[mumble]Mr. Rilch worked on that[/mumble]
OK, first of all, I have to do a little seconding (or thirding, or whatever) of movies already mentioned…
Godzilla (the Matthew Broderick version): big pile of suck. The lead actress was so annoying I seriously considered puncturing my eardrums with a ball-point pen so I wouldn’t have to listen to her anymore.
Moulin Rouge: To be honest, I only watched about 20 minutes of it. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I’ve had friends tell me that it gets much better, but there’s no way I’m going to take the time to find out.
Star Trek V: 'nuff said.
Popeye: The second-worst movie Robin Williams ever made (more on that topic later), and that’s saying something.
Moonraker: The only James Bond flick that caused me actual physical pain.
Superman III: Richard Pryor as a genius computer hacker. Riiiiight.
Dumb & Dumber: Went to this movie with a friend, on his recommendation. He has never stopped apologizing to this day.
OK, now for my new picks…
If Lucy Fell: Horrendous piece of trash. Sarah Jessica Parker attempts to act. Fails miserably.
Mr. Wrong: Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Pullman. Starts off OK, then goes horribly, horribly wrong. Truly painful.
And in first place (or last place, depending on how you look at it)…
Bicentennial Man.
Holy crap, was that bad. And long. That’s over two hours of my life I’ll never get back. And the worst thing is that it seems longer than it is. I had convinced myself that it was actually an hour longer than it was; I really thought (when writing this) that it was over three hours long. What a hyper-emotional, gooshily sentimental, overacted, ill-conceived, badly directed, manipulative piece of crap! What the hell happened to Robin Williams, anyway? He’s been in some good movies! He’s a funny guy! Why the hell is he frittering away his talent on festering llama-puke like this?
Gaahhh!!!
PS–Mrs. Doubtfire (and Williams goes for the trifecta!).
Have any of you seen King Kong Lives, starring Linda Hamilton? It’s a sequel to the remake that starred Jeff Bridges. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen doctors implant an artificial heart the size of a Yugo into a giant gorilla or to see said gorilla eat a live alligator. In one “action” sequence, the director chose to destroy a model truck instead of a real one. The fire coming from the model looked like candle flames. Filmed in North Carolina for no good reason other than to save money.
Yentle
Eyes Wide Shut
Fargo
The absolute worst, so bad I walked out…Trainstoppers
Trainstoppers?
friendly laugh
I think you mean either Trainspotting or Clockstoppers…
I can only thank goodness that my Crappy Movie Filter has enabled me to miss out on some of the delights here.
However, for my picks I’m going to assume certain rules. One, that I have myself sat down on purpose to watch the film, coerced or otherwise. Just catching 5 minutes channel-surfing doesn’t count. Two, that I went into the movie with even feeble expectations of being entertained as the film intended me to be–not that I plan to laugh at its awfulness; I must presume that part of being “bad” is the crushing letdown at the gap between expectation and reality. This rules out “Plan 9” or anything else I saw first on MST3K (including “Manos”). Three, that I actually saw it myself. This rules out “Battlefield Earth.” (Thank God.)
So far as I’m concerned, the worst movies ever:
LAZER BLAST (starring one of the Carradine boys). Saw this at a drive-in as the opening picture prior to “Star Wars” and it was the most awful, cringe-inducing thing I can remember. I swear to this day you could see the fingers of the special-effects man holding up the space ships.
PLANET OF THE APES (remake). I saw this with two friends for the first time on video and it was so bad we actually started a conversation (completely by accident) and forgot the movie was on.
THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE. Okay, maybe it was just my age and temperament, but this movie felt about two days long. It’s the only movie I’ve ever watched that had an aftertaste, not unlike aspartame.
And the number one worst movie, given my above conditions:
BATMAN AND ROBIN. Joel Schumacher, go back to the costume shop and never, ever, ever helm a movie again. I haven’t seen so much neon since my plane touched down facing Hong Kong Harbor. It’s the worst plot since… well, since BATMAN FOREVER. As Mike J. Nelson wrote, BATMAN AND ROBIN is not the worst movie ever. It is the worst thing ever.
<8)))><
When the ‘Superman’ franchise was at its peak, someone brought out ‘Supergirl’. Probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Failed in every respect. No redeeming features whatsoever. Sucky through and through.
Just wanted to comment on a few of your picks. While The Godfather Part III was very disappointing and not worthy of its title and legacy, I’m not sure that it’s one of the worst films ever made. Yes, when you compare it to the first two, it’s bad, on its own merit it was okay. And Jacksen9, Fargo…what exactly did you think made it one of the worst? Just wondering. I thought it may have been a bit overrated (a lot of stuff is…), but definitely not one of the worst.
What I find really amusing is the fact that my brother has many of these movies on DVD: Armageddon, Planet of the Apes, Batman & Robin, The Phantom Menace, Godzilla, Superman III… I guess there really is no accounting for taste, 'cause he’s a nice guy otherwise.
Lost and Found with David Spade. Holy Stuff was that awful.
I think you mean either Trainspotting or Clockstoppers…
You are right. Trainspotting. I was at the mall and waiting for some car repair so I just walked in and saw a movie that fit my time situation. So…I get my popcorn and soda, I watch this guy walk around for about 5 minutes in obvious pain. He then goes into a filthy restroom and takes a dump, turns around and reaches into the toilet. I was up and out of there. Seems that someone told me that trainspotting is some sort of drug thing.
And Jacksen9, Fargo…what exactly did you think made it one of the worst? Just wondering. I thought it may have been a bit overrated (a lot of stuff is…), but definitely not one of the worst.
Maybe and probably not the worst. But, it was hyped and promoted… and didn’t it win a bunch of awards? I think that when a movie I don’t like wins an award, it makes me like it even less. Weird huh? One of the best movies, IMHO, was the Color Purple. It did not win anything.
Clockwork Orange … weird. I thought it was very bad. I never understood what the heck was going on.
Don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this…
Manos: Hands of Fate
Somewhere there is a Rhino re-issue of one of the Joel episodes of MST3K where they watch this. It’s painful. Halfway through the jokes just kind of dry up. Why? Cos you’re absolutely speechless as to how, not just terrible it is, but how well…nothing is really happening. It’s just…a bizarre experience.
I believe that I, personally, saved you all from a movie that would have made anyone’s Top 10 list of bad movies, and many would place it first.
In 1972 or '73 my sister and I went to see Judge Roy Bean with Paul Newman and Victoria Principal - bad enough by itself. But when the movie ended the theater announced that they were locking the doors and showing us a preview screening of a yet-unreleased movie, so we should leave immediately if we didn’t want to be locked in. My sister and I thought this would be an interesting experience, so we stayed.
It was a modern musical version of Othello, set in a hippie religious commune. Othello, played by Lou Rawls, was the charismatic hippie preacher-man. Desdemona, played by Season Hubley, was his young runaway hippie wife. I don’t remember who else was in it, but you get the picture. A memorable musical number was “Tickle My Fancy,” sung by the Emilia character. A memorable scene was Othello digging Desdemona’s grave in the desert. You could see nothing but the hole in the dirt, with Lou Rawls singing his number from the bottom of the pit, and every now and then a shovelful of dirt flying out of the hole. It looked like a very drawn-out scene from a nature film about gophers. I think this was actor Patrick McGoohan’s first (and probably last) directing work.
After the movie we had to fill out questionnaires. I had just graduated from UCSD with a degree in English Literature, so I was pretty articulate in my criticism. Most of it was placing an x in the appropriate column, and I’m pretty sure that everyone who saw that mess put an extra-dark X in the far-right column; the one headed, “You couldn’t pay me enough money to see this movie again, and I will be warning all my friends against it.”
I’ve seen many Shakespeare productions that were placed in modern settings and many of them worked very well; some of them I really loved. So when I tell you this movie was an abomination, please believe me. You’ll have to take my word, because they never released the movie; you owe it all to me!
Nightfall, supposedly based on the classic science fiction short story of the same name by Isaac Asimov.
I suppose technically my nomination should be ruled ineligible, because I didn’t actually stay at the theater and watch the whole thing through.
I did get to the part where the birds peck the woman’s eyes out, though.
Hmmm… as much as your selfless act may have saved all humanity, it may have been for not.
The first edition of The Book of Rock Lists mentions a rock-musical version of Othello called Catch My Soul, which starred Richie Havens (he of the funky cover version of “Here Comes The Sun”) as Othello. It was unleashed [sic] in 1974. No, I can’t say I’ve had the “privilege” of seeing this, but it sounds a lot like what you described above.
The movie was adapted from the off-Broadway stage production which starred William Marshall (Trek fans will know him as Richard Daystrom from “The Ultimate Computer”) as Othello and Jerry Lee Lewis (yes, that Jerry Lee Lewis) as Iago. There’s a production still of the two of them, which has Lewis/Iago looking like he’s forgotten his lines and Marshall/Othello looking at him in wide-eyed horror.
OK…back on track:
Heathers. Everybody and His Dog told me what a great movie this was. I wish I could get my money back from each and every one of them. I don’t think I laughed once. These people think “dark comedy” means when something isn’t funny but you laugh anyway at predetermined intervals.
Ooh, another candidate (and one where I actually sat through the entire movie): Eraserhead. I mean, I actually think David Lynch has done some pretty interesting stuff, and his music is quite lovely, but sweet baby Jesus on a sidecar, I could have had a more enjoyable experience by going to bed jet-lagged or developing a dangerously high fever.
“Joe vs. the Volcano” was HORRIBLE!!! This from someone who loves Tom Hanks!
Although I do like and respect Will Smith and was a fan of the TV series as a child, I have to say “Wild Wild West” (sometimes referred to by critics as “Vile Vile West”) has the questionable distinction of being the only movie I’ve ever actually walked out of. Sad to say, I’ll usually stick around till the end, since I paid good money to be entertained and always hope it’ll get better. I could tell from the start that WWW was not going to. It was actually painful to watch. Yuck! We snuck in and saw “Big Daddy” with Adam Sandler, and though we’d never have bought a ticket for that one in the first place, were actually reasonably entertained.
Jax 
Worst movies I’ve actually paid money to see in the theater:
Vibes Think way back. Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum. Starring as a clairvoyant and a psychic. Yeah.
The Phantom Menace Seriously the most painful film I"ve seen in the last 5 years.
A Walk in the Clouds Two words: Keanu Reeves. YECH. His flat “I love you Victoria.” has become a long-standing inside joke with friends.
Ummm…don’t remember. Thankfully. Some awful alien/Martian thingy with Charlie Sheen. The dialogue was laugh-out-loud funny. I remember some character asking Charlie casually, how he was doing. “Well, I feel like a can of smashed assholes, but otherwise I’m great.” The line is bad enough, but the way it was delivered made it seriously the funniest damn thing EVER!
Godzilla Holy fright this thing was awful. Years ago I did like a 15-point hatefest for that thing on the old SDMB, going through bit-by-bit the mind-numbing implausibilities (a helicopter that can’t seem to figure out it can FLY HIGHER than the lizard’s reach, basing Zilla on aquatic, vegetarian iguanas, making baby Zillas act like Velociraptors the SECOND they hatched…etc). It was…well, it was so bad it pissed me off.
So, there yah go.
Was it anything like this list?