So, what IS the worst film ever made?
Our piece last week on Eddie Murphy's cinematic train-wreck A Thousand Words - a possible nominee for the worst film ever - had El Reg commentards queuing up to recount their celluloid nightmare experiences. And chilling reading it made, to be sure. Inspired by your litany of cinematic shame, we've decided to run a poll this …
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Re: It's hard to choose,
I liked THIS Hardware: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099740/
Is that the one you dislike?
Re: What about the clasic
IMHO once a film has been celebrated as a "worst ever", it sometimes becomes a "cult classic". Plan 9 reached this status. It even had a film made about its making. LOL.
clearly no-one has watched anything by a "director" called Pat Higgins - TrashHouse and Killer Killer are 2, and consumed about 3 hours of my life i would love to have back!!!
The Fountain
I can not believe that during the weeks/months/years that this film was being written, filmed and cut that not one person stood up and said that it was a pile of pants!!
Its 96 minutes of my life I will never get back and still a sore point with the wife who took me to see it as I was getting bored shopping. To this day I have never complained about shopping with her ever since.
Flame as everyone one involved in this movie should burn in hell for it.
SW9
Named after Brixton's postcode. It was a weird film that tried to capture the edginess of the area using a number of interweaving plot lines. It failed and just left me annoyed at losing a small bit of my life.
This was a while before on-demand video services over t'internet.
Love And Human Remains is probably my one.
Following an epic spell of indecision in Blockbuster when we were teenagers, one of my friends grabbed this one and by then we were all too bored to object, or, for that matter, even read the plot summary on the back.
The only good to come of it was that we never, ever, let him choose which movie to watch after that.
Re: Snakes on a plane.
Yes. The only good part of that film is the infamous line utilising Samuel L. Jackson's favourite phrase of cursing.
Re: Snakes on a plane.
You actually watched that?
Here's your coat ...
best worst films
There are 2 films that are so bad that in some crazy post-modern way they've got a massive fan clubs (well, A fan club at least), both claiming to be best worst movie.
Troll2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105643/
and
The Room
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/
Re: best worst films
Oh dear God, I had totally forgotten about The Room!!
Definitely The Room, no shadow of a doubt: yet another one in the bucket beyond "so bad it's good." Perhaps that bucket should be termed "so bad, I wept uncontrollably with joy once it ended."
My nominations
1st - 2 girls 1 cup
2nd - Richard Stallman picking things off his bare feet, putting them into his mouth and chewing
Re: My nominations
Not on general release. Do these films have to have been passed by the BBFC?
Deep Blue Sea
The only good part is Samuel L Jackson being killed during his "we gotta pull together" speech, apart from that utter drivel with the worst acting and CGI ever seen.
Dune
Infinitely worse than Battlefield Earth.
Such a pity, because both the books are in the insanely great category
Re: Dune
To suggest original or new Dune movies were less than good (even if not as good as they could have been) suggests you missed the point of the books and the movies alike. (Sardaukar terror troops in the newer ones looking like open-kitchen staff from an Italian themed restaurant aside).
To suggest the Battlefield Earth books were any less awful than the movie confirms your complete lack of taste. They were so bad that even as a sci-fi junkie teenager at the time I couldn't force myself to read beyond the first 1/2 of the series.
Re: Dune
Disagree. Dune wasn't bad per se, it just failed bcos they ran out of budget and had to butcher the last half of the book. (Oh, and the "weirding modules" crud.) Up to Paul joining the Fremen was pretty much perfect though. So for me it falls more into the category of those "nearly great" could-have-beens.
I saw it for the first time last year, and even though it's 30 years old, I was still blown away by the shield FX which are like nothing you've ever seen.
Re: Dune
IIRC Battlefield Earth was a book, not a series. Are you thinking of Invasion Earth (by Piers Anthony).
Johnny Goodboy Tyler FTW!
Re: Dune
The made for TV series adaptation of Dune was quite good and true to the book(s), even if some of the acting was a bit wooden. The film looked like they'd put the book's ideas through a blender and poured it into a script.
Re: Hubbard * Earth books
Just now looked it up. It seems the series was Mission Earth ~6,000 pages of dreck. Completely gave up on Hubbard after attempting those, so never read, or even knew of, Battlefield as a different work. Just years later heard of a movie that sounded (in name, story and sheer awfulness) nearly identical from the same author and assumed it was the same.
That more than one such steaming pile originated from the same pen suggests it was not a mistake to forgo further reading.
Re: Dune
The miniseries completely missed the Zeitgeist of the book. The 80s movie managed to nail it quite effectively despite it's other flaws.
Twilight and it's sequels, films made from the worst books ever naturally produce the worst films ever, it's like evolution, possibly.
Those movies broke the rule: they were far better than the books (but still pretty bad).
Re: Napoleon Dynamite
Only time it is remotely funny is if you’re really p*ssed or really High. And then you only laugh at how sh*t it is!
Merely being a bad film isn't enough.
Some movies are obviously bad before they even start, and thus easily avoided, such as Battlefield Earth and the entire Steckler portfolio mentioned previously.
The worst ones are those that despite being terrible somehow become inexplicably popular, not always, but most often with the fairer sex.
Examples: St. Elmo's Fire, Titanic, Twilight, the entire catalogs of Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise or Oliver Stone (other than Platoon).
The word-of-mouth expectation that they may be good, makes the experience of actually seeing such films that much worse.
Re: the entire catalogs of Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise or Oliver Stone
Upvoted! The popularity of Cruise mystifies me. Most big name Hollywood actors have perfected several facial expressions and are more or less capable of adopting them on command from the director.
Cruise has 2 expressions -
- the one where he's trying to look tough but just looks like a plank
- the other one - used for happy, sad, bemused, 'charming', etc. This one makes him look like a gerbil surprised by an unexpected cavity search.
Re: the entire catalogs of Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise or Oliver Stone
Spot on, except I must have Ben Afflick and Piano Reeves included :-)
Well, you could start
With every movie showcased on Mystery Science Theater 3000:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094517/
But that would make a huge list, so I'll give you my top 3 from that show's illustrious history:
Manos: The Hands of Fate,
Red Zone: Cuba,
and the very long-titled one mentioned by alan above: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, or as MST3k fans call it: TISCWSLaBMUZ (an abbreviation which makes more sense than the movie does.)
If I had to choose one, I'd say Red Zone: Cuba. I've actually been able to piece together the plots for the other two, but after a dozen or so times watching it, I still have no idea what Red Zone: Cuba is about. I think Cuba is involved, but I'm not sure...
I'd like to suggest disqualifying movies like Hobgoblins, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Troll 2, or anything by Troma Studios, on the grounds that those movies are intentionally cheese.
Re: Well, you could start
Yeah I think Red Zone sucks worse than Manos. Even though Manos doesn't make a whole hell of alot of sense either.
"Pod People" and "Cavedwellers" were pretty awful too. Im pretty sure they're all first or second season.
US remakes
Of classic British and European films
Also
I will exclude bad adaptions of books.
Worst I have seen I think is Plan 9. Battlefield Earth is bad, Alien 4 is shite.
Re: US remakes
I have to agree on that.
Death at a funeral - English version was utter genius. The US version was complete crap (almost literally, seeing the amount of toilet humour they put in)
"Le Diner de Cons" is a masterpiece, I was busting a gut laughing, even though my French wasn't good enough to properly keep up. The US version "Dinner for Schmucks" would be just 'meh' if I saw it "stand-alone", but having seen the original, I know it took a hell of a lot of screwing up to go from masterpiece to 'meh'.
Also, I found "Abre los Ojos" to be totally enthralling (again, my Spanish was just barely good enough to keep up), haven't seen "Vanilla Sky", which was based on it, yet, and I'm not sure whether I want to.... but any film with Penelope Cruz is worth a peek
Re: US remakes
Vanilla Sky
Shockingly with Tom Cruise is actually quite watcheable.
Re: US remakes
yeah, I thought Vanilla Sky was quite well made. Probably wouldn't watch it again, though as the ending was too badly handled for my tastes.
Jack Frost.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Frost-DVD-Michael-Keaton/dp/B00004CZXV for the avoidance of doubt. It represents the one time I have ever had to give a film more out of 10 than I wanted to. I wanted to give it -5, the site I was reviewing for only allowed 1-10...
As further support of how crappy it is - I gave it to my parents when they got a DVD player... they gave it back to me as a "gift" for my birthday. I gave it to them for their wedding anniversary. They returned it as a Christmas "gift". Even charity shops reject it!
This one's improved if you swap it out for the OTHER Jack Frost... The one with a killer snowman!
Batman & Robin
After sitting through hours of this shiteness I looked at my watch and discovered that only 10 minutes had passed since the film started. Or it could have been Batman Forever. Put them both in just to be on the safe side.
Oh, and Napoleon Dynamite.
just about...
..anything from The Asylum Enough there for an entire top 10.. but lets just settle for Mega Piranha where scientists decide that the best fish to use in experiments to grow giant fish (to help alleviate food shortages) are piranhas....
Anon for obvious reasons
Re: just about...
I think the "No Troma films" rule should apply to these too: The Asylum has even gone on record to point out that they made a deliberate choice to produce cheesy movies.
Even so, I do have a soft spot for anyone who can, hand on heart, hear a pitch for a movie like "Megashark vs. Giant Octopus" and say, "Wait: did you say that the giant shark jumps out of the sea for absolutely no reason at all to take a big bite out of a jetliner flying above the clouds? That's... that's BRILLIANT!"
And they were right: it's an exceptionally silly movie. Frankly, if you watch a movie with a name like "Sharktopus", you can't really complain that it lacks elements of good movies that it never claimed to have in the first place.
Cheese is itself an art form. I suspect The Asylum's TV movies will gain some serious cult followings in the years to come. They're so bad, they go out the other side and become watchable for the ridiculous premises, the pathetic effects and—possibly deliberate—bullshit "science" exposition sequences. Some of them are actually quite decently scripted all things considered—they often have fewer plot holes than certain big-budget blockbusters I could mention.
I can't get enough of them, me.
My nomination for "worst movie ever" goes to... "U571". Not only because it was a massive slap in the face to the original (British!) submarine crew who actually did that for real, but because it's not as if there was a shortage of research material available on the subject at the time. So the producers and director clearly made a deliberate decision to fuck up such a crucial, foundational element of the story.
(Part of me would like to put "Independence Day" on the list too for its dire script, but, to be honest, I do enjoy watching the kind of over-the-top video game cut-scenes full of special effects set-pieces that his films are full of. I'm a fan of most of Gerry Anderson's oeuvre for much the same reason: if there's lots of shit being blown up, I'm there! Calling me "shallow" is an insult to puddles.)
Not seen it, but...
Isn't Plan 9 From Outer Space often considered The Worst Movie Of All Time?
Re: Not seen it, but...
Only by people who haven't watched Aztec Rex.
My nominations:
Donnie Darko - and ANYTHING with ANYBODY named Gyllenhaal in it.
The Bourne Merm - and anything involving Matt Damon or that other guy, the one that went out with jenny from the block. They're pretty interchangeable. If it was Matt Damon that went out with Jenny from the block then you know, the other one.
Transformers?
Happy Go Lucky = What The Flip?
Blair Witch Meh.
But, the absolute worst films ever made are the Lord of Teh Rings trilogy, face facts, they are clown shoes.
Re: 'LOTR'
My god, I'm agreeing with lots of people today.
'LOTR' - just mediocre. Another big budget trilogy that's not much cop (and I expect some people may disagree with me) - Star Wars. The first one was a reasonable enough space western with state of the art (for the time) special effects. But it was shallow - not the life-changing event it's now being spun as.
Re: My nominations:
You must have hated The Dark Knight then, Maggie Gyllenhaal was quite important in that one.
Re: My nominations:
The Bourne Identity: Take a fantastic book with loads of depth and detail, completely strip out the main villain, most of the plot, all the psychological nuance and thriller bits, and just leave the basic premise and a bunch of action scenes barely hanging together by a scrap of script. Very Poor and very disappointing (although by no means close to the worst film ever)
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