Are we talking about the same movie? Secret Nazi moon base? Black astronaut brainwashed into thinking he’s a white guy? President Sarah Palin?
I can understand not thinking the movie was funny, because as a comedy, it’s completely fucking dire. But not being funny isn’t the same thing as being serious: the film was manifestly attempting to be a farce. If they’d taken it just a bit more seriously, they might have salvaged something from this mess. The concept would have worked great as a two-fisted, pulpy action movie. Instead, they made a third rate version of the Not Another … Movie franchise.
Haven’t seen Iron Sky, but have read enough descriptions of it to make me think they were shooting for a Buckaroo Banzai feel (which, IMO, was a vastly underrated film in its time; though time has been favorable to it, ratings-wise) and failed miserably.
I’m watching it now. 18 minutes in, there’s a parody of the bunker scene from *Downfall *that is so often posted to Youtube. Not sure how the rest of the movie is going to go, but that got a big laugh out of me.
The Sound of the Mountain (1954)!!! (One of the great Japanese master Mikio Naruse’s most observant films, this look at the complex dynamics within a family where the parents are living under the same roof as their troubled son and his wife is slowly, subtly brutal)
I read this in 1987 in OUTRAGEOUSLY Offensive Jokes, Vol IV by Maude Thickett (and I still have the book—it’s a real gem). The line there was “She’s in the fucking attic!”
I don’t care what anyone says, Buckaroo Banzai was abysmal. The only good part about it was it made me appreciate the scene in *RoboCop *where Peter Weller got shot.
Boy, it’s hard to pick a winner. I’ve seen a lot of really bad films, and I’ve heard of others that were really bad that I haven’t seen.
Here are a few:
Tales from the Past/Gallery of Horrors/Return from the Past – it has a few other names, too. A 1967 “horror anthology” with five stories. It stars John Carradine (who would, it seems, appear in anything, even more than Donald Sutherland will). You know a film is in trouble when the best scenes are literally stolen from Roger Corman movies. Every storty has a “twist” that a 5-year-old can see coming from a mile azway. Add to this that the technical quality of the film is abysmal, with muddy color and iffy sound. A loser all the way around.
http://www.trailerfan.com/movie/return-from-the-past The Prehistoric Sound/Sound of Horror/El sonido de la muerte (1966) and Italian monster movie with a money-saving twist – people release a dinosaur from a cave, but it’s *invisible[/ik]. They don’t have to show it! But the film DOES give you some of the absolute WORST “invisibility” effects you’ve ever seen. The Monster footprints appear in dust (they stop the camera and make a new print every few frames). Two guys throw axes at it. The axes stick and you see the monster “walking” along, courtesy of them “animating” a cel with the two strangely static axes against a still background. It’s face-palmingly awful. At the very end, even though they’ve established that the dino is invisible, they make it visible just before its death – and it’s a guy in a grade-Z dinosaur costume (that resembles no known dinosaur) clinging to the roof of a car.
The film features horror-movie scream queens Soledad Miranda and Ingrid Pitt (her film debut!), who probably wished they were elsewhere.
Cool World was truly awful. It was trying to be an adult Roger Rabbit. It could have been saved by good animation or a good story. It had neither. At the time Brad Pitt had some heat from his scene in Thelma & Louise. He did shine through. It was obvious that he was going to be a star if you watch this. But even he couldn’t save it.
I kind of liked Last Action Hero. It was trying to be campy and was. It had some good moments.
I’m not a big horror fan so I don’t rate many very high. Rob Zombie’s first couple were terrible. As were the Hostel movies. But maybe House of the Dead takes the cake. No redeeming qualities. But going after Uwe Boll is low hanging fruit.
I have the DVD from Netflix right now; this post piqued my curiosity about it. (I had never heard of it.) I decided to shut the movie itself off after about 20 minutes and listen to the commentary track instead. I’ll finish THAT later tonight.
Not only are rabbits a recurring theme, this movie also features, as its music, numerous versions of “Telstar”, at least one with lyrics.
I’ve seen this one. I made the same observation about it at the time – Sutherland never appears onscreen with another character.
Sutherland, like Donald PLeasance or (at the end of his life, Olivier) appear in damned near anything. He was in an incredi8bly bad film called The TRouble with Spies. Both this one and GAS were recommended by the personm I was with (different people, two doifferent occasions) who went on the strength of the films having Donald Sutherland. That’ll teach 'em.
Neither of these are among the worst films, though. My personal choice is The Star Wars Holiday Special, which I have never been able to sit all the way through in one sitting.
