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

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 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.

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

"Take the Money and Run". Isn't that the movie where the Woody Allen character carves a gun out of the bar of soap, colors it with shoe polish, then tries to escape - in the rain? One minute he's holding the gun on the guard then the next he looks down and all he has is soap foam in his hands. That has to be one of the funniest scenes ever filmed.

Yup. That movie is full of some of the funniest scenes ever filmed. Like when the entire chain gang escapes, and they try to disguise themselves and look inconspicuous. Hillarity ensues.

Mark

"Blood Work" with Clint Eastwood was the most disappointing movie I'd seen in the last five years or so. It was awfully stale, tired, predictable,and boring. Ebert and others didn't object because they liked Eastwood's other work.

Then I saw "Sin City." It was a visually beautiful attempt to render comics based on film noir on the screen. But the plot was nonsensical and hard to find, and the violence was reprehensible. In spite of some really striking cinematography it was trash.

I'd say the same thing about "Kill Bill" (both volumes). Some talent on the technical side, but just garbage so far as characters, motivations, and morals were concerned. Tarantino was shocking and offensive in his early movies, but there was more than just stabbings and beheadings to hold our interest.

The problem with talk about "worst movies" is that most of us have never seen the really worst movies and never will. Those are the hard core porn films that don't have to satisfy or appeal on any other level. There are soft core porn, horror, and martial arts movies of similar rottenness.

Apart from those genres, the worst movies of all time were probably made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. There's a political moral here. Fassbinder got his funding from the German government and German public television. They were desperate to show the "New Germany" and gave out money for all manner of trash. Fassbinder boasted that he could turn out a completed movie while his competitors were still trying to read their grant forms. It's easy to be fast when you don't have to worry about plot consistency, character development or the quality of the acting. It's cruel to say it, but it's a good thing for filmgoers that Fassbinder died before Paulie Shore and others started their careers. It spared us films that would be so bad that they could destroy the universe.

I'd say more or less the same thing about John Waters and Lina Wertmuller. If you look at it right, they made the same films. Just substitute class-conscious workers for fat girls, fascists and millionaires for uptight squares, and Marxist kitsch for gay camp.

But yes, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was unbearable. I left about the time when their dog died. It was insulting that they expected us to cry after all that boredom. I felt like vomiting. The funny thing is that the novel was supposed to be a protest against "kitsch" -- and the film embodied it.

Also horrible -- "The World According to Garp." I felt like killing Robin Williams when he explained "what it all meant." The point of it all was that life is worth living in spite of everything. That's the reason for two hours of unmemorable penis jokes. Nice to know that life is good, but I'd feel better if the film makers convinced me that they'd made a movie worth seeing after all.

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