What Is the Worst Movie You've Ever Seen?

[Tjack]

1 hour ago, dmjalund said:

Gigli (Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez) is supposed to be pretty bad. Haven;t watched it though

    It is a movie that is far beyond merely stupid. The main point of contention is that Ms. Lopez plays a lesbian who falls in love with Ben even though his character is an idiot.  (That’s not just an opinion, it’s a plot point that he’s stupid and inept.)  

    However there is a scene in this film that make it VERY rentable. In it Jenny from the block delivers a very seductive soliloquy on why she finds women desirable while doing yoga in tight exercise wear.

    Guys...find this on YouTube,  trust me.

[Bazza]

3 hours ago, death tribble said:

That was just a cheap jibe and is beneath you.

Do you seriously like Hook ?

Haven’t seen it. Should I? 

[death tribble]

The purpose of most films is to put bums on seats which is why I don't have a problem with the Star Wars sequels or George Clooney's Batman. They are spectacles. Show us something we have not seen before.

Are we not entertained ? You may not like it but enough people saw it to make it a success.

 

I like Kevin Costner's Robin Hood. Alan Richman steals the film but I don't see the problems with it unlike say The Phantom Menace or The Last Jedi which I will happily debate with people. And then I will still watch the films again. For the British audience one reason they can honestly say they would avoid Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for was the fact that Bryan Adams was No 1 for 16 weeks with the theme song.

 

Certified however has pulled up a stinker that I have not seen in full but have been aware of extracts of, and that is Leonard Part 6. Even before his fall from grace this was considered a bad film. Consequently I have no wish to see it.

 

While on the subject let's throw out some other films that are bad or labelled as bad by a number of people.

Waterworld comes to mind. I like it. You can see the money spent on the screen. It has Dennis Hopper as the bad guy.

Hudson Hawk. Bruce Willis may have been 'too cool for school' but Danny Aiello keeps the film grounded.

Harlem Nights. A film that could not decide whether it wanted to be a comedy or a drama. Danny Aiello was again the best thing in the film. I saw Dolph Ludgrun as the Punisher directly after this and it was a lot funnier.

The Postman. Another Costner epic but one that got slated. I have not seen it but the synopsis put me off.

Catwoman. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Hallie Berry and Sharon Stone deserve better. And actually making this as a Batman film would have been a better idea.

Showgirls. Men bad, women good. Tell us something we don't know. Has one of the most ridiculous sex scenes ever put on film.

Wild Wild West. The series was so much better. The tone is off and a couple of the jokes should have been excised like Will Smith touching the lady's bosom and his explanation for it trying to avoid a lynch mob.

Battlefield Earth. So bad that people stayed away in droves. It is one thing when a film has limited release but this one did not.

Jaws the Revenge. So the shark knows where the Brody family are and will go after them seeking to kill them ? No.

Pearl Harbor. This should end with the attack on December 7th and its immediate aftermath. The Doolittle raid is a film to itself. Tora ! Tora ! Tora ! is much better.

Jack and Jill. Think Adam Sandler is funny ? You won't after seeing this. A lot of his recent stuff is awful like Grown Ups but this takes the cake.

The Giant Claw. It looks like a giant turkey. I have seen it twice and cannot believe that it came out in the same decade as Them !, War of the Worlds and The day the Earth Stood Still.

Anything by Uwe Boll. Any film you can name if you put it up against Boll's work looks like Citizen Kane.

Any Steven Segal direct to video film. As with Boll other films look like masterpieces compared to Segal's later work. 

 

More as I think of them.

 

[death tribble]

27 minutes ago, Tjack said:

   Trust me my dear Tribble, you don’t want to crack the lid on this particular can of crazy.

 

I have seen the movie and could tolerate watching it through again. Despite its flaws.

 

14 minutes ago, Bazza said:

Haven’t seen it. Should I? 

Here is my take on it. If you like the Disney version of Peter Pan, if you like any other live action version of the story avoid Hook. It Americanises the whole thing and neuters it completely. So Peter Pan becomes a lawyer ? No. Hoffman's Hook is restrained. the crocodile is dead ? No. I heard all the praise heaped on the film beforehand and want to ram it down people's throats having seen it.

[Old Man]

Thanks for reminding me of Jaws 4, DT. The one where the shark leaps out of the water and roars. 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

15 minutes ago, death tribble said:

Here is my take on it. If you like the Disney version of Peter Pan, if you like any other live action version of the story avoid Hook. It Americanises the whole thing and neuters it completely. So Peter Pan becomes a lawyer ? No. Hoffman's Hook is restrained. the crocodile is dead ? No. I heard all the praise heaped on the film beforehand and want to ram it down people's throats having seen it.

 

Hook had some great moments. (I loved Hook and Smee.)

 

It also had some of the worst moments in film history. (There is no excusing anything with Rufio. Just awful. The actor is actually anti-charismatic, just a black hole of suck.)

 

 

[Bazza]

I liked Hudson Hawk when I saw it decades ago. 

 

Also liked The Wild Wild West with the mechanical steampunk spider, or whatever it was. 

[Tjack]

On 3/2/2022 at 9:10 PM, Bazza said:

I liked Hudson Hawk when I saw it decades ago. 

 

Also liked The Wild Wild West with the mechanical steampunk spider, or whatever it was. 

   I always believed that those two movies were horribly misunderstood.

Hudson Hawk was incredibly mis-advertised.  The studio bought what they thought was going to be another Die-Hard.   What they got from producer Bruce Willis was a modern version of a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby “Road” picture. Silly plot, lots of gags and musical numbers. The whole schmere.

    So they just advertised it as another Die-Hard anyway and the public who were expecting chocolate cake but got tutti-frutti ice cream instead were upset.  They didn’t understand what was going on and trashed the film.

   
  WWW on the other hand.... I have said that the only thing wrong with that movie was the entire script.  Casting...Good. Set Design....Great.  Music...All right.  The idea of upping the Steampunk quotient...Fantastic.  Even the giant mechanical spiders...Acceptable.
 Both stars in drag, Ted Levine’s Southern General that made you long for his reserved dignified portrayal of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs,  Mr Branagh’s awful accent and scenery chewing and sequences like escaping from the buzz saw shurikens of doom...........What brand of crack were you people smoking?

   The shooting script should have been used to smack the writers, producers and directors into unconsciousness and after they were released from enforced drug rehab they could take another shot at the whole thing.

[DShomshak]

 

 

Fortunately for me, I haven's seen most of the movies mentioned -- and I won't. Thanks for the warnings, folks.

 

I've seen some microbudget schlock like Wild World of Batwoman and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo. Terrible, but they didn't aim higher, so at least you can laugh at them. And I find Plan 9 from Outer Space rather touching, in its own crackbrained way. Ed Wood was trying. You can almost imagine the movie he might have made if only he'd had more money and more talent.

 

Debbie Does Damnation is worth seeing in a bizarre, backwards way just to see what sort of movie an amateur can make with a budget of, IIRC, under $1,000. (But NSFW.)

 

Waterworld was bloated, but hey, it had a decent score and a few nice visuals.

 

The only movie for which I ever walked out of the theater was a compilation of animation by some guy from Czechoslovakia. Avant-gard surrealism and dull, dull, dull.

 

But I'd say the worst movie for which I paid money was All the Marbles, starring Peter Falk as a promoter for two tag-team lady wrestlers. My friends and I only saw it because the movie we wanted to see was sold out and we didn't want to just drive home. Dull, dull, dull. Okay, on "making an entrance" scene that had me laughing with its over-the-topness, but I'm not sure it was intended to be funny. And unlike big-budget Star Wars spectacles that managed to put fannies in seats despite their flaws, I'm pretty sure All the Marbles flopped. I don't remember anything actively terrible about it. It was just a waste of celluloid and time.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Certified]

1 hour ago, death tribble said:

Showgirls. Men bad, women good. Tell us something we don't know. Has one of the most ridiculous sex scenes ever put on film.

 

Not sure that's actually the point. For whatever reason, I think Showgirls gets an unfair bad rap. This is the story of a woman who goes to Las Vegas, learns how corrupt the city is, gets drawn into this lifestyle to the point of inuring someone, and realizes that this is not the person she wants to be and leaves. Also, Paul Atreides gets a lap dance. 

 

Maybe I'm a bit more forgiving of this movie having lived in Vegas, and seen just how much the city can chew people up and turn them into things they never wanted to be, but I really think if you look at the story beats, there is a solid flick there. Verhoeven is generally trying to make a point with his movies from what I see, I think people just get lost in Jessie from Saved By The Bell doing full nudity. 

[Pariah]

I'll probably get eviscerated for saying this, but I simply cannot stand Tommy Boy. I have tried to watch it. Really, I have. I just couldn't do it. I've never been able to watch enough of the film to understand why seemingly everyone but me thinks it's funny.

 

And since I am about to step in front of the tomatoes anyway, I will go ahead and add 2001: A Space Monotony Odyssey to the list. Yes, I know, classic science fiction film, groundbreaking effects, hand in your geek card, all the rest. I don't care. I rented it back in the day so that I could have something to watch while recovering from surgery. It literally took me three sittings to get through it.

 

That's it for right now. I'll undoubtedly come up with something else to shock and offend the rest of you with later.

[Bazza]

10 minutes ago, Pariah said:

I'll probably get eviscerated for saying this, but I simply cannot stand Tommy Boy. I have tried to watch it. Really, I have. I just couldn't do it. I've never been able to watch enough of the film to understand why seemingly everyone but me thinks it's funny.

 

And since I am about to step in front of the tomatoes anyway, I will go ahead and add 2001: A Space Monotony Odyssey to the list. Yes, I know, classic science fiction film, groundbreaking effects, hand in your geek card, all the rest. I don't care. I rented it back in the day so that I could have something to watch while recovering from surgery. It literally took me three sittings to get through it.

 

That's it for right now. I'll undoubtedly come up with something else to shock and offend the rest of you with later.

Don’t need to apologise for  2001. A friend watched it at my home and after it finished he was glad to look outside and see a TREE! 
 

and if you are going to step in front of the tomato’s then I can post my list—it will be a good distraction from them being aimed my way.  

[Tjack]

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

I'll probably get eviscerated for saying this, but I simply cannot stand Tommy Boy. I have tried to watch it. Really, I have. I just couldn't do it. I've never been able to watch enough of the film to understand why seemingly everyone but me thinks it's funny.

 

And since I am about to step in front of the tomatoes anyway, I will go ahead and add 2001: A Space Monotony Odyssey to the list. Yes, I know, classic science fiction film, groundbreaking effects, hand in your geek card, all the rest. I don't care. I rented it back in the day so that I could have something to watch while recovering from surgery. It literally took me three sittings to get through it.

 

That's it for right now. I'll undoubtedly come up with something else to shock and offend the rest of you with later.

    The only way to watch 2001 is with the remote in hand and your thumb firmly on the FF button.  Every time the classical music starts hit that button like it owes you money.  This brings the running time to 30-45 minutes.  After that the whole thing is just bad Star Trek.....The Original Series.    Kirk would have whooped HAL the same way he beat Landru and the M-5 computers before him.🖖

[Bazza]

4 hours ago, Tjack said:

    The only way to watch 2001 is with the remote in hand and your thumb firmly on the FF button.  Every time the classical music starts hit that button like it owes you money.  This brings the running time to 30-45 minutes.  After that the whole thing is just bad Star Trek.....The Original Series.    Kirk would have whooped HAL the same way he beat Landru and the M-5 computers before him.🖖

Then you missed the purpose of the film as an alchemical allegory in the same manner as Greek mythology, Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey, or Shakespeare’s Tempest. 

[death tribble]

I like 2001. It makes you think. There is a lot going on. And I am pretty sure I saw it after I had seen the first Star Trek movie and Star Wars so it was not my first exposure to Sci fi. I'd recommend seeing things like the Trek movies, Star Wars and some of the 50s Sci Fi before 2001.

 

I do apologise for bringing up bad memories for some people i.e. roaring sharks but film is something I love and am more than happy to warn people off something that is tripe.

I would say that Tjack is right about Hudson Hawk and Wild Wild West. When I saw the latter I had never seen the series (British TV did not get everything broadcast in the US and repeat on other channels) but my opinion of it dropped further when I did see the series.

Most of the films we are discussing have good production values unlike a lot of straight to video fodder where swearing is substituted for dialogue. And then you have poor CGI and poor acting. I will give some big budget films a pass because of how poor some direct to video stuff can be.

 

And if you want an idea of potential films to avoid look at the Golden Raspberry winners. In 1987 Leonard Part 6 beat out Jaws the Revenge and Ishtar for Best picture. And another one which people tend to forget, Tough Guys Don't Dance. I saw this at the cinema because Isabella Rossellini was in it. But it is Ryan O'Neal who is awful in it which I believe is why it was nominated for Worst Picture. 

 

Some times the critics are right when they tear a film to shreds.

[Tjack]

1 hour ago, Bazza said:

Then you missed the purpose of the film as an alchemical allegory in the same manner as Greek mythology, Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey, or Shakespeare’s Tempest. 

   Yup.

[Drhoz]

The Spirit (2008). I was So. F***ing. Angry. by the end of it. 

 

- Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one out of four stars and said, "There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material"

[Cancer]

I saw 2001 in its first run when I was about 13.  I do not consider it a bad movie in any way.  I agree with the review of it published ten years later (on the anniversary of its release, IIRC) in the campus paper, where the writer's key line was, "I didn't understand a d----d thing in it, but I knew it was cool as s--t."  Which it absolutely, thoroughly was in the late 1960s.

 

OTOH, one of my favorite things back in the day was reading Joe Bob Briggs's reviews of bad movies, for comments like

Quote

No dead bodies. One hundred seventeen breasts. Multiple aardvarking. Lap dancing. Cage dancing. Convenience-store dancing. Blindfold aardvarking. Blind-MAN aardvarking. Lesbo Fu. Pool cue-Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Tane McClure. Joe Bob says check it out.

I'd never watch any of those movies, but the reviews were a high point in my grad school week.

[Starlord]

3 hours ago, Bazza said:

Then you missed the purpose of the film as an alchemical allegory in the same manner as Greek mythology, Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey, or Shakespeare’s Tempest. 

 

...buuuuutttt also, just because it has a higher purpose and wants to be thought-provoking doesn't make it good/interesting/watchable....

 

Truly great art does both.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

21 minutes ago, Cancer said:

I'd never watch any of those movies, but the reviews were a high point in my grad school week.

 

I watch a handful of YouTube channels dedicated to reviewing bad (or cult) movies. I feel like I've seen some of the more questionable ones even though I've only seen the in-depth reviews. I had to stop myself from answering "Things" earlier because I had to remind myself I hadn't actually seen it. 

[Sundog]

1 hour ago, Starlord said:

 

...buuuuutttt also, just because it has a higher purpose and wants to be thought-provoking doesn't make it good/interesting/watchable....

 

Truly great art does both.

 

Which, to me, 2001 does.

It's slow paced. Act one and act two are more set up than story. But the film, to me, is engrossing and eminently watchable. The one thing you CAN'T do is turn your brain off - it's not that kind of movie. Which is fine, if I want to do that I'll watch Commando.

[dmjalund]

3 hours ago, Sundog said:

if I want to do that I'll watch Commando.

Why is what you wear while watching relevant?

[slikmar]

17 hours ago, Tjack said:

Mr Branagh’s awful accent and scenery chewing and sequences like escaping from the buzz saw shurikens of doom

Not to mention besmirching the memory of a brilliant character played by the amazing Michael Dunn. Could you not have named the character ANYTHING ELSE? Another hollywood "who is the most famous villain, ok, name our villain that" moment. I was offended by Branagh, who generally has a lot of class, playing this character in such a way.

 

I agree on the casting. I would really have loved to see Will Smith and Kevin Kline actually play James West and Artemis Gordon,  trusting friends from the beginning. They would have fit those roles well.

[rravenwood]

The Vanished was simply awful, awful, awful.

A lot of people won't agree with me on this, which is fine, but: Birdman with Michael Keaton.

The Florida Project didn't go over well, either.

 

All three of the above seemed at least interesting at first, but were sheer letdowns by the end.

[death tribble]

On the subject of Hollywood how about turning TV series into lacklustre films or remaking good films into bad ones ?

Steve Martin is guilty of both of these for Sgt Bilko, The Pink Panther, The Out of Towners, Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen to name some examples.

 

But turning TV shows into rubbish films is not confined to Hollywood it was a staple of British cinema as well. There was a series called On the Buses which spawned 3 films, Please Sir ! and Are You Being Served ? The fault here is usually to take the characters into new locations which kind of destroys the point.