I consider myself somewhat a kon-oh-sewer of bad cinema. But whenever I ask what the worst movie people have ever seen is it invariably devolves into a “popular but I hate it” response like TITANIC or “popular to badmouth” response like GIGLI.
Now there have been some seriously bad mainstream turds, but anybody who truly watches bad movies know the worst ones never receive recognition, let alone a cinematic release. So to make one of these queries more interesting, I thought it would be nice to get a list of movies that nobody really knows about but are pure piles of crap.
My nominee: SLAPSTICK (OF ANOTHER KIND). This movie is an adaption of a Kurt Vonnegut novel (not usually a good sign), starring two freakish twins played by Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn. It is truly inept, awful and non-entertaining. Well, unless you’re like me and revel in artistic failure.
See, Lewis and Kahn are some truly hideous looking twins. They are super smart, but only when together. There is also Pat Morita, who plays a tiny Chinese man in a flying fortune cookie who is looking for the secret of gravity. There is also the president for some reason.
Worst of all, this movie thinks of itself as some sort of drama-dy. That means the terrible comic sequences are interspersed with even worse drama scenes.
I haven’t even scratched the surface of how bad this is. It even beat out TROLL 2 for sheer cinematic ineptitude. I shudder to think of this film being released in theaters, as the thought of watching it on the big screen makes me want to vomit in terror.
So, what is the worst (non-mainstream) movie you have ever seen?
As an aside, does anybody else think the IMDb’s Bottom 100 has been ruined since they added the 625 votes or more criteria?
Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil. How many filmmakers could make a late 60s Rolling Stones (pseudo)documentary too boring to watch?
Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie is truly awful, almost unbelievably so. Really, it will blow your mind; you’ll wonder why somebody did this and why you’re watching it.
I’ve watched a lot of non-mainstream movies. Occasionally I see one that I can only describe this way: “It consists of a series of still pictures projected at a rate of 24 frames per second, thus achieving the illusion of motion. Therefore it is technically a movie.”
One that comes to mind is a little gem called Island of Death. I had to have my cortex scrubbed after seeing that.
Does In The Bedroom count? I suppose it may not since it got some attention around Oscar time. I’ll mention it anyway because I absolutely hated it. I usually love that kind of movie too.
Doomed Love. It was released by Twilight video in their ‘cult’ section, along with Brother from Another Planet, Forbidden Zone, Meetings with Remarkable Men and Spike Lee’s very early work Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barber Shop: We Cut Heads. Doomed Love, however, could not remotely hold a candle to even this selection of films. It was the lowest of the low-budgets, with the rankest of rank amateur casts. I almost feel sorry for ripping it, as they seem to be sincere in their efforts, but something this bad just can’t go unpunished.
Imagine a high school theater project that received a C- being performed by second-stringers from your local community theater. The “sets” are scenes painted in black on a white background, no character ever says more than four words at a time, and all the lines are delivered in a slow, droning monotone. And then, just when it can’t get worse, they sing. I didn’t realize just how challenging it was to sing in a droning monotone, but these guys seem to be doing it on purpose. I was laughing hysterically by the end of the movie because I just couldn’t believe how bad it was.
I submitted all the information that the imdb has on this movie, and judging by the vote tally (or lack thereof), I may well be the only person who has seen this film. How it ended up sitting in the back corner of a teeny, tiny video shop in suburban Tokyo is a story that’s probably a hell of a lot more interesting than the movie itself ever was.
I kind of liked Eraserhead… but it’s not like I can’t see why some people don’t.
I guess Punch Drunk Love was a mainstream film, though it did play some art theaters. I walked out after about 20 minutes.
It tries so hard to be avant-garde that it’s just confusing. But not in a good, Memento kind of way. More in a “my three year old edited it” kind of way.
The acting wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t anything to get excited about.
I think the problem was more with the potentially decent script being mishandled and filmed and the movie being miscast awfully.
Cherry Falls: a serial killer starts killing virgins, so all the teens get together for one big sex-party (with surprising lack of nudity). It was advertised as “American Pie… with a body count!”. Naturally we had to rent it. Terrible acting and writing, sub par (but not downright terrible) direction, and just general stupidity. It’s in the “so bad it’s gone past ‘so bad it’s funny’ and into the physically painful area.”
I have to say Timecode. I get the whole ‘four seperate stories at the same time interweaving at the end’ thing - but just didn’t care about any one of them.
Cavegirl was really bad. I went hoping to see a lot of strange gratuitous nudity. I think the blonde was pretty hot but I did drink heavily at that time in my life. I do remember very little gratuitous nudity. It was in a multiplex and the guy taking tickets said he would turn his head if I wanted to sneak out and go to a different movie.
Eraserhead. Had not my (rather larger than I) friend (whose house we were at) hid the remote and then physically stopped any attempt to turn it off, I would never have seen enough of it to verify that it fit Baldwin’s definition of a movie. Why did he do all that, you may be wondering? So he could have people to talk to about how umbelievably shitty it was.
Invitation to Ruin. Sure, a movie with nudity, white slavery, bondage, dungeons, castration, and even worse might sound interesting to you. But you’d be wrong. Steaming pile of grade-Z dreck.
“Satan’s Cheerleaders” Every bit of godawful as it sounds. It “starred” Yvonne DeCarlo (looking really haggard, plump & old at the time) and a bunch of teenage girls who acted as if they were lobotomized.