Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler What's the Best "Worst" Film You've Ever Seen?

So, people are always asking what the best films for this and that are on here. I'd like to hear the other side of this coin. I'd like to hear about the films you've seen that have been so bad they were brilliant. Films that made you laugh and cry and gag at the same time. Films so horrendously, fascinatingly awful, you couldn't tear yourself away from it... Films you had to have your friends watch with you so you could confirm it was as disastrous as it was. Films your wife/husband could gather no clue as to why you were watching it and pondered your sanity over... Anyway, you get my drift..

I'll start:

Knightriders

No, not the talking car and mulleted hair Knight Rider, but the 1981 "Camelot is a State of Mind" Knightrider. Modern Day knights on motorcycles gallivant across the states performing for Renaissance Faire going, penny philosophy pondering, Monk and Jester love, Greed, hippies and white trash...

Genius!

I laughed 'till I cried, 'till I had to get another beer Genius!


(I posted this over on another website, but I'd love to hear from my speaker peeps!)

Any of the Japanese "monster" (can we say that without getting sued?) movies from the 50's and 60's. Jet powered turtles, firebreathing iguanas, supersonic pterodactyls... all combined with 'corny' dialogue; awesome!!

I love those old monster movies, Godzilla, Mothra, Rhodan, etc.

Don't forget Gamera...this is what happens when you buy kids a pet turtle and they flush him down the 'can'.

Plan 9 From Outer Space. Ed Wood never lets you down.

A list of the mistakes can be found here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/goofs

Maybe Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie will be a qualifier.

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY. By far the worst film ever made. big budget and spar power means it falls further than other low budget crap competitors.

Have we all forgotten the great movies of Steven Seagal?

I still remember going to the Saturday matinee as a kid and seeing two westerns, a cartoon, and an episode of Flash Gordon. Even as a kid I knew that supposed rocket ship looked like a large pipe from which they were pushing out ashes which fell straight down. It wasn't a movie per se, but it has to be the worst serial ever produced.

The "best-worst" one I can think of in recent memory was Be Kind Rewind.

I generally dislike Jack Black's movies because I find him irritating. It was on HBO or something some lazy afternoon a month or so ago. It was pretty dumb, as expected.

But even though I wanted to really hate it, I found it somewhat amusing. There was some charm to it. I believe it stems from having worked in a little tiny video store during high school, and having a group of crazy friends that might actually have tried to 'remake' movies as they did.

I've also always sort of thought that Mars Attacks! was a classic example of a best "worst" movie. Of course, it was done just like those classic B (C?) grade sci-fi moves from the 50's, so that was sort of what it was supposed to be. Always enjoy that one for its wonderful-awfulness ;).

I guess it’s not technically a “bad” movie based on some of the ratings I just looked up my pick is “Dark Star.” It’s certainly not big budget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)

Ha! "Dark Star" is a fantastic best-worst movie choice! Man, I'd forgotten about that one. Any film that unapologeticly uses a beach ball as an alien gets a thumbs-up from me.

Cabin Boy

Wow. They wouldn't even have to rename that movie for the porn version.

Awesome picture!. That’s got avatar written all over it. I love when it strums it’s toes. It would be cool to make that into an animated gif.

Since I'm a sucker for renting science fiction even when I know it has recieved awful reviews, I'd say my persona choices are a tie between

Freejack. A Sci-fi starring Mik Jagger.
and
Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta. Anyone else see a connection here?


Worst movie that I couldn't finish watching, not even to see how much worse it could possibly get...
Catwoman
How the Hell do you ruin Halle Berry in a skin tight outfit???

Most boring movie I ever had to sit through because my wife liked it...
Sleeping Pills in a Bottle or as some called it, "Message in a Bottle."

Choice for worst movie character...
Jar Jar Binks. I could not possibly hate anything more without it personally injuring my family. I won't even link him so as not to subject you to him further.

Well now I have a replacement as the worst film I ever saw. The wife rented a film called "The Triplets of Belleville" from netflix. It's a very dark animated film made in France and clearly low budget. It was like I would imagine watching a King Cobra would be. I just sat and stared at the screen wishing I was somewhere else.

Flash Gordon

Could not stop watching. Max Von Sydow playing a Chinese emperor. Solid gold stuff right there.

Nell has got to be one of the worst movies ever. How the hell did Jodie Foster get any recognition for a role where she just makes sh!t up?!!! Upinthewhah wit de chickabee! Just shoot me alredy!

Hmmm, a trick question...Best "Worst" movie? The Scooby Doo movies were, what's the word...."corny"?

The last X-files movie(I want to Believe) was brutal to watch, so bad in fact, I wonder if Scully and Mulder even watched it.

By the way a movie should not qualify if you were able to voluntarily stop watching part way through. For example I walked out on "Blade" so it doesn't qualify. There are other films that my wife "made me" watch and they don't qualify either.

That movie that Tom Cruise made with his(then) wife, Nicole Kidman was pretty bad....but I perservered, nothing to do with the nude women in stilletos of course.

Robot Monster
X the Unknown
The Crawling Eye
The Magnetic Monster

The following films may be too good to qualify but ...

Them
the original "The Thing"

Ah, if any of you had really 'studied' you would have commented on these superb choices.

Robot Monster - a gorilla in a space helmet with rabbit ear antennae sitting at a collapsible card table in a cave with a bubble machine who rails against the only human family left after the conquest by the earth by Ro-men. Moronic? Maybe, but full of Archetypical images from an alternate universe which burrow into your subconscious. Be careful!

X-the unknown, a radioactive subterranean globulous life form, a hungry ionizing mud pie which is oozing toward a nuclear reactor in the English foggy marshes looking for a hot lunch while turning all unwary humans in its path into bubbling pizza faces. Brilliant!

The Crawling Eye? What could be better? An invasion which starts in the Alps (it's colder there) and ends with bombing runs by a gorgeous Canberra twin engine jet bomber showing off Europe's post war military luftkrieg prowess while incinerating the giant crawling eyes from somewhere else.

The magnetic monster. So prescient. a runaway nuclear reaction must have created an awesome monopole. Oops there goes my hammer.

Sorry but attractive nude women disqualify a film from consideration.

Eyes Wide Shut was, indeed, a strange movie. Even with the nudity, it's not on my list of movies to re-watch.

2x6 I'm sure that all these films are worthy of consideration. The titles alone would prevent most of us from even beginning to watch them. Please don't be offended; but I'm thinking of films you had reason to expect might be good but weren't.

I think this thread got hijacked. Its suppose to be the best worst film, not the truly worst film…

Whaaat? Robot Monster a truly worst film????

I don't know about best worst film, but I watched one of the absolute worst films ever last night: The Girlfriend Experience.

The best part about it was the fact that it was only 70 mins long.

Wife watched (I peeked) 'Ghosts of Girlfriends Past' a couple of nights ago ... that silly ass movie has got to be included on some sort of 'worst list' somehow.

How about "The Worst Chick Movie I Pretended to Like to Get Jiggy with the Wife" thread.

I know but best worst is really just another way to say mediocre, boring, pointless, etc. I think a film is really bad if you just "have to" watch it all the way through, and wind up being a little ashamed that you did.

Not that I remember anything about the film, but as a 15 year old, the title was cool:

C.H.U.D.
(Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers)

Almost anything with Tom Cruise could make my list, but War of the Worlds was a new low. I should disqualify myself, since I kept nodding off during it

I agree with you. It was really bad. I told my wife that "when you are making a movie and it's turning out that bad; you should either start over or write off the investment and move on." The only good in that movie is the subwoofer effects.

However I can watch "Top Gun" over and over. So Cruise isn't all bad.

Yeah, but that was in his pre-scientologist days and was not a lunatic following some made up religon.

All religions are made up. By made up, I mean they were created. Some are just more plausible than others.

Hi Pmbuko,

How timely. I'm just reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, good read and very persuasive.

To Joe in CT: Au contraire, I found the remake of "War of the Worlds" far better than the original, which is very dated and corny.

Regards,
Alan

I thought the new "War of the Worlds" could have been better, myself after watching it. Speilberg sometimes seems to throw a lot of money into his special effects, imo, to make up for some of the weak stories. Yah, the original was corny, but they could have done so much more with the new one, methinks.

I liked the original!

Alan, I'm going to check out that book on Amazon!

There are some cool Richard Dawkins videos on youTube. I remember one where he is in Oklahoma addressing a university audience about the state legislature's efforts to force the teaching of creationism in science class. Recommended.

The video, not creationism. At least not in science class.

Unless I missed something, no one has mentioned "Napoleon Dynamite"

Without a doubt, a train wreck one can't stop watching.

Scott

That was no train wreck. It was genius.

I get it now, but the first time.... I was thinking.. WTF??

Scott

I found the movie funny after I watched it and thought about each scene. It was funny AFTER the fact. While I watched it, I didn't understand why it was so popular.

You hit it dead on. When I watched it, I really wanted to leave the room but afterward, when you try to talk about how bad a particular was, you started laughing.

Agreed. Napoleon Dynamite is a perfect choice for a "best-worst" movie. I feel exactly the same way; had no idea either why it was popular when it was released. But afterward, while thinking & talking about it, I realized that I quite liked it. And I caught the last half of it on HBO recently, and found it hilarious to re-watch. Classic best/worst.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is another oddball I'd nominate. People either seem to love it or hate it. Both my wife and I were sort of negative about it at first, but by the end, I thought it was great and quite enjoyed it. My wife still thinks it had very few redeeming qualities. Actually, most of Wes Anderson's movies are like that; The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, The Darjeeling Limited, etc. A weird, quirky, love/hate, best/worst sort of vibe.

And if we're creating a special class for Tom Cruise movies, my nomination would be Magnolia. Perhaps I just don't get it, but even after watching it and reading reviews, I still don't understand what or why any of it happened, nor why I wasted my time watching it. I think that flipping through 2+ hours of infomercials would have been more interesting and more worthwhile. But that's not a "best/worst" for me, just simply a "worst".

+1 Napoleon Dynamite
+1 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Both hit that vibe where it's "love it" or "hate it", and I love 'em both. Great discussion here.

Much less known is this gem from the 80s, The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak.

Wow, with a title like that, how can one pass it up! Does Netflix even carry it?

Just checked. They do not.

OK, this needs revival, while it may not be the worst film ever it's not very good.
"ARCTIC PREDATOR" starring Dean Cain , most every film with Dean Cain could be a candidate for a worst film nod.
Or maybe any film you find on the Syfy channel?

/Jeff

Some doozies on sci-fi for sure.

I've got one I actually liked, but was universally panned....

Your Highness with James Franco, Natalie Portman and Danny Mcbride.

It's like the princess bride all smutted up. Pure awesome.

Wow. Now I totally want to see it.

He slays a Minotaur and wears its junk around his neck as a trophy.... Come on!

Hilarious.