Most awful movies (in celebration of Hollywood's fourth declining revenue year in a row)

9/28/05 | ltn72

[pabianice]

Movie theater revenues are down 10% in the past three years because of home video technology and because movie quality has objectively continued to decline. We Freepers occasionally review a movie here for fun and to warn others not to waste their money.

So, for a change of pace, let's discuss really bad movies we've seen for one reason or another. I propose three classes of bad movie:

Class 1. A bad movie you sit through because of peer pressure

Class 2. A really bad movie you force yourself to watch because, darn it, you paid for it!

Class 3. Horrifyingly bad movies you simply leave, dragging yourself up the aisle with your arms because your legs have gone numb from shock.

Examples:

Class 1: "The Incredible Lightness of Being" -- stupifyingly bad writing and performances, polished off by a plot involving a serial adulterer physician ruining the lives of all around him for his own sexual gratification – won numerous awards in Europe

Class 2: "The Strawberry Statement" -- I still remember the poster: "The Vibes Were Good, but the Times Were Bad" -- horrifyingly bad performances around a story of beautiful, gentle hippies going to college in San Francisco and lovingly protesting the Vietnam War, only to have the experience ruined by Cylon-like police in riot gear gassing and clubbing them to death during a sit-in for peace; also includes some of the worst dehumanization of women ever portrayed on the screen

"Coming Home" -- what can you say about a movie with Jane Fonda that tells the tale of a maimed vet coming home from the Illegal Vietnam War on Terror to win the heart of a military officer's wife who realizes that her Marine husband is actually a monster (who's also lousy in bed, of course) and so leaves him for the maimed (but good in bed despite the loss of most of his appendages) and virtuous war-protesting vet; movie ends with Marine drowning self by walking into the ocean to atone for his evil acts of national defense

“War of the Worlds” (2005) – This is one big mess of a movie; Aliens have already visited Earth in the distant past to leave their Tripods but then wait until we have atomic weapons and armies before they decide to come back and wipe us out; they arrive at nearly the speed of light in capsules that burrow underground and would be instantly vaporized by the impact; they need human blood to fertilize their Martian Kudzu (“Soilent Red is People!”); it never occurs to the Martians that they need to get flu shots before invading another planet; as the aliens sicken, they conveniently lower their shields so as to be suddenly defenseless against anti-tank rockets; the list is almost endless; the 1954 movie was far superior

"Getting Straight" -- yet another Vietnam vet comes home to attend college and is faced with a school faculty who are all repressed homosexuals and psychotics who determine to drive him out of college; he's saved by heroine who encourages him to Stiock it To the Man!; story ends with the vet kissing his male teacher on the mouth, creating a riot on campus, and then having sex with the heroine on the staircase as the riot and tear gas swill about them in a wonderful collage of color and self-congratulation -- ah!

Class 3: "The Happy Hooker" -- no plot, no production, no acting, but lots of frontal nudity and smashed beds

"Darling" -- critically acclaimed piece of crap about a beautiful, talented, rich woman with the IQ of an end table struggling to make her way in a world of rich men who throw themselves at her feet and take her to fabulous vacation spots

Special Category – What Would Have Been Good Movies But Ruined by One Bad Scene: “A Few Good Men” – Very entertaining story about good and evil in uniform ruined in the courtroom climax, when LTJG Caffee says to the colonel: “I’m a Navy officer, and you are under arrest, you son of a bitch!” Those last five gratuitous words by a screenwriter clueless about the military instantly makes Caffee guilty of disrespect towards a superior officer (a court martial offense) and lower him to Jessup’s level

[Wicket]

Leaving Las Vegas - I normally enjoy Nicholas Cage, and perhaps was hoping for a modestly more upbeat ending than where it seemed to be headed. It followed its own perverse logic to the very bitter end.

I cannot believe I wasted two hours of my life on it. Friends don't let friends see this movie.

[Woman on Caroline Street]

I think what struck me funny about that scene, was that while Mr. Blonde was slicing this poor guy's ear off, he's telling him to "Hold still". You had better believe, if someone was cutting off ANYTHING of mine, I'd be squirmirm like a redworm on a maribou jig.

[Sloth]

while the general public may laugh at old technology, those in the field have respect for the pioneers and wouldn't laugh. today's computer-gaming designers continually deal with getting the most out of their current hardware, and they know how limited early computers were.... here's an analogy - maybe the general public might laugh at a film of old Model-T cars or Wright-brothers type planes, but professional car-designers or plane-designers never would.

This was one of the most jarring things in 'Deep Impact.' Robert Duvall plays an old Mercury-era astronaut who goes along with a crop of current astronauts because he's familiar with some old equipment they're using in order to blow up the asteroids or whatever. Anyway, the young crew pretty much dismiss the guy as a feeble old has-been who belongs in moth balls.

I'm pretty sure that real contemporary astronauts would just about worship one of those old 'Right Stuff' pilots.

[Question_Assumptions]

I'll grant you that the themes were ambitious but I tend to write off the narrative sprawl and ambiguous ending as bad writing/directing. Given the big bucks spent to make it, the beautiful special effects, and the excellent acting all around, there are structural reasons why this movie is on almost nobody's "must see" list.

[W1_hooyah]

"Good movies are a rarity. But most of all, mediocrity rules. The mediocre ones drive me up the wall. The stinkers are kind of fascinating in a way."

Well stated.

The Piano is absolutely the worst movie ever made.

[wideminded]

"... And a vial of in-soo-lin ..."

[LS]

That was a bad one, but it at least lets me demonstrate some aspects of Hellenistic combat to my students, so it has a little redeeming value.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

I know this is reaching from the movies to television. But one of my favorite Star Trek episodes was when the Enterprise went back in time to old Earth space and had to transport aboard an Air Force fighter pilot whose jet was torn apart by the Enterprise's tractor beam.

The point of my post was that the Enterprise crew treated him with respect.

[Betis70]

"You gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?"

[colorado tanker]

I'm with you. The Piano was dreadful. I was cheering for her to drown along with that stupid piano at at the end.

[LS]

Sorry, thought it totally sucked.

[rlmorel]

I have noticed a preponderance of disdain for "AI" on this board. Is there an age thing going on here?

I can think of much worse movies than that, but they are older. There are two movies I watched that were so bad or weird that I had to get my brother to watch them with me again, because I needed someone else to confirm that I wasn't living on another planet.

One was "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" (bad) and the other was "Eraserhead" (weird)

My brother has never forgiven me for asking him to watch them with me the second time.

"Autumn in New York" still rates as the most inanely bad movie. At least "Killer Tomatoes" was bad and not only knew it was bad, was actually trying to be bad, and "Eraserhead was just...the most bizzare thing I had seen on screen, ever, and was, I believe, trying to be that way.

"Autumn in New York" was really trying to be a good movie! GACK!

[Wicket]

If you like Gary Sinise, you should rent "The Stand" by Steven King - it's an End of the World As We Know It movie, but good and Sinise is great in it. And Apollo 13 if you haven't seen yet.

[rlmorel]

ARRGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

I FORGOT ABOUT "THE PIANO"!!!!!!!

AAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I take my posts back. "Autumn in New York" comes in as a distant second to "The Piano".

Thanks for bringing back to me something I had worked so hard to block from my consciousness!!!!

[PigRigger]

There's one main reason I don't enjoy many of Spielberg's movies, it always seems to come down to an innocent child saving the world from malicious non-believing adults.

To me, many of his movies are very immature and very predictable. But that's just me....

I really hate (fiction) movies where I can figure out the ending.....I can usually figure out where Spielberg is going early on....

[Sensei Ern]

Of course I did. I lost count how many times I listened to the commentary...almost as many times as I saw it without commentary. I especially enjoyed learning how he had to act most of the windmill scene backwards.

[Sensei Ern]

I hve Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. The commentary on one of those is very interesting.

[latina4dubya]

Like he'd grow up to be a child molester.

no way! i didn't see him as perverted... he saw right through his freaky cousin Rico... his dance at the end to save Pedro was fantastic... very giving... i probably laughed a total of six-ten times throughout the movie (not a lot)... and not gut-aching laughs... but there were just all these little things about it that made me like it... it was all so silly... but not in the "Tommy Boy," "Dumb and Dumber" sense... now those are movies i find absolutely revolting... i do appreciate that you have a different opinion about Napoleon Dynamite...

[Puzzler]

Sergeant Bilko. Excruciatingly bad.

[uncbob]

Agreed, and it portrayed Marines as vacuous automatons

Yep see my reply #326 to a freeper that disagreed with me