best of the WORST films according to this Wikipedia listicle

In an interview during production [of Inchon], Sir Laurence Olivier explained why he agreed to be in the cast:

"People ask me why I'm playing in this picture. The answer is simple; money, dear boy. I'm like a vintage wine. You have to drink me quickly before I turn sour. I'm almost used up now, and I can feel the end coming. That's why I'm taking money now. I've got nothing to leave my family, but the money I can make from films. Nothing is beneath me if it pays well. I've earned the right to damn well grab whatever I can in the time I've got left."

If I saw Highlander II (and will have to check), it’s the only one of these movies I’ve ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvq-fnjCyeo

This looks like some way out stuff.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

MOMMIE DEAREST and ISHTAR should run away with this

I voted for Maniac; it's terrible but in a Grand Guignol manner.

Is No Orchids For Miss Blandish supposed to be that bad? As a British knockoff of American hard-boiled film it was meh, but I didn't think it was that actively awful.

yeah, going with Ishtar for sure

The thing about Ishtar was that neither Warren Beatty nor Dustin Hoffman had made a film for five years prior, so a film with both of them together… expectations were huge. So what did we get? Basically a pretty funny Hope and Crosby “Road” picture. Nothing amazing. But certainly a lot of laughs, particularly in the first half before it gets all ‘Rambo.’

has ANYBODY seen the Uma Thurman Avengers?

i did and it was truly awful. i've only walked out of one movie, and that should have been the second

...wait so what WAS the movie you walked out on?

Judging by username it was Do the Right Thing

prospero's books (although tbf i hadn't paid for it)

The only film I can remember walking out on was Exit to Eden, which was a supposedly sexy film starring Rosie O'Donnell and Dana Delaney that was pretty much the very opposite of sexy.

me and my friends walked out of the Gus Vant Sant Psycho, which we had gone to with free tickets. this was senior year of high school. we then decided to go to downtown Orlando (Church Street) and I got lost and ran out of gas on I-4, then when a cop stopped by to help, ran towards him and tripped on the asphalt, scraping up my hands and knees. dad kept asking me for years if I made the story up of me falling and if someone had actually beaten me up.

in recent years, having things like Moviepass and memberships, I pretty much walk out the moment I start to nod off of a bad film

I may have also walked out on Wes Craven's Shocker from 1990, which put me off horror films for a good ten years

when walking out of a movie, always walk into another one

Ha I remember how bad EXIT TO EDEN was and also someone later telling me about some Schadenfreude gloating from one of the director’s old friends

But the wit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wMwAtIMsNY

I may have also walked out on Wes Craven's Shocker from 1990

I only finally saw that the other year at an annual Halloween party that shows various horror movies of less than compelling quality. A friend noted during it "Yeah Wes said in later years he was going through a divorce at the time" and boy, could you ever tell.

i've seen

Reefer Madness
Robot Monster
Zaat aka Blood Waters of Doctor Z
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
The Swarm (1978)
Mommie Dearest (1981)

All bad movies. Exorcist ii and mommie dearest are the most constantly entertaining. I guess I'll go with mommie dearest for the axe scene and the coat hangers scene.

The Swarm is really the worst, I mean OMFG. If you took money to be in that film you are a whore.

Ha, I believe Michael Caine basically said as much on more than one occasion

damn, you left off a lot of my favorite picks

i guess out of what's left i gotta go with _fatal deviation_. y'all really should check out the whole list on wikipedia, though - there are some very worthy picks by very worthy creators on there

noteworthy bad films i can think of off the top of my head include:

the return of dr. x
boom in the moon
the wizard of oz (the 1925 larry semon version)
switch (2013)
devilman (2004)
space warriors 2000
ninja: final duel

The Swarm is really the worst, I mean OMFG. If you took money to be in that film you are a whore.

― Josefa

hey sex work is work

btw, a link between two of the films on this list: gore vidal was inspired to write "myra breckinridge" specifically to make fun of bunny breckinridge, a trans woman who appeared in "plan 9 from outer space".

i'm not overly fond of gore vidal. personally.

Ishtar is fucking brilliant, and people were idiots to bash it upon release. The opening establishing bromance scenes at the bar between Hoffman and Beatty are so funny you forget to breathe

New biography on Elaine May is out in a few weeks

North is wretched, excruciating, racist shit, and Rob Reiner had never recovered from it

The only film I walked out of was "Gold", Roger Moore. Because it was very boring.

I used to claim that Ecks vs. Sever was the worst movie I'd seen. I wonder if it "holds up"

Ecks vs. Sever is excruciating. It’s not even comedically awful

Voted Robot Monster, a great work. Good blu edition out now with a 3D capacity that makes some of the directing choices make much more sense.

The Apple has enough wild musical numbers to be worth seeing, though honestly I started feeling pretty uncomfortable in the last half when you start to realize that all the evil characters are black/gay/gender-non-conforming and the only pure characters are the straight Aryan types.
― JoeStork, Thursday, 2 May 2024 17:01 (two hours ago)

Its production came at a moment in the Disco chronology when the producers felt that, as well as cashing in on Disco itself, they should also cash in on the backlash against same, so it has this weird moralistic side to it, it knows you've come for the decadence but also wants to pretend it opposes this decadence. The Sgt Pepper's movie is imo an even more blatant version of this, trying to recast the Lonely Hearts Club Band as some sort of ragtime institution symbolizing America's lost innocence, though unlike The Apple it does pull the "some of my best friends" card by making Earth, Wind & Fire part of the good guys. Both movies are kinda illustrative of this boomer duality, they want the sex and the coke but in the end they wish it was still the 50's.

ctrl+f "Battlefield Earth", 0/0 results

😑

making Earth, Wind & Fire part of the good guys.

thus giving us their "got to get you into my life", the one good thing to come out of that film

nobody ever talks about the predecessor film, the "disco beatlemania" to _sgt. pepper's_ "stars on 45" - _all this and world war ii_, a compilation of 1940s newsreel footage set to covers of beatles songs

it even prominently features the bee gees on the soundtrack

i've never actually seen _all this_ or _sgt. pepper's_. casting the hottest disco group in the country as 3/4 of a "ragtime institution symbolizing America's lost innocence" in opposition to the hedonistic degeneracy of disco is certainly a... creative decision. because there's nothing more american than the beatles. not even the bee gees.

they want the sex and the coke but in the end they wish it was still the 50's.

― Daniel_Rf

also weird: the boomer belief that sex wasn't invented until 1967.

_the apple_ really gives me heaven's gate vibes. the ufo cult, not _other_ 1980 critically reviled film. it seems like the kind of film that would inspire someone to _really commit_ to america's lost innocence by, say, getting an orchiectomy. which is another weird thing to me. i know a lot of people who've had orchis, and the idea that getting an orchi is somehow an act of _chastity_ is utterly bizarre to me. in fairness, a lot of us also boof prog. i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that marshall herff applewhite never boofed prog.

-

if i hadn't voted for _fatal deviation_ i would probably have gone with _robot monster_.

By a quick count I think I've seen 6 of these in their original release? Am tempted to vote Cats bc of how much fun it was to see in a rowdy theater. But at the end of the day my heart belongs to Robot Monster

It’s me, the only person on ILX who liked the Thurman/Fiennes Avengers movie

I also liked Cafwoman but was primarily for Halle Berry in that costume

thus giving us their "got to get you into my life", the one good thing to come out of that film

Also arguably one of the few (only?) Beatles covers better than the original

Stevie Wonder's "We Can Work It Out" wants a word.

Bat Pussy, a female superhero, defends Gothum City from a middle-aged couple making a pornographic film.

Porn parodies appear to have completely defied evolution.

The worst movie I've ever seen (strictly from the standpoint of viewing some incredible ineptitude) was the Jeremy Irons/Thora Birch "Dungeons And Dragons" movie from 1999 or thereabouts

Of this list, I genuinely think "Myra Breckenridge" is a fantastic film and a terrific adaptation and never understood why people hated on it so much, it has a proto-Oliver Stone vibe

See also Skidoo, in that vein

^ classic for the end credits alone

worst 'real' movie I've ever seen, in terms of "i can't believe something this amateurish is in general theatrical release", i think has got to still be Whatever Works, a movie so bad I couldnt bear to walk out

I saw Crash on video and Me and You and Everyone We Know within a couple months of one another back in '05 and I don't think anything I've seen since has come within spitting distance of that double-header of awful.

Whatever Works was definitely weird and awkward... iirc it was shot from a screenplay dating back to the 1960s which would partially explain it.

Also arguably one of the few (only?) Beatles covers better than the original

― Rich E. (Eric H.)

oh no watch out this is one of my special interests. i spent several years compiling my favorite cover of every beatles original released under the beatles name between 1962 and 1970. not all of them are "better than the original" but a lot of them are!

-

Porn parodies appear to have completely defied evolution.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

almost like people don't _actually_ watch porn for the lulz

as a rick sloane fan, hobgoblins the easy choice for me.

worst 'real' movie I've ever seen, in terms of "i can't believe something this amateurish is in general theatrical release", i think has got to still be Whatever Works, a movie so bad I couldnt bear to walk out

― waste of compute (One Eye Open), Friday, 31 May 2024 18:24 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Whatever Works was definitely weird and awkward... iirc it was shot from a screenplay dating back to the 1960s which would partially explain it.

― Josefa, Friday, 31 May 2024 18:32 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

there are several late period Woody Allen films that are weird like this, but I don't think anything can top Cassandra's Dream (2007), where it's particularly jarring because it's meant to be a serious drama rather than a light comedy - every single element of it feels 'off', almost like an Ed Wood movie.

(I don't know how much of this is specific to being from the UK and the films version of the UK seeming wrong in a million small ways. It seems like the film received fairly positive reviews in the US?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQFSNyRLEiA

voted for Mommie Dearest, which is a fascinating film in retrospect that appears to have destroyed Faye Dunaway's career

It’s a shame that people discuss Mommie Dearest more than the truly brilliant films Frank Perry made like Last Summer, Ladybug Ladybug, Doc (also with Faye Dunaway, and easily the most underrated western of the 70’s), Diary of a Mad Housewife, and Play it as it Lays

I think THE SWIMMER probably rates a tiny bit higher in the cinephile circles than MOMMIE

Ah I should have voted Things, it's genuinely otherworldly, almost everything in it is incompetent at a level where you wonder how it could even have been completed, but at the same time it really achieves something beyond 99% of 'bad movies.' It looks like it was filmed in Hell.

A review on Letterboxd of Bat Pussy:

Commonly called "the first porn parody" as well as "the worst porn movie of all time," this Texas-shot oddity is about as meagre as you can get and still have something to project on a screen. The loose plot involves "Buddy" and "Sam," a squabbling couple who bicker, argue, and insult each other while also drowsily, sloppily going down on each other. Sample dialogue: "I've sucked on them tittes for the last fucking time. I been suckin' on them mother fuckers for the nast, last nine years." Meanwhile, across town in her secret hideout, "Dora Dildo" gets "a twitch in her twat" that tells her that fucking is happening in Gotham City. So she puts on a ratty Batgirl costume and becomes "Bat Pussy," and travels slowly along the side of a highway on a hippity-hop to interrupt Buddy and Sam's flaccid lovemaking. Eventually she arrives in their home and hops in their marital bed, and the three of them writhe around together in a big pile of pockmarked flesh. Words cannot do justice to what this actually looks like, except to note that the Blu-Ray clarity reveals Buddy's diaper-rash in all its glory. It ends after a little more than 50 minutes, and you will not be begging for more.

There is one fun moment where Sam and Bat Pussy fall out of bed in a very awkward and possibly painful way and start cracking up. I liked seeing them break kayfabe for a few seconds.

There are a lot of pornos that you could call "not very sexy," but very few where it's this difficult to imagine anyone, anywhere being able to jerk off to it. The director and actors are still unknown, so there's no one who can really explain it, giving this movie a powerful sense of mystery. The Blu-Ray does include an excellent new commentary by Melinda Belles and Dennis Campa, two Texas exploitation film experts who know everything it's currently possible to know about it, which is not a whole lot.

In conclusion: this is a great film that belongs in every home video library.

Lancaster's best performance is in Atlantic City, though he was already on fire for a lot of the '70s.

...And 50s/60s. He was also great in From Here To Eternity (1954), The Birdman of Alcatraz (1963), and The Leopard (1963)

xxxp I would love to see Last Summer, but it is not available right now

Agreed.

beamish13 otm about Lancaster. A fascinating, conflicted guy, equipped with a superior intelligence. He loved Lampedusa's novel so much that he handed out inscribed copies to friends for years. I can think of few American movie stars with his beauty who accepted the toll of age and chose roles late in life without vanity.