I’d vote for Robot Monster. (“To live like the hu-man. To die like the hu-man.”) What would be your choice?
Starship Troopers certainly ranks down there, as does Alien.
On low budget, there’s Space Mutiny. It looks like they shot two movies and spliced the film together. Then, realizing they still didn’t have enough footage for a feature, they added a third, irrelevant subplot to pad it out.
Worst Sci-Fi adaptation of best Sci-Fi book.
Dune
{Worst Sci-Fi adaptation of best Sci-Fi book.}
How about the 1990 Randy Quaid film version of Fredric Brown’s brilliantly hilarious 1955 novel MARTIANS, GO HOME?
I haven’t seen it. But NO ONE has ever admitted to having seen it.
Well I guess I could be the first to say Battlefield Earth…of course I haven’t SEEN it or anything, but but sheer reputation, I’m betting it shows up.
Plus I don’t like Scientology.
Uke:
I’VE seen “Martians, Go Home”. It is awful. I’m a big Fredric Brown fan, and I’m appalled! If memory serves, this film as the first effort by the folks who later gave us Independence Day and Godzilla. (Something no one seems to have picked up on – these guys clearly are familiar with good sf, as proven by their choice of a Fredric Brown book, and by details in their other flicks. But they choose to make lowbrow schlock, anyway.)
This still isn’t my choice for worst sf film, though. I think Dune and Starship Troopers have redeeming social value. I think Robot Monster and Plan 9 do, too, for that matter.
The worst sf films are ones that are boring, especially if adapted from a good story or novel. Something like “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank”, which was a pretty good short story. I had high hopes – a PBS movie (Like “Lathe of Heaven”) staring Raul Julia. How was I to know they had no idea what they werre doing, or how to construct a coherent plot?
Then there’s “Millenium”. I never read Varley’s book, but it CAN’T have been as bad as this flick!
Or just about any adaptation of Verne, Welles, Poe, or Lovecraft. (Just TRY to watch “From the Earth to the Moon”) I’ll grant that there are a few bright spots (“Journey to the Center of the Earth”), but too much of it is drivel.
Or (SHUDDER) the “adaptation” of Asimov’s “Nightfall”.
Battlefield Earth
Sphere
Alien Resurrection
Robot Jox
Beastmaster 2
Beastmaster 3
It’s generally agreed that Plan 9 from Outer
Space is the worst MOVIE ever made, bar none.
So we have a winner.
Cal:
I dunno…there have been some pretty darn watchable movies made from Poe’s work. Not that Poe would recognize them as having been adapted from his work, but good and/or interesting nonetheless. F’instance…
Jean Epstein’s French avant-garde THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928)
Bela Lugosi’s THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932)
Lugosi/Karloff’s THE BLACK CAT (1934), and, to a lesser extent, their THE RAVEN (1935)
The Roger Corman/Vincent Price HOUSE OF USHER (1960) and MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)
The Michael Reeves/Vincent Price WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968), based on “The Conqueror Worm”
James Whale’s THE INVISIBLE MAN (1932) and the George Pal WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) are pretty classic versions of Wells’s novels.
As for Verne, Disney’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (like the one you cited, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH) is all right for the kiddies. And I kinda like MASTER OF THE WORLD (1961)…sue me, I enjoy Vincent Price…and 1962’s FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON, which offers the spectacle of Red Buttons as a romantic lead and the awe-inspiring naked legs of Barbara Luna.
Uke:
You are correct that there have been some watchable adaptations of Poe et al. But I’m not fond of all those on your list. For my money, the TV adaptation of Murders in the Rue Morgue with George C. Scott is much more faithful and watchable. The James Whale Invisible Man actualy owes as much of a debt to Philip Wylie’s “The Murderer Invisible” as to Wells. My vote for a good Wells adaptation is “Th Man Who Could Work Miracles”. (The all-time winer for most faithful adaptation is “Things to Come”, since wels himself wrote the screenplay. But that movie, despite good moments, is frequently boring.)
Vincent Price apparently liked a TV show he did called “An evening with Edgar Allen Poe”, which was pretty true to Poe. Of course, the TV people wanted him to do the REAL Poe. You know, like in the movies?
Disney’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” was a good flick (although a lot of it was really taken from another Verne work – “For the Flag”). Disney and Verne was the ideal combination. It’s a pity that the only other Verne adaptation they did was “In Search of the Castaways”.
Damn you! I’ve never seen THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES, and I hear it’s really really good. And totally unavailable on video.
I forgot all about THINGS TO COME, which is one of my favorite wacked-out flicks. Boring, you say? I think it’s eminently quotable, and I work its lines into my day to day conversations when I can, complete with grossly overblown and emotive Brit accents…
“What d’ya think of THAT, Mister Wings Over Your Wits?!?” – Ralph Richardson as The Boss
“Ah, if only I had been a MAN!!!” – Rowena
“Men will never fly again. Flying’s OVAH!!!” – the mechanic guy
“Men are FLYING again!!!” – whoever
“Which shall it be, Passworthy? All the Universe…or Nothingness?” – Raymond Massey as Oswald Cabal
Oh, and I forgot to mention RE-ANIMATOR (1985) as a delightful take-off on a minor Lovecraft tale.
I’ll assume by your silence that you and I are in agreement on the subject of BarBara Luna’s shapely gams.
A late seventies film called “Damnation Alley.” It had George Peppard, motorcylces and giant mutant cockroaches. It would have been perfect material for MST3K.
Uke:
“Things to Come” does have quotable lines.
"Who do you represent?"
"Law and Sanity"
"I am the Law here!!!"
"I said 'Law and Sanity'"
Nevertheless, you’ve got to sit through a lot of boring parts and heavyhanded-as-a-sledgehammer symbolism and bad model work to get to this. And in the end a lot of it seems delightfully naive. (“What is the point of all of this PRO-GRESS?”) There’s a story that Stanley Kubrick asked Arthur C. Clarke t recommend some good SF films when they were doing 2001, and Clarke recommended “Things to Come”. Kubrick watched it, then asked Clarke never to recommend a film again. Its probably not true, but (as they say) it should be.
I’m sure you can get a copy of “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” if you went through one of the specialty video sources (or one of the bootleg ones). I’ve got a copy I taped off TV, myself.
Hey! Just checked it out on the IMdB, and it seems that TMWCWM is available for sale again! And for all of fifteen bucks, too!
Solarbabies
Jason Patric and Jamie Gertz rollerblading through a post-apocolyptic wasteland while being chased by Charles Durning. Top that!
Howzabout Armageddon? Expensively-made crap is worse than cheaply-made crap.
Hello? Lost in Space?
Hands down winner. “Battlefield Earth” makes “Robot Monster” look like “Gone with the Wind.”
I don’t have anything personal aganst Scientology (I know it’s a scam, but I don’t really care) and I don’t give a crap if L. Ron Hubbard wrote the original book and actually the original book wasn’t that bad, though it was too long. But the movie was easily, far and away, the worst sci-fi movie ever made. It was unbelievable. It was so bad that twenty minutes in I honesty, really and truly, thought that John Travolta had made it into a comedy. I was wondering why he was poking fun at the book, wondering if I should be laughing, and then I realized to my horror that it was entirely serious.
You think Lost in Space was bad, mattk? No way it was as bad as Battlefield Earth. At least LIS had a cool closing credits theme song and Heather Graham in a tight-fitting suit.
Armageddon was ten times better than Battlefield Earth.
Okay, Solarbabies was pretty awful. But Battlefield Earth was still worse.
Admittedly I haven’t seen Battlefield Earth, but Lost in Space had it all; pointlessly expensive special effects, absence of decent plot, poor acting (and another lesson from the occasional Gary Oldman school of over-acting), and the threat of a sequel. The only high point (beyond Heather Graham’s attempt to distract me from the horror) was the theme track (Orbital? Orb? I always get them confused).
The stupid Hallmark remake of 20,000 leagues under the sea. This was Horrible, utter crap. Instead of the proffesor having an assistant, he has a daughter, whom of course, falls in love with Ned, and of course, Cpt. Nemo falls for her. It was a complete butchery of the story.