Epically Bad Films

[JTEM]

Let me start off my saying that the worst movie I ever saw was,
um, well it was... was...

I don't remember.

It was a long time ago, the title escapes me and I googled it
a number of times, asked for help online and just never found
it. But, it was this rancid little tale with no Good Guys. A
horrible teenage girl turns to prostitution, I believe, only to
murder one of her tricks. This leads to her promotion to
hitman -- or hitgirl -- whose reign finally ends when she is
tasked with murdering an ex boyfriends dad. The ridiculous
plot, the unlikeable characters and the implausible
contrivances on which every turn of the plot relied on all
added up to cinema vomit.

...perhaps something made for TV?

I dunno. But here's some bad movies whose titles I do know:


#Gigli

Quite literally ruined Ben Affleck's career. Shunned by Hollywood,
Affleck had to make his own films, quickly proving his merit. He
fought himself into a second Academy Award! Yes, he got there in
the end, but he did it the hard way, all because of Gigli.

#Heaven's Gate

Pretty much shut down at it's premiere, "Heaven's Gate" is faulted
for the demise of United Artists.

It killed the studio!

It was, for it's time, quite a big budget production, and earned back
less than 10% of its cost in the theaters.

#The Room (2003)

Popularly described as the worst movie for all time, which probably
saved it from financial ruin... the curiosity factor working for it.


From my personal list I would add:

#200 American

A micro budget production that maybe should have spent a little
less.

#The Monitors

I saw this on TV, believe it or, and I often wondered if I should try to
see it again, as maybe I was too young to understand it. Or maybe it
really is just as bad as I recall.



REMEMBER:

A bad comedy isn't funny, but a bad drama can be hilarious. So,
just because a movie is bad doesn't always mean that it isn't worth
watching.




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[Michael OConnor]

Never saw any of those, so I can't judge if they were terrible on a level with "Airport 79: The Concorde" (a movie so bad that in recent years, after the success of "Airplane!", it has been rebranded as a comedy) or "The Black Hole" or the Robert Altman-Paul Newman post-apocalyptic Ice Age movie "Quintet". I did not dislike "Waterworld" or "The Postman". As a connoisseur of bad films, the one movie I've found that I could not sit thru has been "Zardoz", which may be the worst film I have ever seen.

[moviePig]

On 10/23/2019 5:11 PM, Michael OConnor wrote:
> Never saw any of those, so I can't judge if they were terrible on a level with "Airport 79: The Concorde" (a movie so bad that in recent years, after the success of "Airplane!", it has been rebranded as a comedy) or "The Black Hole" or the Robert Altman-Paul Newman post-apocalyptic Ice Age movie "Quintet". I did not dislike "Waterworld" or "The Postman". As a connoisseur of bad films, the one movie I've found that I could not sit thru has been "Zardoz", which may be the worst film I have ever seen.

Re ZARDOZ, different strokes...

A famously bad movie, iirc, is THE SILVER CHALICE. When it reached TV
broadcast, star Paul Newman took out an apology ad in the NYTimes.

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[Halmyre]

On Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at 9:38:35 PM UTC+1, JTEM wrote:
>
> #Heaven's Gate
>
> Pretty much shut down at it's premiere, "Heaven's Gate" is faulted
> for the demise of United Artists.
>
> It killed the studio!
>
> It was, for it's time, quite a big budget production, and earned back
> less than 10% of its cost in the theaters.
>

I thought there had since been a bit of revisionism and as a result the film is now seen in a better light?

Worst film I've ever seen? The Happening was pretty rank. I gave up on The Green Hornet and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Most recently, The Commuter started off promisingly but then went rapidly downhill and reached its nadir with the I'm Spartacus moment.

--
Halmyre

--
Halmyre

[Poisoned Rose]

The Dana Carvey vehicle "Master of Disguise" could be tops for me.

[baxteran...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, October 24, 2019 at 5:05:24 AM UTC-6, Poisoned Rose wrote:
> The Dana Carvey vehicle "Master of Disguise" could be tops for me.

I seen some pretty goldurned bad movies, but I aint remembered a one a them.

[art...@yahoo.com]

On Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at 4:38:35 PM UTC-4, JTEM wrote:
> Let me start off my saying that the worst movie I ever saw was,
> um, well it was... was...

As a big fan of lurid sex thrillers, I will have to say that The General's Daughter was horrid. (I wish they made those movies like they did in the 90's. Is there a more recent one I should watch?)

[Michael OConnor]

> > Let me start off my saying that the worst movie I ever saw was,
> > um, well it was... was...
>
> As a big fan of lurid sex thrillers, I will have to say that The General's Daughter was horrid. (I wish they made those movies like they did in the 90's. Is there a more recent one I should watch?)

Are you talking about the so-called Skinomax movies? Those soft-core R movies that would star some has-been actor like Andrew Stevens (who starred in or produced a lot of those back then) or William Katt and some generic hottie of the week like Shannon Tweed. The plots were about as paper-thin as a Lifetime movie and involved a murder or blackmail and there would be a lot of T&A. I remember seeing them movies all over the place on late night premium cable in the 90's, it was a pretty successful genre that pretty much disappeared.

[art...@yahoo.com]

I never saw too many of those, not having cable. More like Basic Instinct, Jade,etc. I remember reading a review of Body of Evidence (Which I never actually saw) which starting by suggesting that Madonna had seen Basic Instinct and said "I want to make one of those". So I am talking about one of those...

[Bill Anderson]

On 10/23/2019 4:11 PM, Michael OConnor wrote:
> Never saw any of those, so I can't judge if they were terrible on a level with "Airport 79: The Concorde" (a movie so bad that in recent years, after the success of "Airplane!", it has been rebranded as a comedy) or "The Black Hole" or the Robert Altman-Paul Newman post-apocalyptic Ice Age movie "Quintet". I did not dislike "Waterworld" or "The Postman". As a connoisseur of bad films, the one movie I've found that I could not sit thru has been "Zardoz", which may be the worst film I have ever seen.
>

Yep, you're on the right track with ZARDOZ. But though HEAVEN'S GATE,
mentioned in the original post, may have been an epically bad business
decision, it's a decent movie with at least one unforgettable scene: the
guy roller skating while playing a fiddle.

The worst movie I have ever seen/walked out of was CALIGULA.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

[JTEM]

"Drop Dead Fred."

Epic in its badness... truly horrible...





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[TT]

Gigli is not THAT bad as it's made out to be. At least it has a good
scene with Lopez etc.

Heaven's Gate is actually good, or even very good if you like authentic
looking westerns with great cinematography.

-

As for the worst films I've seen....there are many... some which live up
to their bad reputation such as...

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
The Room (2003)
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)

etc...

And many many films which I think are hugely OVERRATED:
(list taken from Excel file which calculates difference between my own
IMDB rating and the IMDB average for a title)

Here's first 100 on my list of overrated titles...

2006 Rang De Basanti
2001 Dil Chahta Hai
1986 Offret
2008 Martyrs
1959 Hiroshima mon amour
1972 Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
2014 Captain America: The Winter Soldier
1995 La cité des enfants perdus
1983 L'argent
1955 Ordet
2012 Cloud Atlas
2007 [Rec]
2018 Black Panther
2009 Kynodontas
1975 Sholay
2000 Werckmeister harmóniák
2015 Furious Seven
1999 Ôdishon
1967 Week End
2009 Hachi: A Dog's Tale
1976 Herz aus Glas
2008 The Dark Knight
2003 Big Fish
1922 Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
2009 Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte
1992 Lat sau san taam
2004 El habitante incierto
2015 Chappie
2003 21 Grams
2010 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
2014 Kingsman: The Secret Service
1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth
1972 Tenshi no kôkotsu
1965 Pierrot le fou
1925 The Phantom of the Opera
2008 Synecdoche, New York
2008 Quantum of Solace
1967 Wavelength
1984 Stranger Than Paradise
1997 The Sweet Hereafter
2013 Kick-Ass 2
2012 The Dark Knight Rises
2009 3 Idiots
1945 Les enfants du paradis
1991 Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian
2017 Coco
2002 Russkiy kovcheg
2016 Toni Erdmann
2014 Godzilla
1990 Nema-ye Nazdik
2005 Brick
2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
2013 Only Lovers Left Alive
2013 Under the Skin
1975 Black Moon
1979 Stalker
1952 Saikaku ichidai onna
2014 Kis Uykusu
1965 Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution
2006 The Fountain
1996 Scream
2007 There Will Be Blood
2011 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
2007 Into the Wild
2014 The Grand Budapest Hotel
1939 La règle du jeu
1924 Greed
1983 Nostalghia
1927 Napoléon vu par Abel Gance
2000 Yi yi
1960 Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru
2014 Mommy
1998 Crna macka, beli macor
2004 The Passion of the Christ
2005 The Jacket
1922 Foolish Wives
2012 Holy Motors
2006 Casino Royale
1987 Der Himmel über Berlin
2016 Deadpool
1963 Il gattopardo
1973 La maman et la putain
1933 Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse
1958 Jalsaghar
2008 Vals Im Bashir
1997 Pâfekuto burû
2009 A Serious Man
2008 Tropic Thunder
2006 Gwoemul
1972 The Last House on the Left
1950 Harvey
2002 Hable con ella
2006 The Fall
1948 Germania anno zero
2017 Dunkirk
1939 Zangiku monogatari
1994 Utomlennye solntsem
2004 Primer
2006 Inland Empire
1999 Fight Club

[JTEM]

TT wrote:

> As for the worst films I've seen....there are many... some which live up
> to their bad reputation such as...
>
> Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

I've seen worse. After all, it has a beginning, a middle and an end,
not something a lot of bad movies have... Monster A GoGo, for
example.

> Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)

The sequel was bad. The sequel was exceptionally bad. No, even
worse than bad...

But how can you condemn Attack of the Killer Tomatoes without
condemning Mars Attacks in the same breath?

> 2017 Dunkirk

I honestly felt ripped-off by this film.







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[hector]

I disagree with almost everyone on what is a bad movie.
To me, they are movies that seem made up as they go along in a rambling
way. Often some arch annoying content thrown in.
My list has been, The Abyss (rambling series of events with plenty of
self importance), Ragtime (whatever happened to that movie?), Salvation
(1988, I challenge anyone to sit through it), The Usual Suspects
(another rambling movie with self importance).

[hector]

On 24/10/2019 7:38 AM, JTEM wrote:
>

That's the problem right there. Some movies aren't worth watching.

>
>
>
>
> -- --
>
> https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/188544881683
>

[Michael OConnor]

> I disagree with almost everyone on what is a bad movie.
> To me, they are movies that seem made up as they go along in a rambling
> way. Often some arch annoying content thrown in.
> My list has been, The Abyss (rambling series of events with plenty of
> self importance), Ragtime (whatever happened to that movie?), Salvation
> (1988, I challenge anyone to sit through it), The Usual Suspects
> (another rambling movie with self importance).

"Ragtime" was a terrific book, although the movie was a mess of sorts because they cut out half the book, although Milos Forman captured the atmosphere of the book perfectly. Casting James Olson as the family patriarch instead of an actor with more, shall we say, gravitas, such as a Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman would have helped considerably.

While not a fan of remakes, I wouldn't mind seeing somebody take a crack at "Ragtime" in a venue like Netflix, perhaps stretching this out into six or eight hours to tell the entire story. I want to see the story of the father traveling to the North Pole, and a lot of the other stories that were told in Doctorow's book that were not directly related to Colehouse Walker Jr. and his car, such as more on Houdini, who if memory serves had his own chapter in the book.

[Sol L. Siegel]

Michael OConnor <mpoco...@aol.com> wrote in
news:fa4bc057-0bba-4064...@googlegroups.com:

> "Ragtime" was a terrific book, although the movie was a mess of sorts
> because they cut out half the book, although Milos Forman captured the
> atmosphere of the book perfectly.

I've always thought that much of the cutting - particularly the excision
of Emma Goldman - may have been dictated by Dino de Laurentius, the
producer, who had previously fired Robert Altman from the project. It was
poetic justice of a sort when that year's Academy Award for Supporting
Actress went to Maureen Stapleton for her role in "Reds" as... Emma
Goldman.

I also wonder: did the reworking of "Amadeus" to focus more on Mozart's
problems with the Habsburg crown possibly have something to do with
Forman venting over similar problems with "Ragtime"?

- Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA USA

[hector]

On 15/11/2019 3:32 PM, Michael OConnor wrote:
>
>> I disagree with almost everyone on what is a bad movie.
>> To me, they are movies that seem made up as they go along in a rambling
>> way. Often some arch annoying content thrown in.
>> My list has been, The Abyss (rambling series of events with plenty of
>> self importance), Ragtime (whatever happened to that movie?), Salvation
>> (1988, I challenge anyone to sit through it), The Usual Suspects
>> (another rambling movie with self importance).
>
> "Ragtime" was a terrific book, although the movie was a mess of sorts because they cut out half the book, although Milos Forman captured the atmosphere of the book perfectly. Casting James Olson as the family patriarch instead of an actor with more, shall we say, gravitas, such as a Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman would have helped considerably.

I've never read the book. I tried to forget the movie along with
everybody else.

>
> While not a fan of remakes, I wouldn't mind seeing somebody take a crack at "Ragtime" in a venue like Netflix, perhaps stretching this out into six or eight hours to tell the entire story. I want to see the story of the father traveling to the North Pole, and a lot of the other stories that were told in Doctorow's book that were not directly related to Colehouse Walker Jr. and his car, such as more on Houdini, who if memory serves had his own chapter in the book.
>

Many books could deal with that treatment. I like miniserieses

[Poisoned Rose]

On 2019-11-04 12:21:52 +0000, TT listed 100 most overrated films.....

Boy, I can't go along with more than a handful of these picks.
Sometimes it's because the movie doesn't seem particularly revered to
me (Harvey, Inland Empire, Godzilla, Big Fish, Chappie, The Fountain,
Only Lovers Left Alive….), but usually it's because I've seen the film
and didn't rate it much worse than its general reputation. And I liked
many of these films a lot.

And in a year when Joker is still a hot topic? ;) And I have a special
beef with the gurgling nostalgia for "beloved" teen films of the
'80s....

I do think Toni Erdmann, Audition, Dogtooth, L'argent and the Dark
Knight films are annoyingly overrated, and I don't share the worship
for Edward Yang in general. And I tried to watch The Fall once and
couldn't bear to finish it.

I've only seen about 75% of those, though. Of the ones I've missed, I'd
happily watch The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, Ecstasy of the
Angels, Hard Boiled or Black Cat White Cat.

Good to see an obvious film buff in this group, though.

[Bill Anderson]

On 11/19/2019 1:15 AM, hector wrote:
> On 15/11/2019 3:32 PM, Michael OConnor wrote:

>>
>> "Ragtime" was a terrific book, although the movie was a mess of sorts
>> because they cut out half the book, although Milos Forman captured the
>> atmosphere of the book perfectly.  Casting James Olson as the family
>> patriarch instead of an actor with more, shall we say, gravitas, such
>> as a Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman would have helped considerably.
>
> I've never read the book.  I tried to forget the movie along with
> everybody else.
>

Nevertheless, "Ragtime" was a terrific book.

[moviePig]

And should be played slow...