I can’t pick just one. I have enjoyed many bad movies.
Lifeforce, starring Mathilda May’s breasts, and a bunch of British actors. (Oh, yeah, and one gratuitous American. His character was the lead role in the novel. His character is ostensibly the lead role in the film. And yet he manages to make Raymond Burr’s contributions to Godzilla seem vital to the story.)
Sword of the Valiant, with Michael O’Keefe as Sir Gawaine, and Sean Connery as the Green Knight. As a Work of Cinematic Art, it is utter garbage. As a film version of a medieval romance, it’s not bad. It is exactly the sort of story that troubadours wrote to entertain pampered aristocrats who never had to work a day in their lives.
The 1990 version of Captain America. OK, changing the Red Skull to an Italian was a bit weird. (It was filmed in Yugoslavia, which looks a little bit like Italy, and not at all like Germany.) But Ronny Cox made an awesome President of the United States!
The Roger Corman version of the Fantastic Four. Of course it sucked. But it could have sucked a lot worse. The screenwriter had actually read the comic books (mostly from the John Byrne era) and did make an attempt to bring the comics to the screen. The guy playing Doctor Doom was a horrible actor. But he had the perfect voice for a villain in an iron mask. His armor was obviously cheap plastic, but they did a pretty good job on the mask.
I liked it as well. Probably helped that I saw it in a theater with my parents, who were in their fifties at the time and likely quite familiar with Thimble Theater.
Opening scene: A drug dealer buys a house and accidentally stumbles across a portal to the 6th dimension. You can tell he’s a drug dealer, because he’s in bad blackface.
This one was done by the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, who eventually became (obviously) Oingo Boingo.
It’s a black and white about 12-year old Flash Hercules, played by a 65-year old Jewish man in a propeller beanie who, with his best friend Squeezit the Chicken Boy, is off to save his sister Frenchie from the Ruler of the 6th dimension. Played by Herve Villechaize. He has a demon wife (Susan Tyrell), a topless daughter, a harem in panties and mickey mouse ears and a 7 foot tall frog butler named Bust Rod.
And it’s Danny Elfman’s first musical. He plays Satan.
Yes, I know, they took liberties with the historical facts. But, in reality, those facts are pretty thin. 99% of our information on them was brought to us by poets, playwrights, novelists, and people with social and political axes to grind. The story has always been more myth than history.
So, when the filmmakers add the fox spirit and the tengu, in some respects they are just being honest about their intentions. The way they presented the mythological elements was relatively respectful of Japanese folklore.
I have to admit I liked this, although Wikipedia says it has a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I particularly liked the booby-trap that relied on the stupidity of the villain’s goons to defeat them.
It had two songs in it that I bought the whole album for: The Hell of It, and Old Souls.
People know Paul Williams more for his pop/ballad songs (which admittedly Old Souls is, and a lovely one, too!), but The Hell of It is a good rock song and surprisingly vicious.
LifeForce also starred Mathilda May’s butt. Credit where it’s due.
It’s my theory that Dan O’Bannon would keep doing something until he got it right, then continue until he got it wrong again. He started out with the Living Dead movie Dead and Buried, which was awful, continued on to make Return of the Living Dead, which wasn’t bad, then did LifeForce, which was a retreate to awfulness. The worst part, offering counterpoint to te maked Ms. may, was the miserable puppet work of the re-animated bodies.
I’m a big fan of Sir Gawaine and the Green Kinght, which is a story with dramatic possibilities, if done right (It’s significant that this is the portion of Thomas Berger’s novel Arthur Rex that was excerpted for Playboy when the novel came out, illustrated with a Frank Frazetta painting), just right for an epic movie version.
Unfortunately, Sword of the Valiant is not that movie, despite the wonderful presence of Sean Connery as the Green Knight. But O’Keefe’s acting is as wooden as ever, and his Dutch Boy hairdo makes it really hard to take him seriously. And this wasn’t the script to make this story really live.
I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t see past the awful acting and virtually nonexistent effects in that Corman Fantastic Four fiasco. The FF was my favorite Marvel comic book, and now that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is coming into its own, it pains me that the cosmic concepts of Jack Kirby (mostly from FF and Thor) are ending up on the screen without the FF. – Him (Adam Warlock, as he later became) has been hinted at twice in the MCU, Ego the LIving Planet, . Instead of the Baxter Building in Manhattan we get Stark Tower.
Liquid Sky - You must be BAKED to see this movie. If you try it sober, you will be tempted to scoff at the shaky plot. Aliens, lesbians, and heroin in 1980s NYC club scene. Musical score sounds like circus music run through a synthesizer on bad acid.