Ten Worst Movies?

The problem with pop-culture lists is that they’re always overweighted toward recent years.

That said, I’m surprised anyone remembers Howard the Duck. The real crime of the movie wasn’t being awful, it was pissing on what had been one of the most esoteric and interesting comics — especially in the later issues where the writer got tired of being a comic-book writer, and started blogging before the fact. I’m sure I’ve referenced “Trapped in a world he never made!” once or twice during my tenure.

But to the point: A movie that takes down a studio can’t help but top any such list. There’s bad, and then there’s apocalyptic.

I’ve seen 3 of the worst reviewed movies:
8mm
Mission to Mars
Showgirls (because of the nudity, duh.)

The only one I liked was 8mm and it was because it was weird.

I’m surprised that stuff like Transformers and other Bayhem shit isn’t on the list, but it could be because of low expectations from a schlockmeister like Bay.

Also: Any list that doesn’t include Jar-Jar is proof of a lazy writer.

@nojo:
Lucas could be his own category on this list.

The Crystal Skull sucked.

@ManchuCandidate: And Willow, of course.

I’d also mention That Fucking Ewok Happy-Dance Movie, but RML has his dog trained on me.

@nojo:
Which one? There are two. The ROTJ and the TV movie with Diabeetus Wilford Brumley.

Oh, and 1941? Not quite Cimino levels of self-destruction, but Spielberg barely survived.

I’ve seen one out of 10 – Cocktail. It was awful, but only garden-variety awful. Queenan mentions Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom, which a cellmate at work told me about a few weeks ago. He said I’d need to shower afterwards. So it’s in my Netflix. Also, he mentioned a film called The Centipede. That’s got to be seriously awful.

@ManchuCandidate: I don’t count the TV movie, or else we’d have to include the Christmas special.

So ROTJ it is. Originally it was supposed to be “Revenge”, but Lucas wussed out. That was the first sign of the apocalypse to come.

@blogenfreude: Ex-Defamer God Mark Lisanti liveblogged a viewing of Centipede a few weeks back. So bad, it’s destined for cult greatness.

@ManchuCandidate: I saw “Showgirls” and appreciated it for Elizabeth Hurley’s athleticism. I also appreciated at least one other actress’s athleticism in that film. Yes, very athletic. How can you pan a movie that helped put pole-dancing into some of the tonier (hah!) fitness clubs?

@nojo: “G.I.Jane”? That Harrison Ford-Annette Benig vehicle where he played a lawyer who got amnesia? Gawddam that was awful.

At least I sat next to Joe Ely and his family during “The Bear”.

And who among us hasn’t had their childhood scarred by Darby O’Gill and the Little People?

Oh, that’s right. Anyone lucky enough to be born too late.

@Nabisco:
That would be Elizabeth Berkley actually. She’s a lousy actress, but her Showgirl highlights make watching “Saved By the Bell” reruns feel creepy (not that I watched them.)

@Nabisco: Cheater. You knew G.I.Jane would be awful going in.

Ya’ll are forgetting that by Hollywood standards, a movie can’t be bad if it makes money, such as Transformers.

@Original Andrew: Or Avatar, of course, which I finally got around to watching the other day. Cameron and Lucas should just go get a room.

@blogenfreude:

The Centipede, from what I’ve read, wouldn’t qualify for a “worst movie” list because it’s intentionally going for raw gross-out factor.

On the other hand, I don’t understand why Salon’s hating on Hudson Hawk. Terrible, campy and cheesy – but in an endearing pulp-comicbook sort of way. It’s always seemed (to me) to be a movie where the producers were in on the joke. “Heaven’s Gate”, on the other hand, seems like a serious attempt to make a serious movie that *accidentally* turned into a bizarro post-modern mess.

@ManchuCandidate: Somewhere in your house, you have hidden SBTB DVDs – admit it. We should be like porn buddies – if something awful happens to you, I’ll get to your house fast and remove embarrassing shit like that.

@al2o3cr: in an endearing pulp-comicbook sort of way

Beatty films Dick Tracy using an interesting palette of comic-book colors, fails.

Rodriguez films Sin City using an interesting palette of comic-book colors, succeeds.

Lesson: Don’t let Dustin Hoffman mumble his way through your comic-book movie.

For those of you, like me, who want more Queenan:

For years, I’d been vaguely aware of Michael Bolton’s existence, just as I’d been vaguely aware that there was an ebola virus plague in Africa. Horrible tragedies, yes, but they had nothing to do with me. All that changed when I purchased a copy of The Classics. When you work up the gumption to put a record like The Classics on your CD player, it’s not much different from deliberately inoculating yourself with rabies. With his heart-on-my-sleeve appeals to every emotion no decent human being should even dream of possessing, Michael Bolton is the only person in history who has figured out a way to make “Yesterday” sound worse than the original. He’s Mandy Patinkin squared. His sacrilegious version of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me” is a premeditated act of cultural ghoulism, a crime of musical genocide tantamount to a Jerry Vale rerecording of the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” And having to sit there, and listen while this Kmart Joe Cocker mutilates “You Send Me” is like sitting through a performance of King Lear with Don Knotts in the title role. Which leads to the inevitable question: If it’s a crime to deface the Statue of Liberty or to spraypaint swastikas on Mount Rushmore or to burn the American flag, why isn’t it a crime for Michael Bolton to butcher Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”?

I’m never very good at these things because I haven’t seen a whole bunch of movies. That said, though, I’m surprised at the inclusion of Hudson Hawk on a top 10 list. That wasn’t even Bruce Willis’s worst movie. The boat cop thing he starred in with SJP was much worse.

And I agree about the bias toward movies in the last 20 years. There are a bunch of bad movies from the 70s that everyone seems to forget about because the industry would rather remember it as the decade of the auteur (or whatever it is they call it in film school). Not too long ago, “Mother, Jugs, and Speed” was on tv and I watched it because it had Bill Cosby and was advertised as a comedy. It was terrible as a movie and absolutely non-existent as a comedy.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Damn, you just jostled Silver Streak from the dark corners of my mind, where it was safely hidden for years.

@blogenfreude: Brilliant. The only redeeming thing about “Yesterday” in the original* is that it was backed by “I Should Have Known Better” as a single. It was made for musical pimples like Bolton.
@ManchuCandidate: Right. She had me at “Elizabeth”, and I never watched that teevee show (a generational thing, I suspect).

*Confirmed Beatle on the Beatles v. Stones continuum, mind you.

@nojo: Not good, but again not the worst either Wilder or Pryor ever did together. That would be “Hear No Evil, See No Evil”. Ridiculously unfunny and made all the more difficult to watch because of Pryor’s obvious health problems.

Is it wrong that I’m rooting for anyone but Dario Franchitti just so I don’t have to see/hear about Ashley Judd?

@blogenfreude:
i can’t get enough either. also manolo dhargis. i look forward to their pans more than their picks. hilarious stuff.

the sequel to saturday night fever. the title is buried deep, thank god.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:
I think you jinxed it.

To be fair, better Ashley at the finish line than in a movie.

@baked: the title is buried deep, thank god

Stayin’ Alive!

Never tempt fate in a graveyard.

I’m not so much a fan of smart-alec losers writing in Salon having been on the receiving end of that kind of jealous camp in my time.

The awfulness or not of Heaven’s Gate is mostly conditional on the director’s astounding hubris. I thought it a very strikingly designed movie with some of the most interesting and carefully thought-out exteriors of the old west. And if its dramatics leave one slightly limp it’s a lot better than Titanic which is risible on many levels..

I also like 1941. It’s a very smart idea that suffered from production bloat but is full of fun and has one of the best photographed dance numbers I know. Like Silver Streak. I thought it a very smartly judged entertainment.

My least favorite movies would most likely have to include the recent Synecdoche which is flat-out putrid; Zabriski Point the movie that bankrupted MGM and caused the sale of the studio backlog; And Something Happened with poor Carol Baker. Very nice and very smart woman and very bad marriage.

Stayin’ Alive makes a very good double bill with Soap Dish next time you have a bunch of show-folk over.

@Benedick:
wait. i’m confused. i liked soap dish!

my review of titanic: sit in a chair in front of a closed window. have someone point the hose at the window. get a man and a woman to say “jack!” rose!” “jack!” “rose!” jack!” “rose!” for THREE hours.
you saw it.

@baked:

I’M KING OF THE WOR— [Woody Allen’s monster enters frame and devours Leo alive]

@Benedick: I will add HG to my Netflix – about time I watched the whole thing. As for Titanic … seeing Kate Winslet with her shirt off made it worthwhile, but if you saw it in DC, the asshole in the back of the theater yelling ‘DIE ALREADY!’ when Leo was in the freezing water was, of course, moi.

@blogenfreude: @nojo:

the line of the movie that makes 14 year olds swoon and makes me burst out laughing? “i’d rather be his whore than your wife !!!!”

speaking of die already, ever see the show “i shouldn’t be alive”
morons doing moronic shit? it kills it for me that they narrate.
i want them to die already!

@baked: Is it like Jackass?

@baked: Soap Dish is very amusing. I love it that Sally Field cries in every scene. If you add to it the truly hilarious view of the business of show in Stayin’ Alive as a curtain raiser while keeping one finger on the remote to speed through the boring bits, you can have a very nice time.

@blogenfreude: It’s not much good but neither was the very pompous The Deer Hunter which was as foolishly over-praised as Heaven’s Gate was slammed. But I did think that the designs were very original and it’s gorgeously photographed. If you want to talk merely dreadful I’d suggest The Lady in the Water or whatever it’s called as being a true stinker. Everything about it reeks. And – beach read alert! – the bio of the director which is called something like The Man Who Heard Voices is truly badness of a whole new magnitude. There is something on every page to make you spray your Wheeties onto the page. You end up feeling sorry for the Disney execs. And by Disney execs I mean Disney execs. A must read.

@baked: Me, too, re Soap Dish, and congratulations on your new baby. Bella is indeed bella.

@baked: @lynnlightfoot: “Her brain will laterally explore within the next three houses. It’s a dreadful, dreadful thud.” Love it!

@baked: @flippin eck: Could you tell our wardrobe person, whose name I don’t quite have yet, that I don’t feel quite right in a turban. What I feel like is Gloria FUCKING Swanson! Am I 70 David, am I 70? Why don’t you just put me in a walker? By a goddamned walker and put me in it!