I see my “favorites” have already been mentioned - Highlander 2 and Prometheus.
They are a tough pair to beat. If I had to choose one, I’d choose Highlander 2 - because I went in really expecting it to be fun.
I was already wary of Prometheus, because the franchise has - not good - after the first two. But the Highlander franchise hadn’t been shat on - yet - so I was expecting it to be more or less as much fun as the first one.
You really think so??
I saw it when it originally came out. I continue to be flummoxed by the fact that people like it. The luggage has been mentioned, but jeez, what a lame gag.
But the real problem with the movie is the ‘brain cloud.’ When Joe is diagnosed with it, anybody with brain cells to rub together and who’s watched movies before thinks, “they should have come up with a less stupid-sounding fictional disease, but it’s a movie, OK, brain cloud, whatever” and suspends disbelief. It’s fiction, you can have a ‘brain cloud’ be a thing in fiction. It can be real in this story. So you let it be real, and get on with the movie.
Only at the end, you find that it isn’t just Joe that’s been conned, you’ve been conned. ‘Brain cloud’ - what, you believed that shit? Stupid Joe, stupid you!
Sorry, but expecting your audience to suspend disbelief, then telling them they were suckers because they did, is a fundamental breakdown.
One of these years when I’ve got more time on my hands, I’ll try watching it again to see if I can see what its fans see in it. But I can’t see a way around the brain cloud problem.
At the very least I expected it to have something, anything to do the first one.
If the worst movie I ever saw wasn’t Joe Versus the Volcano, then it was another Tom Hanks movie from that period: The 'Burbs. I saw it with my wife and her grandmother, and if it had been just me, or just me and my wife, we’d have been out of there in under half an hour. And it didn’t get any better from there.
Yeah it was a big disappointment, because parts 1-5 were pretty decent.
I’ve never seen it, but always assumed I would hate it. At the time, the right-wing columnist Cal Thomas wrote a column on it. The TL;DR version of his column would be “all you hippies and counterculture types were wrong about everything, and this movie proves it.” I’m not sure if that was the subtext of the movie, or whether Cal was just reading it in, but I didn’t feel like going to find out.
Yes, that’s the absolute worst. Not only are you smarting from having paid $15 for a movie that stinks, you are basically trapped into watching the entire thing because you are with people in a theater. It’s like adding insult to injury.
The worst movie I’ve seen thinking it might be good is Jaws 3D. Dark (like actually dark on-screen), bland, and dumb plot. Honorable mention to The Last Jedi, at least it looked good.
The worst movie I’ve seen knowing it’s bad was Manos, The Hands of Fate via MST3K.
Doesn’t Joe get mocked by one of Meg Ryan’s characters for believing something so stupid?
Also: Robert Stack’s speech about the “braincloud” was one of the funniest things in the film.
Bolding mine. Yeah, this is where my crappy memory sets me free - I know I have seen so many horrible movies, but I forget them all so quickly. I am not much burdened by the lameness of past films.
There are a few exceptions. One movie i just can’t forget for its badness is Paul Simon’s “One Trick Pony.” Decades ago, I saw it on video with three friends, and when it ended, all four of us were, “WTF? The movie is over? NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED.”
The movie I disliked the most that was widely liked was The Big Chill. It was like a made-for-TV adaptation of The Return of the Secaucus Seven, with an effort to make everything as superficial as possible, and the human relationships and interactions as implausible as possible.
Gotta make all the characters to have been Big Leaders of the antiwar movement back then, and Really Bigly Successful People in the present. (Except the druggie and the gf of the dead guy.) And somehow, as every last one of them (except the dead guy and the druggie) transitions from Yippie to Yuppie, they manage to stay in touch with one another, and every last resentment they had of each other in 1968 has festered and is even more present and intense when they reunite in 1983, even though they’ve got new lives where they, as already noted, are Big Successes.
The only semi-likable characters were the druggie guy and the airhead gf of the dead guy, and only semi- for them. I wouldn’t want to spend five minutes in conversation with any of the others.
I LOVE bad movies. Caltiki, Creeping Terror, Idaho Transfer ----- I own copies of them all and about 1000+ more. And not just SciFi; I also own my own copy of White Apache and a few hundred others from westerns to romance.
But the movie so bad even I walked out of the theater half-way through and NEVER want near my eyeballs again:
The Norseman (1978) - don’t know if it was the horrible acting or the Six-Million-Dollar-Man effects but that piece of turd is about an hour of my life I badly want back.
Maybe, but when in the movie?
It’s been 28 years since I’ve seen it, so there are a lot of details I’ve mercifully forgotten.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was in high school during its initial midnight run, so of course all my friends did the dress up bit. I saw it, twice, and hated it. I thought it was stupid, unfunny, and unclever.
Coming in second are most of the “redneck comedies” of the late 70s and early 80s (Stroker Ace, Smokey and the Bandit II and III, etc.). I recently watched the original Smokey and the Bandit, and there are some good lines, so it’s not unwatchable, but there are so many plot holes and idiocy going on that, while I loved it when it came out (and for many years after), it’s severely diminished in my view.
Brian DePalma’s movie Sisters scared the crap out of me when I first saw it in the early 70s, and recently, I tried seeing it again. Couldn’t do it. Psycho is my #1 all-time favorite movie, and Sisters has been compared to it (or at least Hitchockian), but this one just isn’t for me. Maybe the style is too avant-garde or something.
The brain cloud is not the problem, it is the key to the whole story. Joe is in danger of “losing his soul/sole” (scene I) because he has chosen to lead a life he finds despicable over a potentially scary but fulfilling one (firefighter). The result is he is diagnosed with a brain cloud. Yes, it’s a ridiculous condition and it is a lie. But it kicks him out of his rut and is ultimately his salvation–he becomes the ultimate fire fighter when he offers himself to the volcano. So is he truly the fool for having believed in the brain cloud? Is the audience a fool for believing it? Life is about making the best decision you can with the information you have at the time. Joe and the audience are asked to believe something incredible, Joe and the audience agree to do so, and in doing so are made out to be fools, but are they?
Joe: I don’t have any money, I spent it all on docors!
Dr. Ellison: Yes, well perhaps you’d like a second opinion.
It’s basically Scientology propaganda rooted in their mythos, and probably makes wonderful sense to those who subscribe to it.
In fairness, it did result in the construction of at least one terrific house.
Smokey and the Bandit is quite enhanced when viewed as the Road Trip of a Lifetime for Fred the basset hound. Watch as Fred…
… barks at the other cars!
… enjoys the petting action with a young, nubile Sally Fields!
… eats delicious burgers at a choke 'n puke!
… is the center of attention at a bikers brawl!
… sits in the front seat of a big rig, plenty of room, with your master!
… goes for a swim in a roadside lake!
… smuggles beer!
… sings with country music legend Jerry Reed!
Yeah, there’s a lot going on in SatB. Don’t dismiss the Fred.
This one. So, so much this one. I expected a science fiction movie and I got a portal to hell. It was horrendous. It still makes me throw things across the room.
By the way, all of y’all dissing the Jaws movies? Have you ever seen that Richard Harris fiasco, Orca(1977)? It’s got a dead killer whale fetus dropping out it’s dead mommy onto the deck of a boat while Daddy Orca stares angrily from the distance, Bo Derek getting her leg chomped off, said Daddy Orca deliberately destroying a fishing village so that the townsfolk will give up Richard Harris (as a low-rent Captain Ahab), and finishing off with a trip north to some ice flows and a nice game of teeter-totter.
Neighbors, an absurd witless ‘black comedy’ - a 1981 stinkbomb starring Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi. Just painful to watch, not a laugh in it, and boring as all getout. However, I suppose their salaries came in useful for buying loads of cocaine.