This article in the Onion AV Club discusses the topic of horrible scenes in otherwise terrific films, and great scenes in otherwise unwatchable films.
Considering that Showgirls somehow got into their former list, I’m not sure what I think of their opinions. What are some of your nominations for such a list?
(And yes, your answers for the former might echo the previous thread about how you’d make a single change to movies, but I think that the extra discussion space, and the other half of the question, makes this a worthwhile thread on its own.)
The Day of the Triffids is a terrible film (of a novel that’s practically a blueprint of a good SF/horror film), but there’s a short scene in an airplane that’s just plain terrific.
LOTR: The Return of the King (IMHO) ranks among the very finest films ever made. Even as a Tolkien fan, I have no problem accepting a lot of Peter Jackson’s more “creative” decisions. But Denethor’s flaming high-dive from the the prow of Minas Tirith was the one point when I just threw up my hands in disgust. It was so ridiculous and over-the-top that it destroyed the believability the whole cast and crew had worked so hard to achieve.
Just last night I was watching the deleriously awful Madame X, and had to rewind and rewatch the scene where Nobly Wronged Lana Turner is cut to shreds by Wicked Mother-in-Law Connie Bennett:
“You’re still just a cheap little shopgirl from San Francisco—you should have stayed on the other side of the coun-tah!”
An obvious choice: The climactic light sabre duels (Darth Maul vs. Obi-Wan and Qui Gong; Annakin, Obi-Wan and Yoda vs. Dooku) in the two Star Wars prequels.
Speaking of which, The Waterboy was a quite bad movie, but was one of my greatest movie-going experiences overall, as it featured one transcendent scene, namely, the first trailer for Episode 1.
My (probably) favorite movie is The Iron Giant, but it has two serious missteps:
(1) The whole scene with the ex-lax.
(2) The too-happy ending. (Although I’ve been told that that was the ending of the original book, in which case I’m far more OK with it.)
In one of the many forgettable action flicks Steven Seagal made after Above the Law, I think the title was On Deadly Ground, there is one scene among the horrible dreck of that movie that had me LOL.
In that scene Billy Bob Thornton (!) plays a mercenary guarding an oil rig in Alaska, which Seagal is about to attack in all his environmental righteousness. He has a HILARIOUS conversation with a fellow mercenary about whether he should leave the folding shoulder stock on his submachine gun folded or extended since it “looks mean” folded but he is more accurate with it extended. That scene and one other in which Seagal plays a sadistic and basically incomprehensible game of mercy with a guy in a bar are the only ones I recall from this movie, for opposite reasons of course.
Great scene from a bad movie: Exorcist III - the infamous night-time hallway scene is definitely one of the scariest things I ever saw in a movie, too bad it was an otherwise sh***y movie.
Bad scene in a great movie: (this is a much harder call) In “Fargo”, the weirdly out-of-place subplot in which Sheriff Gunderson (Frances McDormand) has lunch with her former schoolmate who turns out to be a stalker. That whole episode came straight out of nowhere and just as abruptly dropped without a trace, with no connection to the main storyline I could figure out.
There’s forgettable Adam Sandler movie, I can’t remember the name. But Sandler is hanging out with a bunch of kids. One kid pees his pants and is embarassed by it. Sandler helps the kid out by splashing water on his own pants. He then announces to all the kids “Hey, it’s cool to pee your pants!” All of the other kids start wetting themselves, thinking it’s cool. A nearby little old lady comments, “If it’s cool to pee your pants, then I’m Miles freakin’ Davis.”
Actually, that’s a fairly important scene; it establishes the period when - once she learns that he lied about his relationship with the girl who “died” - Marge starts looking BEYOND what Jerry told her (the scene with the schoolmate occurs between the two Jerry interview scenes), and trying to dig a little deeper into the connections that are being made.
The Coen Brothers’ The Ladykillers was a big fat disappointment. It had so much potential, but for some reason it just didn’t work. However, I thought two scenes (both of which featured the actor playing the Vietnamese general) were hysterical:
When the punks try to rob his strip-mall doughnut shop and he hands them their asses on a plate; and
When he tries to kill the old lady in her sleep and somehow ends up falling downstairs and breaking his neck instead.
Pure Coen weirdness! Too bad the rest of the movie sucked, though.
While that’s definitely the point of the scene, it still doesn’t really have any place in the movie. Gunderson had already been established as a very perceptive and talented cop; there wasn’t any need for that character to get a lesson in looking beyond the obvious.
I agree and yet disagree. While she was certainly capable of figuring it out herself, I think it was also an aside to the viewer, since it’s sometimes hard to follow a person’s thoughts if you can’t read them.
Put another way, that scene was like Robin: There essentially to explain the plot to the “slower” fans.
The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick is pretty bad. It’s supposed to be funny, but it’s not.
But there’s this scene in the middle where Jim Carrey takes Matthew Broderick to the “Medeval Times” restaurant that is side splittingly funny, not the least because Janeane Garofolo is their serving wench. They end up battling each other in the the pit while the Star Trek fight music plays (or maybe Jim Carrey just sings it).
Worth every minute of sitting through the rest of the stupid movie.
The end of Swing Kids bugs the hell out of me. “Peter! Swing heil! Swing heil!” I’m not saying that Swing Kids is a cinematic treasure, but it was enjoyable for me until the end. I mean, the fevered swing dancing in that movie is so perfect. But the end? Pah.
Ice Age. Not a terrible movie, but pretty mediocre when compared to Pixar’s output. There is one stunning scene, though: as the motley band of animals journey through a cave, the mammoth sees a primitive wall painting of humans hunting mammoths, which triggers a flashback to the similar killing of his own family. The flashback is shown by animating the primitive stick-figures to depict the story of the hunt and kill. Beautifully realised, very moving, and, considering that the movie is entirely CGI, a splendid tip of the hat to the anonymous painters of 30,000 years ago who started it all with rock walls and burnt sticks.
Desperado is a good(ish) film if you like that kind of thing but one scene just ruined it for me - the scene where his Antonio Banderas’ friends come laong and help out with their weapons in guitar cases. It just ruins an otherwise well thought out film.
“Psycho” is a great movie, nearly flawless from beginning to end. But the very last scene is dreadful. If I remember it correctly (it’s also rather unmemorable), Norman has been arrested and a psychiatrist acts as a narrator, rambling on and on, explaining why Norman did what he did. And then he rambles some more. It’s like a scene from a bad tv show.
That scene just seems so out of place and unneccesary. I’ve often wondered what the story behind including that it is.