopers actually has a lot of merit, people in the US didn’t get it at the time, I think it would have a very different reception were it to come out now, post-9/11, post-Pat Tillman and all that.
Green Berets
Starship Troopers actually has a lot of merit
Any movie that puts Doogie Howser in a SS uniform has some merit. Plus, the CGI of the Bugs still holds up.
Yeah absolutely, the CGI in Starship Troopers looks great, I wonder why. So much better than most films even today. Spiderman, the Indy Jones etc., the CGI looks rubbish in most of these movies, I’ll never understand the hype.
I still kind of reeling that nobody is backing Showgirls.
I went to see that in the theater, opening night, with a bunch of crass heterosexual college guys, and we were left blubbering in our seats “No… more… breasts… I beg you!”
People may forget that even with all the sexual content it was meant to be a “serious drama”. It had a brutal gang rape scene that was I guess meant to be proactive but was just so appallingly bad that you couldn’t even believe it was happening.
Though I saw on wikipedia that apparently hipsters view it as campy midnight movie fodder… but I just can’t fathom watching that again to find out if it’s aged better than I think.
Er… that was meant to be “provocative” not “proactive”… not the typo I was looking for when discussing brutal gang rapes.
Cliffhanger stands out in my memory as something I wish I could scrub from my memory. Much much worse than Lost In Space.
Such merit as may exist in Starship Troopers is all in the shower scene.
hilzoy, Circle Game is a great song
we can’t go back
we can only look behind, from where we came
Worst movie ever?
I am going to nominate the 2008 Democratic Primary.
Terrible acting, horrible and tedious plot with racist and sexist subplots, it seemed to go on forever, the direction was hideous, was filled with horrible bit actors who constantly mangled their roles and their lines, and everyone I know hated it.
I hope I never see anything like it again.
I will never watch the movie Titanic.
1. Er…I have never my own self dated a film critic, but since I sometimes pretend to be one, I’m sure hilzoy will believe me when I say that Leave It to Beaver is just the tip of the Bad Movie Iceberg. Really. You were *lucky*.
Really…really really.
2. Simply as a curious data point re Endless Love, the film was based on a hugely praised “literary” novel, and was not, as I recall, all that unfaithful to it (except the book didn’t have Lionel Richie and Diana Ross). I frankly loathed both of them; in fact, I think I loathed the novel more.
3. And finally — as a belated b-day present — here is the info you desire: By an amazing coincidence it appears that Stigma is coming out on video in less than two weeks. That’s assuming it’s the *right* Stigma; there appear to have at least two Stigmas that year.
You could google on “Ot Kain DVD”. I have already forgotten, not only how to post links, but also where Gary directed to learn how, so until I really apply myself, suffice it to say that a quick trip to dvdpricesearch dot com will show a variety of prices and vendors.
Congo I think is the worst.
I actually didn’t hate Cliffhanger enough to put it in the bottom 100.
Scholar. Ethicist. Blogger. Domestic Political Activist. International Do-Gooder.
AND she knows how to play the guitar …?
Try here for the DVD
It would be impossible for me to single out any one bad film for special opprobrium — not only because there are so many but because they are bad in several different ways. If I had to name my *least* favorite of the past few years, Christmas with the Kranks would be a likely contender. It so offended me that I drove my friends crazy ranting about it.
When I first saw Starship Troopers, I walked in late, thus missing some moments of crucial context that, when I caught them, literally reversed my assessment. It’s really pretty great.
To really date myself I submit Neighbors with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as the worst movie I ever saw. It was truly awful.
Whoa. Two Dan Aykroyd films cited in two successive posts. Coincidence? Or trend?
The movie that I recall driving me closest to existential despair might have been _The Crow_. (The kind of movie about which Mick LaSalle of the SF Chronicle once said something like, “As you sit and watch, your mind starts to do the grim math. 30 years of life left . . . about 11,000 days . . . 263,000 hours of life left . . . and I spent two of them watching this??”) Although it was also, I can’t believe a young man died to make a movie as wretched as this.
AndyK: it was worth it 😉 . But Leave It To Beaver was truly awful.
I am so psyched about Stigma. I have pre-ordered it. I hope it is the right one. I had no idea it would ever make it to DVD.
“Dune” still ranks as the worst movie I ever paid full price for in a movie theater. It was one of my first dates with the gentleman who is now my husband, and we wouldn’t have stayed until the end except I was telling him “it’s going to rain! it’s going to rain!” and he thought that was preposterous. We were both right, of course.
If you haven’t paid full price, you haven’t *really* suffered. Especially these days.
Tee hee. The one on Amazon is the right Stigma.
This has made my year.
The book Congo was wretched: formulaic, woodenly-written, badly-plotted, far below the already-mediocre quality of Crichton’s earlier work.
going for three:
My Stepmother is an Alien
disagree on Congo. It’s got some of the best dialog ever. “Follow the gorilla. I don’t have her passion.” and from Laura Linney no less. “Freed from the chains of Ceausescu”. A pricelessly bad Romanian accent, from Tim Curry no less.
ah nuts. my prior was supposed to follow AndyK’s comment. too slow.
Congo is pretty awful, but it *does* have Ernie Hudson’s wonderful performance.
Dune is a mess, but what floats in David Lynch’s toilet is *still* more interesting than many of these films.
Congo is wonderful cheese, and not only is Hudson’s performance great, but so is Tim Curry’s scenery-chewing. Plus: Joe Don Baker. Plus: Bruce Campbell in a bit part.
I offer the Dan Ackroyd/Chevy Chase megaflop Nothing But Trouble as One To Avoid (though watching truly bad movies has its own pleasure, in the MST3K sense.) A remarkably strange and repellent moviegoing experience.
I can’t be the only person here who loves Dune, surely. The production design was incredible, the interiors that mixed imperial Europe with space opera. I love the rocking music too.
No no, Dune is wonderful. Probably my favorite Lynch (proving I am not a true Lynchead.)
Oh! Life Is Beautiful! The concentration camp comedy. Avoid at all costs.
300 is probably the most terrible thing I’ve seen recently, I literally found that unwatchable, and I’ve been known to watch all kinds of trash, especially when stuck on a long-haul flight as in this case. I think every single line of dialogue was yelled, at least every second shot was gratuitous slo-mo. To call the political-psychological subtext puerile would be an insult to mindless angry young boys.
Sure, yeah. Many of those movies are bad. But how many movies, in addition to being bad by every conceivable artistic measure, are also morally evil? I submit Aquamarine.
David Kilmer: moral evil is one of the many reasons why I go with Endless Love.
Where’s Gary. Any true Heinlein fan has to rate Starship Troopers as one of the worst movies of all time. And I read the book about 1974, a full seven years before Stigma. The movie may be new, but the book’s a different story.
Hilzoy – I will have to take your word for it, because honestly, I did not make it through much of Endless Love. There must have been a documentary on about Zachary Taylor or something.
Also – You forgot to mention the “David” character’s last name.
OMGOMGOMG -“Barber Saloon”!
Another cringeworthy movie that my family has an inordinately sentimental attachment to is “The Natural”. Toward the end, Robert Redford says to Glenn Close: “Some mistakes you never stop paying for.” which is what I thought about when I read about “Barber Saloon caught on film!”
“Dune” for us crashed on the rock of “nothing like the book”. Also, when the Director’s Cut begins with a *45-minute voice-over* explaining what’s going on, You’re Doing It Wrong.
Howard the Duck
The scene where she pulls the condom out of his little duck wallet. Vomit vomit vomit.
Nashville Girl
Seen as part of one of Quentin Tarantino’s film fests at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin as part of an “Exploitation All-Nighter”, and it pretty much killed my will to stay for the rest of the night. (I did stick around for the following feature, “Death Collector”, which has the distinction of being Joe Pesci’s debut, and which wasn’t half bad, but I bailed after that.) Nashville Girl begins and ends with nasty rape scenes, and is punctuated throughout with some of the worst country music ever. SO. BAD. In SO MANY WAYS.
Ah, damnit. Two people using the same handle round here (we’re both named Francis – or at least I am and I assume the same is true of the other one).
/me switches handle to Francis D
Uh. Crash. Crash. Crash.
I’ve seen movies that have sucked. I’ve never taken in a film that made me livid, tho. not like Crash.
Perhaps I’m dating myself too, but a list of films to die before seeing that doesn’t include anything directed by Ken Russell. Surely not!
Which “Crash”, G.D.? 1996 or 2004?
I thought The Crow was good stuff – still do.
The sequel, OTOH … god, it was awful stuff.
The commenters at Crooked Timber never dated a movie critic. If, like me, they had, they might have seen a lot more truly bad movies.
My degree is in film and I worked for film distributors for five years. I saw some truly dreadful crap, including a softcore porn film called Chatterbox. I’ll leave it to your imagination.
Every year we used to go to the Independent Film Project to see films for potential acquisition. Some were good, some were hideous – and I’m being charitable.
to the other Francis — my initials are FDL (which made the launch of the firedoglake blog a little disconcerting). Any further modification of your identity possible?
Hillary Clinton just conceded!
Boy oh boy, talk about wishful thinking.
Goddamn you The Modesto Kid!
Well I thought she conceded! It seemed to me like she had just said “I’m going to do what’s best for the Party” and since that obviously means she’s removing herself from the race, I got all ecstatic and then she went on talking about what a great candidate she is, and then about ten minutes later she said “and that’s why I’m not making any decisions just yet.” What the @#$@#%!(??
Starship Troopers is better understood as a commentary on the book than as a movie version of the book.
togolosh:
What comment is the movie *making*, do you think?
Am I the only one the remembers Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band?
George Burns singing Beatle’s songs.
Starship Troopers actually has a lot of merit, people in the US didn’t get it at the time,
Gotta disagree on this one. Yeah, I got the subtext about fascist government, the critique of jingoism, the satire of mass media, etc. I just didn’t think any of it was very subtle, insightful, or effective, and a limp-wristed stab at depth isn’t nearly enough to make up for the fact that the rest of the movie is a mind-numbing orgy of gratuitous violence, T&A, and terrible acting. If you want to watch a smart, fiercely intelligent action/war movie from that era rent Three Kings. Starship Troopers is something fratboy film students would come up with after an all-night bong bender. Certainly not the worst film of all time, but hardly good.
My nominations for movies I wish I had never watched:
1.)Swordfish. Just awful. Oozes contempt for the audience with one long, cynical pander to the lowest common denominator after another, as if the filmmakers were checking off a list, in addition to the standard incomprehensibly stupid plot, and lousy acting all around.
2.)Battlefield Earth. Rented this one with a bunch of friends in college because we thought it’d be a hoot to make fun of, but it wasn’t. Overbearing, headache-inducing soundtrack, cheesy special effects, and junior high drama club caliber script and acting that makes you wince rather than laugh. (These two selections, along with other dreck like Wild Hogs, are why John Travolta is possibly my least favorite actor in Hollywood).
3.)Pearl Harbor. This one does have some unintentional comedy value, but since you’ve got to sit through three hours of explosion-porn, Ben Affleck, and romantic dialogue that sounds like it was penned by George Lucas to get to it, it’s not worth it. As an effort to make a “serious” film it’s perhaps the hackiest effort in the oeuvre of hack’s hack Michael Bay.
I watched this one from beginning to end one night after finding it on Comcast Digital OnDemand. I love zombie movies, but this one is truly awful. I only watched the whole thing because I couldn’t stop, being aflicted with Amazement of the Badness. Half of the movie was shot in a warehouse – the same warehouse – from what I could tell, regardless of the diversity of the intended settings. Sorry for being too lazy to link; I don’t have my HTML cheat-sheet on hand.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463392/
Uh. Crash. Crash. Crash.
Oooh, forgot about this one. Easily the worst Best Picture winner ever for my money.
Oh, and does anyone remember The Hand with Michael Caine?
hairshirthedonist,
Directed by Oliver Stone
I saw some truly dreadful crap, including a softcore porn film called Chatterbox.
This is the movie about the woman with the talking vagina, yes?
My one and only comment on Starship Troopers: Anyone who does not have fun watching this movie hates the entire concept of fun. And I’m not at all certain how to account for the opinion of someone who voluntarily contributed money or time to view Swordfish, Battlefield Earth OR Pearl Harbor, or any combination thereof, and expected them to be anything but unmitigated garbage.
That said, the worst movie I’ve seen in recent years — it was on my Netflix list, and I watched it with extremely low expectations — was Transformers. Absolutely terrible even by the standards of movies based on cartoons based on toys.
for a long time, i hated the movie “Independence Day” for both being incredibly stupid and hackneyed and for being a sci-fi movie (I love sci-fi) that was stupid. i felt patronized; in hindsight, i was being a bit of a snob. it’s kind of a fun movie.
i continue to hate the movie “The Patriot”. i thought it felt like emotional blackmail, and i had a very strong negative reaction to it in the theater. probably not the worst movie i’ve seen, but the one i’ve had the worst reaction to– i felt personally really insulted, i guess because i’m a real patriot and this was using cheap “patriotism” as a tear-jerker. rant over 🙂
And I’m not at all certain how to account for the opinion of someone who voluntarily contributed money or time to view Swordfish, Battlefield Earth OR Pearl Harbor, or any combination thereof, and expected them to be anything but unmitigated garbage.
With the exception of Battlefield Earth (which was a rental, hence involving a minimum investment), no money was involved – I saw Swordfish on DVD (my friend was unfortunate enough to receive it as a Christmas present) and Pearl Harbor on TV. As for time, yes, I did make an investment, which I regret, but that’s the whole point of this thread, correct? 😉 Note also that I saw all three of these in college, expecting them to be garbage, but garbage mitigated by ironic entertainment value (which they weren’t). I did a lot of things that wasted time/money and which I now regret when I was in college.
I’d like to hear you mount a serious argument as to why Starship Troopers is less of a piece of crap than these three, or Transformers, for that matter. The only arguments I’ve ever heard in its defense are 1.)”it’s got a sharp critique of right wing government buried within” (which I already noted I didn’t find particularly sharp, and certainly wouldn’t be fun, even if it were sharp), and 2.)”it’s so bad it’s good” (which it’s not, IMO, but is a pretty weak rationale for spending two of your precious hours on earth watching it in any case).
Directed by Oliver Stone
I had no idea. He’s done a few bad ones, but still – all the more delicious.
>>a mind-numbing orgy of gratuitous violence, T&A, and terrible acting.
You say that like it’s a *bad* thing. There are days when the films are so dull I’d sell my birthright for some of that there pottage.
>>2.)Battlefield Earth. Rented this one with a bunch of friends in college because we thought it’d be a hoot to make fun of, but it wasn’t.
Here’s where you got suckered: Unless they’ve put out a new edition, the DVD of BE was NOT the theatrical release, which was so humorously embarrassing that it was recut. Removing the film’s “worst” elements diminished its pleasures.
More really awful films are leaping to mind, sadly. Some movies (like Christmas with the Kranks) offend me morally; others offend me aesthetically (like Perfect Stranger, the Halle Berry/Bruce Willis thing). I’m not sure which variety of offense makes me angrier.
It purported to be mindless CGI porn, and it did its job alright. Fully agreed w/ you re: Starship Troopers, though.
The first movie I walked out on, and still ranks as the worst in my book, is Speed. A black hole of stupid, making everything around it dumber.
If you hated The Hand, be sure to miss Stone’s very first feature, Seizure (aka Queen of Evil, aka Tango Macabre)! With Jonathan Frid, Martine Beswick, Troy Donahue, Mary Woronov, and Herve Villechaize!
Whoa! Duuuude!
>>The first movie I walked out on, and still ranks as the worst in my book, is Speed. A black hole of stupid, making everything around it dumber.
It must have done that to me, because I thought it was great. Made my Top Ten list and all.
Talk to Her.
Any movie which:
1) asks me to have sympathy with a creepy retarded boy as he stalks and then fondles a girl in a coma
2) attempts to impart serious dramatic themes via a giant claymation vagina (complete with a little guy running around in the pubes)
should come with a warning label.
In fact, I think this rule could reasonably be extended to any non-satirical use of a giant claymation vagina.
I just edited the Leave it to Beaver Wikipedia entry. Some smartass had shifted a comma. I could not bear the thought of anyone actually believing that smegma-encrusted rag of a film earned over a hundred million domestically.
Did anyone notice that the full name of the lead male character in Endless Love is David Axelrod? Weird.
Sure, yeah. Many of those movies are bad. But how many movies, in addition to being bad by every conceivable artistic measure, are also morally evil?
Many movies are morally evil. The one that I found most offensive was “Mississippi Burning.” The plot is basically Jack Bauer joins the Civil Rights movement. Seriously! It’s all about how a couple of Jack Bauer type FBI agents torture evil rednecks to advance the cause of the Civil Rights movement. No ticking bomb, even.
Count me with the people who hate “Dune.” My understanding is that it was a 5 hour movie that the directors had to cut down to 2 hours. My family compared it to cutting a 500 page book to 200 pages by cutting out 3/5 of each page — they left enough of each subplot to tantalize a little, but not enough to actually go anywhere. That may be why the whole thing was basically incomprehensible to anyone who had not read the book.
“If they were more antiquated, as I am, they could not possibly have failed to mention the worst movie of all time: Endless Love.”
I take it you’ve never seen Plan 9 From Outer Space, or any other Ed Wood film?
“3) The commenters at Crooked Timber have never been conscripted into a movie while on kibbutz. I was.”
I bet you’ve never been conscripted into a movie (video, technically, in 1976) where you’re handed a broom, and told you’re being chased by a giant time traveling blancmange, and to act according to The Method, and show your fear.
I was. Just sayin’.
The movie: “Starship Troopers actually has a lot of merit”
If you care nothing for the book, or anything resembling sense, sure. Red Mike got it right.
Geez, Chasing Amy is one of my top fifty favorite films of all time, and a favorite of innumerable Kevin Smith fans.
I guess we should all stop now.
“Any further modification of your identity possible?”
With due respect, if you use a perfectly common name, alone, as a handle, what do you expect everyone else who thinks they’ll never, in the whole internet, run into one of the other people with that handle, to do? Is it a surprise that there is more than one “Francis,” or Frank, Jim, Jane, Sarah, Fred, Sam, Jennifer, Joan, Sandra, etc., around?
What are people thinking when they pick a name they know lots of other people are going to use? That they’ll never be anywhere another person with that name, and lack of thinking, will be? Or what?
“Anyone who does not have fun watching this movie hates the entire concept of fun.”
Or had the faintest interest in Robert Heinlein, or didn’t hate the book.
“The one that I found most offensive was ‘Mississippi Burning.'”
Yes! The movie that turned Hoover’s FBI, the one that for most of its history only had as an African-American agent, Hoover’s valet, the FBI that engaged in COINTELPRO, that was involved in the targeted killing of Black Panther leaders, that furiously worked to “prove” that all civil rights leaders were communists led by the Soviet union, that bugged Martin Luther King having extra-marital sex, and sent him the tape with an anonymous note suggesting he commit suicide, and sent the tape to several journalists, the FBI that was Hoover’s perverse tool to crush the civil rights movement — that FBI — is turned into a fictional hero of the Goodman, Schwerner, Chaney, murders.
A more disgusting Big Lie is hard to find in any “historical” movie, and there are some real contenders.
“The first movie I walked out on, and still ranks as the worst in my book, is Speed.”
That’s just bizarre, because it’s so utterly subjective: it was a hit movie, both critically and at the box office, so while you’re 100% entitled to your own opinion, putting it up as any sort of objective worse — and I do see tht you wrote “in my book,” of course — seems rather odd.
Besides, compared to Speed 2? That’s better? Are you kidding. (I know, you never saw it, but we are supposed to be talking about the worst, not “the movie I personally disliked the most,” I thought.)
Personally, I’d stick to movies that are objectively technically That Bad, or to movies that so utterly fail to meet the director’s intentions, rather than by any sort of subjective criteria, but that’s me, again, all over.
If the question was “which movies did I hate most of all?” or “which movies did i find most boring?,” I’d give a different answer than to the question seemingly put here. Though I see that the CT header is “101 Movies to avoid watching before you die,” which leaves me highly unclear as to what, exactly, is being categorized or solicited: according to whom?
Taste is, after all, completely subjective, and inarguable.
“It’s all about how a couple of Jack Bauer type FBI agents torture evil rednecks”
But wait, that’s not true. Neither Gene Hackman nor and Willem Dafoe use any violence at any time. They do bully and use harsh words, but torture? Am I forgetting something? Always possible, and I suppose I must be.
“Jack Bauer”? In what sense?
Haha. Hilzoy, that’s a great story. ( I’ve been roped into some cameos, mainly dead and dying soldiers in period films. I like yours better.) Please post the video when you get it!
Gary, in Mississippi Burning they copter in a black agent to threaten one of the rednecks with torture near the end. It’s a bluff, but an effective tactic for them in the movie.
I had a friend in college who wrote a paper on that film and its historical accuracy — for instance, apparently James Chaney, was driving the car, but in the film they put him in the back seat. My friend used it as a perfect metaphor for the film as a whole – putting blacks in the back seat. Director Alan Parker apparently was aware of some of the problems with the film, but still felt it was important and that he had to make compromises to get it made at the time. I find the film problematic, but I do know some people who had a powerful experience seeing it. So my main concern is about people who don’t go beyond the film to learn more.
I actually have a soft spot for Dune, not that I think it’s a great film. My younger brother and I used to play the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game, except with Dune, because, well, that’s the type of geeks we were (err, are).
Battlefield Earth is pretty damn bad. I won it this year as the Oscar Pool prize. But I was sorta fascinated by its awfulness. The people I watched it with did not feel as charitable. What I loved about that film is that, when it came out, even all the suck-up Hollywood shows felt comfortable trashing it.
“Jack Bauer”? In what sense?
Maybe torture is an exaggeration. They have a large black guy pull out a razor and threaten to castrate one of the conspirators in order to make him give up the plot. (Granted he does not actually do it, but the credible threat is bad enough). They also ask a store keeper for change and then threaten to slam the cash register door on his hand in order to make him step outside so his fellow Klansmen will see him talking to the FBI.
I’m sorry, to do these things when a nuclear bomb is about to blow up Los Angeles is bad enough. To do them in the name of civil rights is grotesque beyond description.
“If they were more antiquated, as I am, they could not possibly have failed to mention the worst movie of all time: Endless Love.”
I take it you’ve never seen Plan 9 From Outer Space, or any other Ed Wood film?
I think perhaps the bar needs to be set differently for Ed Wood than it does for Franco Zefferelli. IMHO at least.
Also, this:“Anyone who does not have fun watching this movie hates the entire concept of fun.”
Or had the faintest interest in Robert Heinlein, or didn’t hate the book.
My suggestion to everyone, everywhere, at any time, ever, who goes to a movie expecting to see a book that they have read and enjoyed: Re-read the book instead. Otherwise you are generally going to be sorely disappointed in one manner or another.
Starship Troopers is much better after you realise it’s supposed to be a part of the world it depicts. It’s the war propoganda movie from that world. And if you say it’s far too over the top to be effective even in that world, Rupert Murdoch has a media empire that would disagree with you.
OK, to expand on a few of those now that I’ve showered:
1. Xeynon, I was just yanking your chain about those three movies. I certainly didn’t mean for it to be a serious look at your judgment and taste.
2. My opinion of Troopers — and I’ll state that I’ve never read the book, but doubt I’d feel much differently if I had, as, again, book, movie, different things — is that it’s in such gleefully bad taste that it approaches a mid-period John Waters movie; it has well-executed action sequences and clever creature design; and it uses American action-movie and war-movie tropes against its own genre in a way that Michael Haneke might be capable of if he weren’t a humorless scold.
Plus, it has Michael Ironside saying, “It sucked his brains!” That’s capital-F Fun and capital-C Camp right there, and if you don’t like it, well, I guess you don’t like it, but to me, them’s good times.
3. The reason people jump so easily to stuff like Plan 9, Gary, is – IMHO – largely due to conventional wisdom. I’m willing to bet that a large proportion of the people who use that as their go-to “worst movie” have never even seen it and are instead relying on the opinions of tastemakers. Certainly, neither it or any other Ed Wood joint are objectively any worse than the dozens of pieces of drive-in fodder that appeared on MST3K over the years. Hell, at least Ed Wood had vision of a sort — Coleman Francis’s cinematic abortions are an order of magnitude worse than anything Wood ever tried. And most Roger Corman movies are not “good” under any objective standards, but many are revered for their cleverness and efficiency, and their reputations as incubators for people who went on to become major industry talents.
And, again, I set the bar differently for people shooting movies in 10 days for $100,000 and where the cast is also the crew than I do differently for a studio-financed picture involving millions of dollars and hundreds of skilled craftsmen. To me, there was no reason whatsoever for an incomprehensibly stupid piece of navel-gazing like Ocean’s 12 to ever appear on the screen. It’s objectively bad, and a waste of anyone’s time. The entire cast are dumber for having participated.
To me, a bad movie is one that fails the Gene Siskel rule: Is this movie more interesting than watching a movie of its cast having lunch together?
4. Finally, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a “worst movie,” any more than there’s anything like a “best movie.” There’s only movies you like, and movies you don’t. But for contrast, perhaps some of those who have posted could name what they feel is the best movie ever. Or, if they’ve only been naming “bad movies,” then some counterexample “good movies.”
Oh, and a last word on Transformers: I’ve got a pretty big TV at home — 50″ — and I watched the movie on HD-DVD, and I was appalled at how clumsily the blocking and framing of some of the action was done. I know I shouldn’t expect otherwise from Michael Bay and his average 1.5 second shot length, but I literally cannot imagine watching that film on anything less than a 40″ screen and expecting the action to make any sense whatsoever. The attack on the military base, when not being shot in frenetic closeups of explosions, had its action so deep in the background you’d be unable to see anything at all on a smaller TV.
Re-read the book instead.
Very true, or they could watch one of these boring BBC literary adaptions. But I’m afraid this particular misunderstanding disregarding the different nature of the two art forms will be with us forever.
I suffer from severe trashophilia cinematica myself and many “bad” movies are actually extremly entertaining. Really bad movies are often not B but A category (and might have been acceptable without the ambition*).
The greatest contrast between ambition and effort on the one side and results on the other I have seen for quite a long time is Das Mädchen Johanna (Joan the girl), the Nazi made version of the Joan of Arc story. That was a prestige project with the creme de la creme of German actors etc. The script turns almost everyone into pure caricatures and the only one who is able to retain at least a shred of credibility is Gründgens. Joan is turned into a pure minor character with a minimum of dialogue (most of it consisting of the same two phrases repeated again and again) and she is just a useful tool, not a “mover” at all.
While I am at the topic of nazi movies: the (in)famous Jud Süß is in my opinion also a not just morally repellent but also extremly badly made movie. It only works (and even then just barely), if one already believes its premise. Some scenes also make sense only, if one knows the British movie Jew Suess it was the answer to (starring Conrad Veidt who delivers a stellar performance).
—
As for US movies: look for the pseudo-Japanese “I tie your shoe, you tie my shoe” of WW2 era war movies
*A good claim could be made that Godzilla works perfectly well when done tongue-in-cheek with rubber suits but completely fails, if taken into “serious” (budget) territory
I was unable to resist the idea of getting my hair cut in a place with a sign that said: “Barber Saloon”, because it was so wonderful
The drunken barbers strike again!
Thanks –
“Dune” still ranks as the worst movie I ever paid full price for in a movie theater.
“Gwendoline” or “The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak”, stands as the worst film that I’ve seen in a theater. “Nothing But Touble” was truly awful, but that at least I saw that on cable.
Among the worst historical movies, “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, with John Wayne as a centurion rates admission to the pantheon, though contenders abound.
“Dune” was a travesty for all fans of the book.
Gary, many Ed Wood films arguably rate as Great Bad Cinema, but then I admit a perverse appreciation for “Re-Animator”.
But “Re-Animator” is unimpeachably great!!
Is this Stigma? Apparently AKA Ot Kain?
Looks like it is available online.
Lifeforce will just suck the life-force out of you.
Maximum Overdrive is one of the few movies I’ve walked out of. Craptastic!
I agree with a few of Xeynon’s choices above; Swordfish was just horrible. But I give extra credit for bad physics. Battlefield Earth was so bad I couldn’t watch it all at once. And, of course, I think Starship Troopers was just awful. It captured practically none of the goodness of the original Heinlein story, and what it did capture, it tritened. If that’s a word. As Phil suggested, though, it probably had a different appeal if you’d never read the book.
The old version of Dune sucked, but at least we had the movie-trivia goodness of sandworm segments made from condoms. The newer version of Dune was, on the other hand, outstanding. IMO, of course.
Perils of Gwendoline is evil, and must be destroyed. I’ve never seen a (non-porn) movie before where the plot was practically written around making sure the heroine stays topless for as much of the movie as possible.
With some exceptions, possibly. Shawshank Redemption was better than the source material, but I think that was actually a short story, or possibly a novella. 2001, more fittingly. Although with the movie, you can’t quite understand what’s happening as well as if you’ve already read the book.
That’s capital-F Fun and capital-C Camp right there, and if you don’t like it, well, I guess you don’t like it, but to me, them’s good times.
That’s Starship Troopers, the movie, encapsulated. It’s just so deliciously over the top. It might have been an accident, but Verhoeven captured the same atmosphere in Robocop, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
With some exceptions, possibly.
I’d nominate Witness for the Prosecution as another exception. (The Hayes Code dictated a change in the ending, which actually improved the story, in my view.) Another short story; I suspect that’s not an accident.
“The Hayes Code dictated a change in the ending, which actually improved the story, in my view.”
What was the original ending?
The short story ended with the revelation that Christine (Marlene Dietrich) knew that Vole (Tyrone Power) was guilty.
Slartibartfast,
Lifeforce at least had the benefit of Matilda May and an incredibly low budget for her wardrobe.
That was its sole redeeming feature, though. It made for a rather hilarious Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-in, as I recall.
She kind of wiped Patrick Stewart’s presence from the film entirely. Even now, I can barely remember that he was in the film.
I can think of another excellent page-to-screen adaptation: The Maltese Falcon. All of the action and snappy dialogue is right there in Hammett’s original.
Candy The synopsis doesn’t do it justice.
“My suggestion to everyone, everywhere, at any time, ever, who goes to a movie expecting to see a book that they have read and enjoyed: Re-read the book instead. Otherwise you are generally going to be sorely disappointed in one manner or another.”
I wouldn’t disagree at all, but I do have more to say than that.
I could write a long essay about the perils of book-to-film, and what can and can’t be done. As it happens, I spent years working both as a freelancer and as an inhouse editor on the job of, among other duties, reading thousands of movie scripts with the goal of sorting out those worth buying the rights to novelize, assigning a writer, or advising on it, and either doing further work on getting the novel done and out, or handing off the project to someone else after we’ve bought the novelization rights.
So even if I weren’t an amateur student of this stuff, I’ve had long occasion to give it a lot of thought. And I’m not going to write about most of that stuff here and now.
But in short, if you want to see most of the plot of a piece of text, it’s very hard to get that into a film unless you’re working from a short story.
Then, there are all sorts of kinds of writing, and that which is plot and character heavy can translate well into film, or one can simply lift the themes, and preserve one essence of the text.
But fiction whose main strength is that of the prose, rather than the plot, that is writerly, rather than a potboiler, won’t translate other than thematically, or through a lot of filters.
And, of course, films do very different work than text.
And so, yes, I couldn’t agree more that one can’t go looking for a film from a text to simply be a reproduction of the text.
But having said that, it’s one thing to use a text as a lift-off point for an idea for a film, and another to try to seriously adapt it, and in cases where the main appeal of the text is that it’s a book or story beloved by millions of people, it’s usually wisest to either: a) make something so different of the film that you’d never really dream of directly comparing the two, save by noting some bits in common; or b) stay reasonably close to what’s important and what was valued in the text.
Starship Troopers, love it or hate it, was a serious book, as well as an adventure, and it had serious things to say. It’s a much misunderstood book, and a book much over-praised and over-criticized. It’s fine to hate it if you hate it while understanding it well.
But what the film did was make a mockery of the book, to say that the story was the opposite of what it was, and that’s pretty sickening to anyone who found anything of value in the book. It trashed the book, and that hurts if you have any fondness for any of the good aspects of the book, and it doesn’t just make the themes of the book not just pointless, but is a complete attack on them.
Lastly, as you might note if you read Jim MacDonald’s review, it makes no sense whatever as any kind of military adventure, since everyone in the film acts like an idiot, and these people are the most incompetent folks to be in any military since F Troop and McHale’s Navy. Worse.
Of course, since you care not about the book, and about the author, it’s fine for you to love what you love about the film. More power to you.
But the film wouldn’t exist without the book, the film was sold as the film of the book, and the film trashed the book. That’s real, too, and so I have to disagree when you use phrasing like “Anyone who does not have fun watching this movie hates the entire concept of fun.” Because that’s just not true, and you’re disparaging people who disagree with you. That’s unnecessary, and that’s all I’m saying.
Me, I’d still like to see a film of the book someday (for chrissakes, do we really need yet another remake of Dune?), since one has never been made.
Oh, and I was watching Ed Wood movies in 1971, including Plan 9; we’re not all just followers of popular wisdom.
“To me, there was no reason whatsoever for an incomprehensibly stupid piece of navel-gazing like Ocean’s 12 to ever appear on the screen.”
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the actors having a good time, and doing some fun acting things, and I laughed a lot.
I guess I shouldn’t have. I was equally wrong the second time I saw it, too. I’m just dumb.
i continue to hate the movie “The Patriot”.
I was watching “The Patriot” on TV, and was appalled. The “hero” thinks it’s fine for every other person to be harassed by the British, but as soon as anything happens to his kid, he’s at war. That’s NOT a patriot. Not even a little bit.
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Perils of Gwendoline is evil, and must be destroyed. I’ve never seen a (non-porn) movie before where the plot was practically written around making sure the heroine stays topless for as much of the movie as possible.
Was it sold as anything other than sexploitation? It seems to me that it’s more a case of you not being the target audience.
============
Every once in a while, a very decent film is made that’s true to the book. Two example: “Gorky park” and “Hunt for Red October”.
“But for contrast, perhaps some of those who have posted could name what they feel is the best movie ever.”
I don’t play “best” or “worst” games, myself.
But some of my favorite movies, just off the top of my head, and forgetting lots of them, because there are so very many, in no order whatever: The Royal Tennenbaums, Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, Batman Begins, Broadcast News, Chasing Amy, Raising Arizona, The Commitments, all the Star Wars films, Star Trek II, ST: Final Contact, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, Annie Hall, The Wind And The Lion, Manhattan, Sleeper, Love and Death, Mean Streets, The Man Who Would Be King, Love, Actually, Ghost World, Lost In Translation, A Hard Day’s Night, Almost Famous, Buckaroo Banzai, My Man Godfrey, It Happened One Night, Philadelphia Story, Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Reds, Free Enterprise, look, I have a few hundred Top Favorite films, ok? The list goes on and on and on.
And that’s not even including tv, like The Wire, neo-Battlestar Galactica, Deadwood, Hill Street Blues, etc., etc.
I’d be curious to know what people think about The Shining as a film adaptation of a book. Here something from King:
I personally think The Shining is a fabulous horror film, and that it did a reasonably good job of staying true to the book to the extent that that could be done while still producing a good film.
my favorites, possibly forgetting a few: Some Like It Hot, Cold Comfort Farm, Strictly Ballroom, Singin’ in the Rain, The Princess Bride, Dave, Coming to America, Spies Like Us, Real Genius, Airplane!, Tommy Boy, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Palm Beach Story, The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Born Yesterday, Stardust, Dear Frankie, Legally Blonde, My Neighbor Totoro, and all things Bond.
Of course, since you care not about the book, and about the author, it’s fine for you to love what you love about the film. More power to you.
Um, who said I “care not about the author?” (Besides you, just now, that is.) Stranger in a Strange Land and The Door Into Summer are among my favorite books in the genre. Don’t make assumptions, Gary, simply because I said I’d never read Troopers.
Oh, and I was watching Ed Wood movies in 1971, including Plan 9; we’re not all just followers of popular wisdom.
I, of course, never said that everyone was a follower of popular wisdom. I said that many are. I certainly didn’t say that you were, so why you felt it necessary to disclaim that you aren’t, I have no idea. Perhaps you were responding to someone who claimed you had never seen Ed Wood’s movies?
I also said that Wood’s films are frequently cited as “worst ever” by people who have never even seen them, thanks to the self-reinforcing pervasiveness of their appearances on “worst ever” lists; and that they’re aren’t objectively worse than other films of their era and ambitions.
I guess I shouldn’t have [enjoyed Ocean’s 12]. I was equally wrong the second time I saw it, too. I’m just dumb.
I’ll point out that the sentence of mine to which you’re responding, here, began with the words, “To me,” which have an actual, objective meaning in the English language, and refer only to my feelings; and they make no implications at all, whatsoever, in any way, about how you do or should feel about Ocean’s 12 or anything else at all. Had I wanted to do that, I would have said “to you,” which would have course been stupid, as I have no way of knowing, without you telling me, whether or not you enjoyed the movie. You did? Super! I didn’t. As I said.
(Yes, yes, I made objective claims about the entire cast being endumbened by participation, etc. Clearly hyperbole.)
(Isn’t this boring and tendentious when you’re on the other end of it?)
Apropos of the tangent the discussion has taken, I recommend Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen: 35 Great Stories That Have Inspired Great Films. Many of the stories therein have been long out of print, and are given some context vis a vis their relations to the movies they inspired.
Gigli — that narcissistic J. Lo and Ben Affleck trash. (Affleck sucks overall).
and anything with Steven Segal.
Anything with Jean Claude Van Damme.
“Shawshank Redemption was better than the source material,”
The movie of The Player was better than the novel, and it was a good novel.
TSR was from the Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which I haven’t read. Good movie, though.
“2001, more fittingly. Although with the movie, you can’t quite understand what’s happening as well as if you’ve already read the book.”
As it happens, I had the odd experience of seeing 2001 on the weekend of its opening release, at its premiere theater in NYC, at the age of nine and a half, having made my father take me to it as the most important movie I would ever want to see, and after it was over, and grownups all around us were expressing bafflement and confusion and disgust, I ended up starting to explain it to them, and found myself with a whole cluster of 14 grownups surrounding me in a circle, as I piped up in my childish voice with stuff like “no, you see, Dave was taken through a hyperspatial transport system — that was the lights, and it was non-Euclidian multiple dimensions — by the aliens behind the monolith, which was their tool, and aged and transformed into a higher state of evolutionary being — that was the glowing em-bree-oh and then he…,” and so on.
If the book was released before the movie — and I don’t recall, and don’t want to check right now, but it probably was — than I most likely had already read the book, though. But it was obvious stuff to any sf reader, and I was already an expert on sf by that age.
It’s a typical example of the way sf tropes can’t be read by those unfamiliar with them, though. Which is part of why it’s so hard to make a true and good sf film, and there are only a handful of actual good actual science fiction movies.
I had a number of experiences like that with a kid. I was always frustrated that hardly any grownups seemed to understand anything — like time dilation, or genetics, or… anything! — since there were obviously lots of smart grownups who wrote all these books I read. But I hardly ever seemed to meet any of them.
Until I was older, and found sf fandom.
The Patriot, while not a bad film qua film — and Mississippi Burning is a very good film qua film, I think — it’s just appalling “history” — is also terrible history, as it turns the British into near Nazi-knock-offs, and invents all sorts of atrocities that the British never committed. Any student of history, let alone any Briton, has a right to be offended and appalled at it for that.
There are a handful of other films that are better than their source material, but my mind is on other things right now, so later for more suggestions about that from me.
It isn’t even close… the worst film of all time is 3000 Miles from Graceland.
Vision Quest was a reasonably watchable movie, but the book was really, really bad. Awful book.
Can we get a treatment of awful books, I wonders?
my personal worst movie ever was Waitress with Kerry Russell. Everyone just RAVED over how great and funny this movie was, so I rented it. ANYONE who has ever been in an abusive relationship or lost a child would be in pain watching this- i writhed.
“Um, who said I “care not about the author?” (Besides you, just now, that is.) Stranger in a Strange Land and The Door Into Summer are among my favorite books in the genre. Don’t make assumptions, Gary, simply because I said I’d never read Troopers.”
My apologies, Phil. You’re quite right.
However, here: “I’ll point out that the sentence of mine to which you’re responding, here, began with the words, ‘To me,'”
No, that’s not what I responded to. What I responded to was this: “It’s objectively bad, and a waste of anyone’s time.”
“(Isn’t this boring and tendentious when you’re on the other end of it?)”
No, it’s fine; I prefer to discuss specifics, and enjoy that. Sorry. I know a lot of folks don’t, but I do.
“my favorites, possibly forgetting a few”
The ones on your list that I really love are: Cold Comfort Farm, The Princess Bride, Dave, Coming to America, Real Genius, Palm Beach Story, The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, and Born Yesterday.
I’ve not yet seen Stardust, though I have a DVD, nor Strictly Ballroom, Dear Frankie, or Legally Blonde. Liked Dave, but didn’t love it. Airplane! is a funny-once for me.
Whoops. End italics!
And also whoops that Dave and Coming to America I liked, but didn’t love.
BTW, Gary, I really enjoyed you story about your going to see 2001 and setting the adults straight. That would make a great scene in a movie.
I know it is now considered a pivotal film, but the only movie I ever walked out on was “Bladerunner.”
Dune. Worst movie ever. Only one I ever walked out of angry. And although I’m not a big sci-fi fan, I liked the books. The move stunk. Big stink.
Rivaled seeing Estelle Parsons (she’s great) in Long Day’s Journey Into Night for making me want to open a vein just to escape.
With respect to Endless Love: I read the novel first (by Scott Spencer), and it really did have merit, I think; of course there’s a great deal more story in the novel (the benighted movie ends about two-thirds of the way through).
Note: Not only is the lead character David Axelrod, but the story takes place in Chicago (although, if I recall correctly, when the real Axelrod was that age he didn’t yet live there).
Does anybody here like “Mars Attacks!”?
“I know it is now considered a pivotal film, but the only movie I ever walked out on was ‘Bladerunner.'”
As I just go through saying about sf tropes and people who don’t know how to read them….
Although I have to say, as someone who is good friends with Phil’s former literary executor, and had friends in common with Phil, and saw Blade Runner on a press comp to the premiere at Seattle’s Cinerama theater, and wouldn’t have missed that for the world, and love a lot about the film, I do think that the worship of it is somewhat overblown. It’s not that wholly some kind of work of genius — though it’s stylistically ground-breaking and significantly original in that regard — and it doesn’t make any sense that Deckard would be a replicant, however cute it seems to toy with or go with that notion.
Neither could you have replicants with super-human strength and endurance that can’t be detected by physical tests; those two things simply aren’t compatible. Not in a universe with our physical laws.
But I am very fond of both the original and final version, and won’t care to quibble about all the other versions.
Whoa boy, as this thread ever intended for me!
It’s hard to pick “worst” movies because very often the things that make a film bad are also what make it (marginally) entertaining. So while I think Road House with Patrick Swayze is absolutely horrible, I’ve seen it at least 20 times and nearly wet myself with laughter every time I watch it. Maybe not the filmmaker’s intent, but it’s hard to call that “bad.”
Probably the one that comes closest to being bad on technical merits and just plain bereft of any entertainment value is “Jaws 4: The Revenge.” After her son is devoured by a shark, the wife of Chief Brody from the first two installments becomes convinced that a great white has it out for her. So she does what anyone would do in this situation: She moved to the Bahamas.
And for reasons that are never explained or even hinted at, the shark follows her.
Everything about this movie is awful. The acting is uniformly attrocious. The dialogue is eye-rolling. The FX are awful; apparently mechanical shark technology went through a rapid regression between the original Jaws and this picture. The entire premise is hackneyed and ridiculous. But the worst part about it? Jaws 4 doesn’t even approach MST3K levels of “so bad it’s nearly good” awfulness. Mostly, it’s just achingly, mind-numbingly BORING – long pointless scenes of dialogue punctuated once every half hour by the appearance of a rubber shark and a half-assed “attack.”
Just. Awful.
Any thoughts on The Bad Lieutenant?
No, no, no. The worst movie of all time was “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” Dennis Quaid, Mark Hamill, and — oh, God, the horror — Kristy McNichol, back in the days when, I suppose, she could get her way on just about anything, and she wanted to be a rock and roll star.
They all have to cringe at the memory.
I would have to go with “Holiday Heart”. How the producers of this film got the very talented Ving Rhames to play a transvestite and Alfre Woodard to play a crack whore is beyond understanding, but it’s so bad, it’s good.
Worst movie I can remember seeing: Earth Girls Are Easy.
Best movie I wish I had never seen: Titus Andronicus, with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange, directed by Julie Taymor. A good production, IMO, but my wife and I had extremely vivid, unsettling bad dreams for about a week after watching it.
Thanks –
Hellboy. One of the worst mainstream movies I’ve ever seen and the first movie I’ve ever walked out on. The beginning was promising, but, by at least halfway through the film, everything interesting about it had already been squandered.
And speaking of Israeli movies, Saint Clara and Late Marriage are the two worst foreign films I’ve ever seen and, with Lars von Trier still at large, that’s saying a lot.
So how come nobody on this thread has yet mentioned Freddy Got Fingered? I got as far through as Tom Green humping a dead moose and that was it.
Worst Movie I ever saw in a movie theater:
John Carpenter’s Vampires, starring James Woods as the head vampire hunter. My girlfriend (now wife) left after 30 minutes because it was so bad. Although we did not have to pay, since we had a gift card, it was still a complete waste of money.
Runner-up: Any moview Mel Brooks has made since History of the World, Part 1 (although I love the line “It’s good to be the king.”).
It’s probably already on this list, but Alien 3 has to be considered a movie to avoid. Rarely does a film take a whole film franchise and flush it down the toilet in an incoherent mess that the series has never recovered from. The worse part about it was that Alien and Aliens build expectations for a third film, only to have those expectations dashed to pieces.
For good book to film adaptations, I think “To kill a Mockingbird” deserves a mention.
Hilzoy’s comment:
“Tee hee. The one on Amazon is the right Stigma.
This has made my year.”
reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode ‘The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine’ where the one time starlet plays her old movies and lives in the past. I can see Hilzoy’s screening room now;)
The Man Who Would Be King
I watched TMWWBK recently and while still enjoyable, the treatment of some of the characters made me wince. I realize that they were just “translating” Kipling, and having read the short story (another short story well-translated), got him pretty much right, it still grates a bit.
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Anything with Jean Claude Van Damme.
Anything with JCvD is going to 10 times better than anything with Segal.
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Does anybody here like “Mars Attacks!”?
Ack! I had gotten that piece of industrial pollution out of my mind. Thanks loads for reminding me of that piece of slime.
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re “Bladerunner”: It may be a poor adaptation of “Do Androids…”, but it got the “essential” PK Dick: altered realities, how can we trust what we know, androids among us, fear and paranoia as a way of life, etc. I liked it for that reason alone.
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How the producers of this film got the very talented Ving Rhames to play a transvestite and Alfre Woodard to play a crack whore is beyond understanding, but it’s so bad, it’s good.
If this was based on, say, poems by Maya Angelou and directed by someone with an ear for said poems, the casting would be AWESOME! Alas, it doesn’t sound like this is the case.
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I’m of the opinion that the best Mel Brooks film EVAH is “The 12 Chairs” with “Young Frankenstein” nipping at its heels.
JayS: but would the onetime starlet want, more than anything, to see just how bad that haircut really was?
— It really was a sort of bowl haircut, I think, in the sense that it was as though they had decided to cut my hair bluntly at points equidistant from the very top of my head. It was sort of short. I used to give guitar lessons, a bit later when I was off kibbutz but still had that haircut, and I kidded once, with the little brother of the kid I was teaching, that it made me look like a monk in a medieval painting, when I stopped trying to have a part. And I shook me head and showed him. For weeks afterwards, he used to beg me: Hilary, please, make a monk! make a monk!
Gary, as a nod towards our mutual agreements rather than disagreements, I’ll note that of your partial list of favorites, all of the following have space in my DVD collection: The Royal Tennenbaums, Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, Batman Begins, Chasing Amy, all the Star Wars films, Star Trek II, ST: Final Contact, Mean Streets, Ghost World, A Hard Day’s Night, Almost Famous, Buckaroo Banzai, It Happened One Night, Philadelphia Story, Maltese Falcon, Casablanca. And if I were to go into my whole collection, I bet we’d have even more overlap.
I just finished a double feature of The Wages of Fear and Rashomon, and from Netflix, I have Once, Ocean’s 13 (I’m nothing if not forgiving) and Year of the Dog waiting to be watched.
One thing I do like about the new “Final Cut” version of Blade Runner (which, btw, on Blu-Ray is just . . . wow) is that it corrects the line “One of them got fried running through an electrical field” to “Two of them got fried . . .” meaning that Deckard’s retirement of Leon, Pris, Zhora and Batty accounts for all six escaped replicants and undercuts Ridley Scott’s tiresome “Of course Deckard is a replicant!” argument.
It’s probably already on this list, but Alien 3 has to be considered a movie to avoid. Rarely does a film take a whole film franchise and flush it down the toilet in an incoherent mess that the series has never recovered from.
This is just wrong, but I know people feel strongly about this. The “workprint cut” on the DVD set is, in fact, fairly amazing and corrects a number of the film’s flaws.
Finally, the one time I saw it, I liked Mars Attacks, but that was a long time ago and I haven’t been inclined to rewatch it.
I just thought of another “WTF was I doing wasting time on this?” movie of recent years: Matrix Reloaded. What a letdown. That whole Architect scene was so ponderously dumb.
Cocktail and The House on the Lake
The best thing about the architect scene in Matrix part deux was the Will Ferrell parody of it on the MTV awards.
>>Lifeforce at least had the benefit of Matilda May and an incredibly low budget for her wardrobe.
Randy Paul, were you living in LA when this came out? That’s almost exactly what I wrote in my review — “Three aliens (led by Mathilda May, whose costumes represent the only well-spent money in the budget) land on Earth and suck the life force out of humans” — and I don’t recall anyone else making that particular joke at the time.
Oh, please tell me something I wrote lodged in someone’s brain for 23 years!
Damn! How’d we get this many miles down the thread and no-one mentioned “Bullwinkle” as the worst ever?
Not the least bit entertaining. So bad that it is totally bereft of even “this is so baaad…” entertainment value (like Plan 9, for instance.) Took a great, clever, subversive TV show and turned it into total dreck. Worse than “Popeye” as a cartoon-to-live-action movie – and THAT’S really saying something!
Close second: an early 80s movie of which I cannot even remember the name. It starred Pia Zadora,and the ONLY redeeming factor (sorry Hilzoy) was a couple of minutes of her, fully nude. Every syllable of dialogue makes your teeth hurt.
Damn! How’d we get this many miles down the thread and no-one mentioned “Bullwinkle” as the worst ever?
Not the least bit entertaining. So bad that it is totally bereft of even “this is so baaad…” entertainment value (like Plan 9, for instance.) Took a great, clever, subversive TV show and turned it into total dreck. Worse than “Popeye” as a cartoon-to-live-action movie – and THAT’S really saying something!
Close second: an early 80s movie of which I cannot even remember the name. It starred Pia Zadora,and the ONLY redeeming factor (sorry Hilzoy) was a couple of minutes of her, fully nude. Every syllable of dialogue makes your teeth hurt.
Damn! How’d we get this many miles down the thread and no-one mentioned “Bullwinkle” as the worst ever?
Not the least bit entertaining. So bad that it is totally bereft of even “this is so baaad…” entertainment value (like Plan 9, for instance.) Took a great, clever, subversive TV show and turned it into total dreck. Worse than “Popeye” as a cartoon-to-live-action movie – and THAT’S really saying something!
Close second: an early 80s movie of which I cannot even remember the name. It starred Pia Zadora,and the ONLY redeeming factor (sorry Hilzoy) was a couple of minutes of her, fully nude. Every syllable of dialogue makes your teeth hurt.
Damn! How’d we get this many miles down the thread and no-one mentioned “Bullwinkle” as the worst ever?
Not the least bit entertaining. So bad that it is totally bereft of even “this is so baaad…” entertainment value (like Plan 9, for instance.) Took a great, clever, subversive TV show and turned it into total dreck. Worse than “Popeye” as a cartoon-to-live-action movie – and THAT’S really saying something!
Close second: an early 80s movie of which I cannot even remember the name. It starred Pia Zadora,and the ONLY redeeming factor (sorry Hilzoy) was a couple of minutes of her, fully nude. Every syllable of dialogue makes your teeth hurt.
Damn! How’d we get this many miles down the thread and no-one mentioned “Bullwinkle” as the worst ever?
Not the least bit entertaining. So bad that it is totally bereft of even “this is so baaad…” entertainment value (like Plan 9, for instance.) Took a great, clever, subversive TV show and turned it into total dreck. Worse than “Popeye” as a cartoon-to-live-action movie – and THAT’S really saying something!
Close second: an early 80s movie of which I cannot even remember the name. It starred Pia Zadora,and the ONLY redeeming factor (sorry Hilzoy) was a couple of minutes of her, fully nude. Every syllable of dialogue makes your teeth hurt.
I thought “7” was horrendous. One hideously gory icky scene after another until the young cop’s wife’s head is in a box. I felt soiled and wished I had not seen it. As for good book-to-movie adaptations, one of the best is good old Gone With the Wind. And certainly one of the absolutely worst is the abomination of Mary Poppins.
AndyK,
Sorry. I went to college in San Francisco, but never lived in LA and was never there from 1979 to 1992. Chalk it up to great minds thinking alike.
Efgoldman,
You’re thinking of Butterfly, based on one of James M. Cain’s lesser works to be sure.
I have been moviegoing for 50 years and sat through many a stinker, but the 2008 Irish flick “ONCE” is the worst I’ve seen in this century. The actors can’t act (no beauties either), the singers can’t sing, the winnng! song was not a song, but a two-note dirge repeated endlessly. Our three-generation audience chortled through this thing, incredulous that this pathetic excuse for a film got GOOD reviews.
At one point many years ago my wife and I were working our way through the local video store’s collection, looking for the world’s worst B-movie.
First place: “Deadly Twins” with Audrey and Judy Landers.
IIRC, there was no writer listed in the credits. Which went nicely with my wife’s comment midway through, “Was there a script or did they just make the whole thing up as they went along?”
Second place: “Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity”.
Things went downhill rapidly after the title.
I have been moviegoing for 50 years and sat through many a stinker, but the 2008 Irish flick “ONCE” is the worst I’ve seen in this century. The actors can’t act (no beauties either), the singers can’t sing, the winnng! song was not a song, but a two-note dirge repeated endlessly. Our three-generation audience chortled through this thing, incredulous that this pathetic excuse for a film got GOOD reviews.
What you wrote here is just… unspeakably wrong.
Anyway, finding the worst movie ever is kind of like trying to find the world’s grayest pebble. Anyone who’s sat through an animation festival would know this. You haven’t walked out on a movie until you’ve actually made eye contact with the director on the way out of the theater because you simply can’t sit through another second of his 20-minute short about clay cavemen poking their penises through holes in rocks. And I actually sat through a Bill Plympton feature, so it’s not like I have a low threshold for pain.
And I thought Hellboy rocked, and Alien 3, flawed as it might have been, was just a stunning piece of cinema. It was the next film in the series (by a director I otherwise admired) that sent the franchise down the tubes, though (based strictly on the promotional materials and reviews) subsequent desecrations appear to be exploring new frontiers in crassness and mediocrity.
Oh, yeah, and for literary adaptations, while I haven’t read the source novel, “Children of Men” was superb.
The absolute worse movie I saw was Robin Williams TOYS,
god awful.
Does anybody here like “Mars Attacks!”?
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! If only for the way the aliens talk. And the scene where the alien inhales a nuke, and then talks in a squeaky voice. And all those exploding Martian heads. I need to watch that movie again.
Also, a couple nominees for “movie that improved on the book”:
1. “Clear and Present Danger” — Clancy’s book just didn’t have any realy full-fledged, intimidating villains. So it was hard to get really excited about Jack Ryan’s crusade to end what gets portrayed as a forgivable mistake. Whereas in the movie you get that wonderful scene of Harrison Ford standing up to the president, and you just want to leap to your feet and start singing The Star-Spangled Banner. At least, that’s my reaction.
2. “Dangerous Liaisons” — This is probably some sort of heresy, but Laclos’s book has a lot of filler and unnecessarily complete explanations that ruin the subtle effect of the epistolary form. The movie kept the best parts, and focused more completely on the relationship between the two main villains.
But “Re-Animator” is unimpeachably great!!
Agreed, but we may number among a very small minority.
Re-Animator does what it does really well, with flair and a good time. I can understand people not liking it, the way I dislike 99% of all spicy food, but that doesn’t make it bad. Just not for most palates.
Jeffrey Combs was at his best in The Frighteners, though. “By the power vested in me by the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES….”
Xeynon, I was just yanking your chain about those three movies.
I know, no offense taken.
is that it’s in such gleefully bad taste that it approaches a mid-period John Waters movie; it has well-executed action sequences and clever creature design; and it uses American action-movie and war-movie tropes against its own genre in a way that Michael Haneke might be capable of if he weren’t a humorless scold.
Plus, it has Michael Ironside saying, “It sucked his brains!” That’s capital-F Fun and capital-C Camp right there, and if you don’t like it, well, I guess you don’t like it, but to me, them’s good times.
Fair enough. I guess one viewer’s clever satire is another’s ham-fisted, flailing attempt at parody. As I said, I actually don’t think the movie was THAT awful – I wouldn’t watch it again, but hardly feel like I wasted two hours of my life or whatever watching it.
And, again, I set the bar differently for people shooting movies in 10 days for $100,000 and where the cast is also the crew than I do differently for a studio-financed picture involving millions of dollars and hundreds of skilled craftsmen.
To an extent this is true; it is, however, possible to make an excellent film on a low or even shoestring budget (e.g. Clerks, The Blair Witch Project)
The absolute worse movie I saw was Robin Williams TOYS,
Robin Williams actually has quite a few stinkers in their among the good memorable performances. Patch Adams was pretty terrible. As was RV And except for Aladdin I find his animated voiceover work pretty much unlistenable. He singlehandedly took Happy Feet from forgettably mediocre to memorably bad with his dual roles in it.
Speaking of actors I can’t stand watching, why has nobody mentioned some of Martin Lawrence’s film work yet? Big Momma’s House was Norbit (in both theme and cinematic quality) years before Norbit was. And though I’ve yet to see it, and don’t intend to, Bad Boys 2 (another Michael Bay classic) has been vigorously panned by a couple of people whose taste I really respect.
Also, to kill an idol, I thought Eyes Wide Shut was terrible – almost like a parody of Kubrick’s flaws as a filmmaker. Glacial pacing, preposterous plot, stilted acting, pretentious philosophizing and obvious, heavy-handed symbolism, the works. The masked orgy is arguably the worst extended scene in the last 10 years of cinema.
to the other Francis — my initials are FDL (which made the launch of the firedoglake blog a little disconcerting). Any further modification of your identity possible?
Francis LD? Being serious, I know what I’ve posted. You know what you’ve posted. The name change is to avoid confusing third parties.
Is it a surprise that there is more than one “Francis,” or Frank, Jim, Jane, Sarah, Fred, Sam, Jennifer, Joan, Sandra, etc., around?
What are people thinking when they pick a name they know lots of other people are going to use? That they’ll never be anywhere another person with that name, and lack of thinking, will be? Or what?
Francis isn’t a very common name and is often abreviated to Frank. In this thread we have a Jeff, a Phil, a Ted, a Sara, and a John – all of which I think are more common than Francis. And I’ve only ever had a problem with it on two* websites (here and Making Light where I changed to Francis D and the other one changed to Francis T). Although I really should have spotted things before this – I’ve been posting here months and he’s been posting here years.
* Three if you count Aetiology – but I’d almost given up the comment threads entirely by then.
“In this thread we have a Jeff, a Phil, a Ted, a Sara, and a John – all of which I think are more common than Francis.”
Indeed.
Plus, there’s Edward James Olmos goodness. Bonus connection to Dune, too.
Probably one of Rutger Hauer’s better films, if not his best. Which, granted, isn’t saying much. Blind Fury, anyone?
“I’ve not yet seen Stardust, though I have a DVD, nor Strictly Ballroom, Dear Frankie, or Legally Blonde.”
Gary, I hope you will consider putting these on your “to be seen” list.
Stardust bullet review: “Robert De Niro is a gay pirate.” Awesome.
Strictly Ballroom is fabulously bent; the opening sequence sets the tone, so you’ll know pretty quickly if it’s for you.
Legally Blonde, on the other hand, I’ve shown to several people and had to tell them to give it a chance for the first few scenes; you might not have this problem, but most folks I’ve made watch it make the mistake of thinking the movie takes itself seriously and that the lead character is as shallow as she appears at first.
Dear Frankie is just a beautiful film. Lovely cinematography (only one thing actually shows up “white,” by deliberate choice) and the characters are well served by the actors. Plus, um, Gerry Butler.
I remember reading in a SF movie dictionary about an Alien ripoff where the monster after killing everybody on board the spaceship finds a bible, converts to Christianity and dies of shame over what it has done. I’d love to see that but have completly forgotten the title (and the dictionary is the size of a phone book, so a random search will take too long).
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I like Mars Attacks. But it only works as a spoof on speed and would imo fail as a standalone (Dr.Strangelove for comparision is highly effective even without much background knowledge).
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Any comments on “The Conqueror” with John Wayne as Dschingis Khan?
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I find Ed Wood movies quite entertaining. That disqualifies them from the true stinkers list as I see it.
“Starship Troopers is much better after you realise it’s supposed to be a part of the world it depicts. It’s the war propoganda movie from that world. And if you say it’s far too over the top to be effective even in that world, Rupert Murdoch has a media empire that would disagree with you.”
This is exactly right. Starship Troopers is Verhoeven’s best film since Robocop. Admittedly, that’s not saying much, but it’s a glorious send up of fascist high camp. Of course it’s not subtle and of course it’s nothing like the book, but if you just take it on its own terms it’s brilliant. Funnily enough it came out around the same time as the equally brilliant Mars Attacks, and received much the same non-plussed reaction from most Americans.
Any comments on “The Conqueror” with John Wayne as Dschingis Khan?
memorable quote:
“I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, take her. There are moments for wisdom and moments when I listen to my blood; my blood says, take this Tartar woman.”
>>Probably one of Rutger Hauer’s better films, if not his best. Which, granted, isn’t saying much. Blind Fury, anyone?
Well, maybe his best *Hollywood* film. If you can find a copy of Legend of the Holy Drunkard, it’s very good. Okay, wait: It’s not better than Blade Runner. But let’s just say that I think a wholesale dismissal of Hauer’s filmography should be limited to his Hollywood stuff.
As for the Conqueror…
Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol opens in LA tomorrow, and it’s certainly the only decent Genghis Khan movie I’m aware of.
>>Probably one of Rutger Hauer’s better films, if not his best. Which, granted, isn’t saying much. Blind Fury, anyone?
Well, maybe his best *Hollywood* film. If you can find a copy of Legend of the Holy Drunkard, it’s very good. Okay, wait: It’s not better than Blade Runner. But let’s just say that I think a wholesale dismissal of Hauer’s filmography should be limited to his Hollywood stuff.
As for the Conqueror…
Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol opens in LA tomorrow, and it’s certainly the only decent Genghis Khan movie I’m aware of.
When it comes to bad movies, I’m reminded of the only movie I ever walked out of: Boiling Point with Wesley Snipes and Dennis Hopper. Egad, was that awful, and I’ve sat through some really bad movies. Also, Love Crimes with Sean Young and Patrick Bergen springs to mind.
I think worst I’ve seen is The Touch of Satan. I saw it on MST3K, but its awfulness overpowered the commentary.
Starship Troopers was great.
I saw Endless Love in the theaters because I knew it would be fabulously wretched and I was right. The one thing I remember is Tom Cruise, who plays Jade’s brother, telling David “Just because you’re fucking my sister doesn’t make you part of the family.”
Starship Troopers was great.
I saw Endless Love in the theaters because I knew it would be fabulously wretched and I was right. The one thing I remember is Tom Cruise, who plays Jade’s brother, telling David “Just because you’re fucking my sister doesn’t make you part of the family.”