best of the WORST films according to this Wikipedia listicle

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

I just saw The Swimmer on Criterion, had never even heard of it before... definitely Burt Lancaster's most impressive performance

I liked Frank Perry's David and Lisa but it felt very underbaked, and I liked Carrie Snodgrass in Diary of a Mad Housewife (although, was there ever a more early-70s film?)

The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster is his greatest achievement I think, it is at turns aspirational, absurd, and allegorical, with beautiful cinematography (I have to believe Slim Aarons was influenced by him) and is maybe the perfect 1968 film

(I posted that before remembering that my favorite film of all time was from 1968)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

MOMMIE DEAREST and ISHTAR should run away with this

― Rich E. (Eric H.), Thursday, May 30, 2024 5:54 PM (yesterday)

Nailed it!

I still need to see Exorcist II: The Heretic.

From Dave Kehr's original capsule review for the Chicago Reader:

"Everybody seems to hate this movie, and not without good reason. But John Boorman’s 1977 follow-up to William Friedkin’s shocker is a much more interesting film than the original, and Boorman deserves credit for trying out some new ideas, even if most of them backfire. Visually, it’s fascinating—sort of a blend of Minnellian baroque and Buñuelian absurdity—but the dialogue is childish, the story is incomprehensible, and the metaphysics are ridiculous. Still, an audacious failure is preferable to a chickenhearted success. More than worth a look, if only out of curiosity"

And of course Scorsese's take:

“The picture asks: Does great goodness bring upon itself great evil? This goes back to the Book of Job; it's God testing the good. In this sense, Regan (Linda Blair) is a modern-day saint — like Ingrid Bergman in Europa '51, and, in a way, like Charlie in Mean Streets. I like the first Exorcist, because of the Catholic guilt I have, and because it scared the hell out of me; but The Heretic surpasses it. Maybe Boorman failed to execute the material, but the movie still deserved better than it got.”

nobody else voted for things?!

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

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,

I'm sure I've told the story already of going to see this at a late night show in a cinema in Dublin. After about twenty minutes, people started to walk out. By the time my boyfriend and I gave up on it after half an hour, there was a small queue at the box office looking for refunds. The staff apologised to everyone, acknowledged that they had booked the film without knowing anything about it, and gave us vouchers. They said they couldn't give a refund because there was nothing technically wrong with the screening.

I liked Carrie Snodgrass in Diary of a Mad Housewife (although, was there ever a more early-70s film?)

Quite true. Frank Langella!

My previous take on Sgt. Pepper's, in part:

'If the Voyager space probe had contained only the Beatles discography and was discovered by meth-head aliens who mistakenly believed that these albums comprised the root of earthling communication, this movie would be their attempt at a response. And it would be difficult to interpret their message as anything but a veiled threat.'

Also I forgot Things was in the running! Probably should've thrown a vote it's way.

I'm glad to say that everything I would've championed received at least one vote. Except Turkish Star Wars, dang it. Love that deranged piece of copyright infringement so much.

Here's how I'd rank those that I've seen:

Not even bad or weird, just good movies:
Robot Monster (1953)
Ishtar (1987)
Mommie Dearest (1981)

Delightfully weird or inept:
The Apple (1980)
Myra Breckinridge (1970)
Things (1989)
Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World) (1982)
An American Hippie in Israel (1972)

Made zero lasting impression whatsoever:
Highlander II: The Quickening (theatrical version, 1991)
Catwoman (2004)
The Last Airbender (2010)

Actual crimes:
North (1994)
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)

I really need to see those last two crime movies

This was a good poll!

Burt Lancaster is excellent in The Swimmer, but I’m not sure if I’d put his performance in it above what he delivered in Conversation Piece, Local Hero, Ulzanna’s Raid, or Brute Force. He was the most unconventional and fearless actor of his generation by far

Seriously, though-how can you not see Last Summer? I saw the only 16mm print of it in existence at a screening with the great Barbara Hershey. It is just devastating. Play It As It Lays is an incredible adaptation of Joan Didion’s novel, and Tuesday Weld is amazing

Was it the uncut version? I've seen Last Summer a couple of times (on actual VHS rental, on bootleg, on TCM) and was never certain if I ever saw the original X version. But yeah the ending is devastating whether cut or not. Wish Cathy Burns had more of a career, not to mention a happier life.

Sadly still the case (taken from frank perry, film director):

Warner Archive used to--might still--field questions about projects on their Facebook page. They have the rights to Last Summer, and it seemed like every month they got a query about their ongoing restoration efforts. IIRC, they were basically making a new master culled from different sources--The Aussie 16 mm print (which is indeed the most complete surviving celluloid copy), a tape master which has the cut footage, and various and sundry negative/positive elements--none of which were in the greatest of shape thank s to both the shoestring nature of the production and original distributor Allied Artists poorly maintained archives.

― to fly across the city and find Aerosmith's car (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, June 5, 2017 2:46 PM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

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.

ok i'm not gonna watch _myra breckenridge_ but i _am_ going to watch youtuber evasive getting a bunch of trans women at her house with bagel bites and making _them_ watch _myra breckenridge_.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spzGWwxY9rM

ok she "attempts to introduce femdom into the curriculum"? honestly, i would do this, BECAUSE GODDAMN WE NEED SOME FUCKING DOMINANT TRANS WOMEN OUT THERE, everybody wants to be a puppygirl these days

Kate I think you’d love that film tbh

There may be an argument on behalf of Mae West's appearances in Myra and Sextette being filed under theoretical dominant trans readings

Kate I think you’d love that film tbh

― frociaggine e figaggine (flamboyant goon tie included)

idk the bit where breckinridge rapes a dude for ten minutes straight might be a little much for me. i got a hard time with cinematic depictions of sexual assault.

There may be an argument on behalf of Mae West's appearances in Myra and Sextette being filed under theoretical dominant trans readings

― Rich E. (Eric H.)

see i see mae west as being camp as hell but not _trans_ particularly

well, more than that... i'm an older queer femme who's trying to figure out how to express my sexuality, and whatever that might look like, it doesn't look anything like mae west. to be clear i haven't seen _myra breckenridge_ or _sextette_ but her performance in both of them seem like mae west being mae west, and it's impossible to _not_ know what mae west is about.

i just don't perform dominance in the way west does. everything she says is a _suggestive double entendre_. and then myra breckinridge rapes a dude for ten minutes straight. she's not there for that, of course, because she's too fragile and threatened to be in the same room as raquel welch. that's the thing... it's hard for me to read west as an older woman confident in her sexuality. easier for me to read her as a woman who's over the hill right now and looking for love.

when it comes to art i do tend to engage with it paratextually. mostly i think this is because i am a Highly Sensitive Person and engaging with stuff directly tends to fuck me up emotionally. i do prefer paratext, mediated secondary sources. particularly i don't like engaging with art by myself, that _really_ fucks me up. fictional stuff, i usually only watch that around other people. idk, eric, you keep on top of this stuff, let me know if there's a local showing of myra breckinridge. i bet someone would show it here if they had a print. apparently church of film is showing a japanese movie called "bye bye love" tonight. i might check that one out.

reading trans representation in older media is difficult. most trans readings of media are either imposing trans narratives on media that isn't intentionally trans or else in some sense subverting the intended message. the interesting thing for me is that evasive says that the rape scene comes directly from the book, but i don't know if the _intent_ is the same. the context. per evasive, both vidal and sarne, the film's director, say that the film was one of those adaptations that's _against_ the source material. i am very fond of this idea, that of a film that's directly hostile to its source material. the most obvious example i can think of is "starship troopers". in this case, though, sarne's intent is apparently patriarchal and cishet - from what i can tell the redeeming feature of the film is its fundamental incoherence.

which yeah is my thing. i do prefer films to be narratively incoherent.

-

ok, here's the best case i can make for that rape scene. again, not having seen the film, talking about it entirely _in theory_

the most powerful queer act is that of _queering_. it is fundamentally a transgressive act however one does it, because being queer is _not normal_ under patriarchy. there's this very powerful cishet fear of being "turned" queer, of being "made" queer. however tempting that fantasy is to me, it doesn't actually work like that. i can't turn someone queer any more than decades of cishet propaganda could turn me straight. it made me very miserable for a very long time, it taught me to hate myself, but it didn't turn me straight. "queering", to me, is a type of deprogramming. i feel like a lot of people have the _potential_ to be queer, and "queering" is the act of making implicit queerness explicit. that's at the heart of a lot of camp, i think, why camp is such a strongly queer practice. "hey, have you ever considered that batman and robin are maybe kind of gay?" that kind of thing. this is easier to do with works that don't have a strong and compelling textual narrative - if i'm gripped by the story a piece of media is _trying_ to tell, i'm not going to take time to stop and wonder if it might actually be gay.

a big part of the transfem narrative is that for a lot of people their gateway to gender exploration is something called "force fem", which falls under the category of "consensual non-consent". and nominally this sort of thing reinforces patriarchal norms that see womanhood as being inferior or degrading. by giving people experiences outside of the realm of what's acceptable under patriarchy, though, it can open the door to challenge those patriarchal norms.

so something can, in one way, be a powerful means of deconstructing the ways individuals have been affected by patriarchal oppression, and in another way be really traumatic and really fuck someone up. i didn't ever do force fem myself, but i have been traumatized in my own ways by the ways in which i tried to come to terms with my gender identity and am still trying to come to terms with whatever the fuck my sexuality is.

i somehow doubt that this is what sarne is trying to express with that scene, but my understanding is that sarne's attempt to express anything at all in that film perhaps opens up the film to alternate readings.

i kinda want to turn this into an essay at some point and tie it in with some other stuff i've been working through but my level of functioning isn't quite up to that right now, oh well

There may be an argument on behalf of Mae West's appearances in Myra and Sextette being filed under theoretical dominant trans readings

― Rich E. (Eric H.), Wednesday, June 5, 2024 9:49 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

There may be an argument on behalf of Mae West's entire career being filed under theoretical dominant trans readings. Which might be overly reductive. That said, I do see her as an extreme branch of mainstream 20th century entertainment that connects her to more underground performers like Dwight Fiske or Ray/Rae Bourbon (he may not have been literally transgender, but he made a career of it).

(Disclaimer: I haven't seen Sextette and have only seen a YouTube supercut of West's scenes in MB.)

"has ANYBODY seen the Uma Thurman Avengers?"

I actually went to see this at the cinema when it came out. The film was terrible but it had a fairly extensive advertising campaign based almost entirely around Uma Thurman in a leather catsuit. This was a period when I went to see pretty much every major or minor action blockbuster. I learn from the internet that it was released on 14 August 1998, and looking at the UK box-office that week I recognise Armageddon, Lost in Space, and Godzilla, which I also went to see at the cinema. I had such refined taste back then. Where did it go wrong.

You really can't appreciate how much The Matrix felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the shower of crap that came before it.

I saw each of those films once at the cinema and never again. I've never revisited them. What do I remember about The Avengers? There's a point where Mrs Peel uses a code phrase - "how now brown cow" - in a telephone box, but the film didn't explain how she knew the code. I vaguely remember that the plot was about weather satellites. And I had almost completely forgotten that Sean Connery was the villain. Does he say "now is the winter of our discontent" at some point?

I wonder if that film had a second life as raw material for fake Kingsman / James Bond trailers. Given the fact it had Ralph Fiennes in a suit. I also learn from the internet that Ralph Fiennes is related to a man called Hero Beauregard Faulkner Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes Tiffin, an actual real man who really exists.

I still think about Ronin every so often. That film was a couple of years ahead of its time. Many years from now I'll be able to explain to the few survivors of the apocalypse that Jean Reno existed and was a thing. This has nothing to do with The Avengers, I just thought about it.