By Hampus Eckerman: The Golden Turkey Awards. The Golden Raspberry Award. Awards given to the worst of the worst movies. So this will be The Worst Movie Golden Bracket.
This is about chosing the worst movie ever made. A bad movie is not a boring movie. It is a movie that creates feelings. Astonishment that the movie could ever be made. Fascination over who could create it. Anger over those who participated in it. Enthusiasm over the brilliance needed to make something so bad.
A truly bad movie is the kind where you continue to watch in the same way as at an oncoming train crash.
* * *
The bracket is done in the same way as previous movie brackets. These are the steps of the nomination phase before the brackets begin.
STEP 1: Nomination Phase
I have created a short list of movies considered to be the worst ever made. In the comment section, you will write movies you think should be added to the list. Also write if you want to nominate a movie already listed.
STEP 2: The Finalizing Phase
I will compile all movies mentioned in a separate post. There you will have the possibility to add your nominations to the movies listed (and only those listed at this stage).
STEP 3: The Final List
I will count all nominations and decide which movies has made into the brackets. The list will be published in a separate post. And after that the brackets will begin.
So without much ado, here is my list of truly bad movies.
- At Long Last Love (1975)
- Attack of the Mushroom People (1963)
- Batman & Robin (1997)
- Battlefield Earth (2000)
- The Black Gestapo (1975)
- Catwoman (2004)
- Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)
- Eegah (1962)
- Empire of the Ants (1976)
- Frankenstein Island (1981)
- The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)
- The Giant Claw (1957)
- The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
- Glen or Glenda (1953)
- Heaven’s Gate (1980)
- Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991)
- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964)
- Ishtar (1987)
- Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
- Leonard Part 6 (1987)
- Maniac (1934)
- Mommie Dearest (1981)
- Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
- Monster a Go-Go! (1965)
- Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
- Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966)
- Reefer Madness (1936)
- Reptilicus (1961)
- Robot Monster (1953)
- The Room (2003)
- Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
- Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)
- Showgirls (1995)
- Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
- Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
- The Terror of Tiny Town (1938)
- They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968)
- The Thing with Two Heads (1972)
- Troll 2 (1990)
- The Food of the Gods (1976)
- The Wicker Man (2006)
What movies can you add?
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Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Ernest Saves Christmas
Mazes and Monsters
MAc and Me
The Happening
Inspector Gadget
The Avengers
Valerian: City Of A Thousand Planets (too soon perhaps but oh it belongs here!)
Phantom Menace
Oblivion
Ghost In The Shell
X-Men: The Last Stand
Universal Soldier
Johnny Mnemonic
How do you choose between The Manster, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant and the Thing with Two Heads?
[godstalk]
Teenagers from Outer Space
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Star Trek Into Darkness.
Walked out of the theatre. Stood there in stunned silence for a long moment, and then didn’t stop ranting for at least 30 minutes.
Seconding: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
After playing fast and loose with the sort of basic physics that small children grasp as soon as they figure out “catch”, the crowning moment of awful was the point where Supes said he won thanks to “high school physics”
Honorable mention: Batman v Superman
Forewarned, I didn’t pay for this. But I did tune in when it was on cable to watch Wonder Woman kick some ass, and marvel at the clunky switch between her theme music and the Wagnerian tone of the rest of it – so blatantly Wagnerian that, in what was supposed to be the tragic death of Superman scene, all I could see was Bugs Bunny being carried off by Elmer – “So what didja expect from an opera, a happy ending?” A true laugh-out-loud moment. Good thing I wasn’t in a theatre.
I will add The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007), Earthsea (2004) and The Phantom (1996).
Rob Thornton, which Ghost In The Shell?
@Hampus
Sorry about that. I was referring to the live-action film with Scarlett Johansson, not the anime.
I’ll second Batman vs. Superman (the worst film I’ve ever paid money to see) and toss in Green Lantern.
Thanks to the rebooted MST3K, I’ll also add Wizards of the Lost Kingdom and Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II.
I’ll add in Zardoz (1974) as not just a terrible movie but the most pretentious SF movie of all time.
Lost Horizon (1973) – the musical remake
Worst movie I ever went out to see:
Norwood (1970). Glen Campbell, Joe Namath and Kim Darby. Viet Nam vet returns home. Acting, writing and directing all terrible.
A Thousand Ways to Die in the West
The FP answering the age old question no one asked of what if Mad Max used DDR to determine who was the best in the wasteland?
Blubberella Uwe Boll took Bloodrayne 3 and made a comedy directors cut which is mostly a super long fat joke with some gay and racist jokes along the way.
Against the Dark – A Steven Segal vampire movie where he slowly fights his way through saving the world from evil
Repo: The Genetic Opera
Prometheus
The Love Guru
D-Wars / Dragon Wars
High Tension – Not only because of the completely dumb ending that could never work, but managed to almost shot for page rip off a Dean Koontz book, and when you’re second hand generic Koontz, you made a mistake in life.
Stealth
Son of the Mask
There were some Italian horror movies that had awesome special effects and great names, like Tombs of the Blind Dead, but are otherwise tedious as hell.
The Rollerball remake
In high school my friends and I would rent a couple horror movies every weekend and stay up watching them, and if there’s one genre where there’s a ton of movies with shoestring budgets and bad acting/plot/etc though it’s also a genre that revels in it and sometimes hard to parse the intentionally bad from the unintentional.
Aeon Flux. Two hours of my life that I’ll never get back.
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. I see someone upthread nominated Phantom Menace, but in my opinion this one was worse. I remember that in the theater the entire crowd giggled when (SPOILER) Nanxva qvfpbirerq uvf zbgure jnf qlvat naq jrag nyy natfgl-zheqrebhf.This was supposed to be a deeply moving moment, and the first-run, first-week audience thought it was so badly acted as to be funny.
I have a feeling that this is going to be a very hard bracket to actually vote in, because most people don’t go out of their way to watch bad movies the way they do to read good books or watch good movies. So the population here who has actually seen one or both movies in any given bracket is likely to be small, which may actually result in the not-quite-so-terrible movies winning their brackets (because at least some people will have seen them).
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones was a movie that made me feel just like a kid again. When I saw the love scene, I wanted to fwow up.
“The Avengers”
Are you referring to the Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes, Sean Connery remake of the british show?
@idontknow. Yes, yes I am. My brain will never let me cleanse it of the image of Sean Connery in a giant teddy bear costume. For that alone I can hate this movie.
Just because a movie was on MST3K doesn’t mean it deserves to make this list. Reptilicus is no Manos!
I’ll nominate a movie that was too expensive to get the MST treatment (although it did get a fan version): Star Trek V. I’d watch hours of Jar Jar Binks before I watch that Shatner crap again.
If the final bracket does not include Disney’s The Black Hole (1979). this endeavor is NOT WORTH TAKING SERIOUSLY, as it were…Heh!
Well, the lack of Billy Rebane films in that original link has certainly been addressed.
There was an episode of Top Gear (or a spinoff special) where they decide what is the worst car ever made. At the beginning they discuss their methodology and state that rather than test various objectively bad Trabants, Yugos and Reliants they would choose something that should have been great but utterly failed (eventually choosing the Lexus SC430). I think we all have to decide for ourselves if that’s what we want here.
I LOATHE, for instance, the ScarJo Ghost in the Shell and could go on at length over every exact reason it disappointed me, but it is an objectively better film than Night Train to Mundo Fine (aka Red Zone Cuba) which I admire for its sheer top-to-bottom awfulness. I expect more from Johanssen, $100 million and the GitS franchise but I don’t expect a single damn thing from Coleman Francis.
That said, The Beast of Yucca Flats should be on the list (as the most SFinal of Francis’ films). I’d also nominate any and all Fantastic Four movies (honestly, the no-budget, never released Roger Corman produced 1994 film is the best) and frelling Freejack.
@Chris Barkley.
We watched THE BLACK HOLE for Skiffy and Fanty Torture Cinema. I have a very soft spot for that movie. My cohosts savaged it. I…did not.
This led to a series of Torture Cinema episodes where we took a cohosts favorite bad SF childhood movie and excoriated it.
I have no specific movies to add – but I have to say the faith people show in non-US film industry is truly touching.
@JMC,I wholeheartedly agree. Some of the best MSTs IMHO were actually pretty good movies like those weird and goofy but lushly produced Russo-Finnish fantasy movies: The Day the Earth Froze (Sorry, sampo’s off.), The Sword and the Dragon (We got a great big envoy!), Jack Frost (I didn’t know there were that many land-mines left in Narnia.) and The Magic Voyage of Sinbad (He’s not Sinbad!).
I could watch those movies on their own (and I have). I can barely watch Manos (Every frame of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph.) even with the riffing… and I like trash cinema.
When I introduce people to MST I always advise to start with ones that are fun on their own like Space Mutiny (Look alive Susan! Oh… sorry.) or The Final Sacrifice (This movie has the bacony stench of Canada all over it.) in order to build up a supply of the patented Hinder-90 required to counteract more advanced viewing that may well involve DEEEEEEP HUUUURTING!
Some readers will recall:
Invasion of the Saucer Men, because you can’t beat a cow for a chaperone
Attack of the Neptune Men
Gappa
I have not seen Retick the Moon Menace, and am not sure it is real.
Mant, the greatest film that never was.
The Giant Gila Monster.
Brain from Planet Arous
I believe Disney’s The Black Hole is the first movie anyone has mentioned today that I ‘ve seen. I certainly thought it was terrible when I saw it on its initial release.
If we have to go for kaiju movies, I’d say All Monsters Attack (which I saw as Godzilla’s Revenge) was the one I hated most as a kid. It has a bullied boy who dreams of going to Monster Island and teaming up with Godzilla’s son.
The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant
Fer sure. Fer sure.
Casey Kasem can introduce songs and voice cartoon characters, but beyond that he can’t act.
Jack Lint – total fan service movie. Godzilla Final Wars had Don Frye running around speaking english while no one else does or mentions it and I always thought that was funny. But even a bad kaiju movie is still a kaiju movie
I definitely vote for Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Also…thank you (?)…to the people who reminded me of the Black Hole (which, yes, sucks).
Toys (1992) – easily the worst movie I ever paid to see, as well as one of the most disappointing.
Runner-up: Meteor (1979) – at least it had Natalie Wood.
My son gave a succinct review of “Reptilicus” (which made the list): “Cheese Danish”. He has the makings of a film critic.
Golden Dawn (1930) — a musical set in colonial Africa.
Songs include “The Whip” and “My Bwanna”.
Seconding “Highlander 2”. We’d had word from UK friends that it was bad. Truly bad. That we should on no account go see it.
When it eventually showed on New Zealand screens some weeks/months later. We went anyway, reasoning (hah!) “how bad can it be?”
Godzilla 1998 — Because, seriously, that movie was a waste of Jean Reno and that is a crime that cannot be forgiven.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith — Because if you’re going to fridge Darth Vader’s wife the very least you can do is have her death actually make sense.
The live-action The Sorcerer’s Apprentice — Because magical battles in the middle of New York City should not put the audience to sleep.
Maid to Order (Ally Sheedy as a spoiled princess turned maid)
The Brood (1970s horror)
The Three Musketeers (1973) That one is because my ex kept talking about it like it was the best Three Musketeers Movie Ever and it didn’t live up to the hype.
There’s another one I have in mind, but I have to get the title from my sibling. Will post separately. It is about an evil hand.
And I have it! Idle Hands!
Did anyone else watch Elvira Mistress of the Dark? The late night show where she MST3Ked horror movies? Tons of really awful stuff there but I can’t remember names!!!
And I just remembered there was an Elvira Mistress of the Dark movie that I know I saw but apparently my mind is protecting me from the memory because I can’t even remember how bad it was.
Anyhow some suggestions:
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Kentucky Fried Movie
Airplane and Airplane 2
Toys started out interesting and became a complete travesty
Howard the Duck
any Naked Gun movie
An inspired list (mainly because it so closely relates one I created myself), but without The Creeping Terror, it is sadly deficient. I mean, can you name another movie that was silent because it lacked a soundtrack?
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) — based on a story by fake writer J.T. Leroy about heinous pedophilia that never actually happened.
Caligula (1979) — Malcolm McDowell makes ancient Rome great again.
It’s Pat (1994) — two hours of smirking over Pat’s ambiguous gender … I only saw it because one of my favorite bands (Ween) is in it, and they ended up in rehab afterwards.
@Beth: Are you thinking of Idle Hands, perhaps? (EDIT: Ah, so you were. I was composing when you posted.)
Nominating The Creature Wasn’t Nice aka Naked Space, which I think has a third title that has mercifully fled my brain. I’ve told friends that it remains on my shelves as a warning to other movies. It’s the one I always go to if someone asks for the name of a bad movie.
If this isn’t supposed to be limited to SFF movies, I’ll add Fifty Shades of Gray for pure creeptastic stalkery badness. Shock Treatment should also make the list, but it’s borderline SFF at best. (I don’t recall it having any SFF elements, but it’s a sequel to RHPS, so does it get grandfathered in?) Speaking of sequels, the second Fright Night 2 (sequel to the remake), which pretty much amounts to “let’s remake it again, but in a foreign country and with a sexy lady vampire.” Ooh: Vamp, with Grace Jones. I have vaguely awful memories of that one. And how could I forget the CGI/live-action Scooby-Doo? So many choices…
I can’t decide whether or not to nominate the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, so I’ll just toss it out there for discussion. Same thing goes for the Monkees’ movie, Head. I liked both, but there’s definitely some badness there. I’ll also mention Phantom of the Paradise, which is in my library but hasn’t quite reached my DVD player yet, so I cannot in good conscience nominate it myself.
Can I nominate the liner notes for Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage, since to my knowledge the amateur-level musical play it describes has not actually been made/filmed?
I probably watch 40-80 bad movies a year for a bad movie awards show that I put on (with others). Times 20-plus years equals I have seen an awful lot of these movies. Emphasis on the awful.
I am giving +1s to:
Attack of the Mushroom People (which I saw as “Matango”)
Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (I’ve seen two movies called “Death Bed” — this is by far the more entertaining one)
The Food of the Gods
The Giant Spider Invasion
Glen or Glenda?
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (I saw this on the SciFi channel, and it was super-entertaining to hear
the narrator announce the return from commercial: “We are now returning
to” *breath* “ThoseIncrediblyStrangeCreaturesWhoStoppedLivingAndBecameMixed-UpZombies” *breath* “On the SciFi Channel”)
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Reptilicus (and booo! on MST3K for cutting the “Tivoli Nights” number)
Robot Monster
The Room
Scream, Blacula, Scream
The Terror of Tiny Town (there was a sequel planned but never undertaken, supposedly to be called “Hang ‘Em Not-so-High”)
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Thing with Two Heads
Troll 2
Zardoz
Although they are bad, I cannot in good conscience give +1s to
Manos: The Hands of Fate
Monster a-Go-Go!
because I found them dreadfully dull.
Here are my not-yet-mentioned gems:
Avenging Disco Godfather
The Human Tornado
(my two favorite Rudy Ray Moore films)
The Pirate Movie
(an early-80s rendition of The Pirates of Penzance which found it necessary to write new songs)
Samurai Cop
(the most 1980s movie ever to 1980s a 1980s)
Roller Blade
Hell Comes To Frogtown
(Don Jackson ftw … I think the first is the best of the … five? … Frogtown movies)
The Guns of El Chupacabra
(Scott Shaw is Don Jackson’s spiritual cinematic successor)
Leprechaun 4 (aka Leprechaun in Space)
Birdemic 2: The Resurrection
(probably my favorite sequels)
Amsterdamned
(If you haven’t seen a speedboat chase through the canals of Amsterdam, then … you … haven’t seen a speedboat chase through the canals of Amsterdam)
And probably a dozen more that I will think of when I lay down to sleep tonight.
The Buffy movie had redeeming features: having the character who’d be first to die in GenericHorrorFranchise kick ass instead was shockingly groundbreaking. Also I decided right then that, should I ever have to wear a prom dress, I would bling up some sneakers like Buffy did. Plus Rutger Hauer.
HIghlander 2: definitely. That and Aliens 3 were the canonical movies whose very existence was vehemently denied on Usenet; can’t get much worse than that.
There is some overlap here with other posters. I tried to pick movies that weren’t bad because they were slow or boring, but because they either had a vision that was straight-out bonkers or was so badly executed as to be hilarious. Shirtless, oiled, fluffy-haired archangels in studded leather briefs “wrestling” demons to a bangin’ soundtrack while puppet phalluses look on? I got it for you, in Rock & Roll Nightmare. A diaphonously draped white woman in a giant playroom, rapturously watching as nearly naked black bodybuilders step out of her oversized “Toybox”? Look no further than Rudy Ray Moore’s The Human Tornado. An order of post-Apocalyptic, roller-skating, switchblade-wielding Nuns in KKK hoods and their healing hot tub of love? Roller Blade, natch.
Weird. Incomprehensible. Sometimes offensive or nauseating. But never boring.
Rock & Roll Nightmare (1987)
The Human Tornado (1976)
Starcrash (1979)
Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997)
Space Ninja: Swords of the Space Ark (1979)
Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)
The Guns of El Chupacabra (1997)
Roller Blade (1985)
The Roller Blade Seven (1991)
Ultracop 2000 (1992)
Zardoz (1973)
Metallica/Captive Planet (1979)
Samurai Cop (1991)
Narcosys (2000)
+1s to:
Attack of the Mushroom People
Batman & Robin
Death Bed
Eegah
Glen or Glenda
Manos
Monster A-Go-Go
Plan 9
Reptilicus
The Room
The Terror of Tiny Town
The Thing With Two Heads
Troll 2
The Food of the Gods
Mazes and Monsters
Star Trek V
Paul, you are not alone in retaining a childhood fondness for The Black Hole. Even after rewatching.
Independence Day: Resurgence (I complained all the way home: “This movie was STUPID!”)
Beware! The Blob (A misbegotten sequel to the original Blob. I’ve tried my best to block it out, but still can’t get rid of the image of the black man adjusting his TV, and sitting back in his chair right into a mass of red Blob.)
Seconding The Food of the Gods (Marjoe Gortner and huge fake mosquitoes!)
Ultraviolet (Fifteen minutes into this, I yanked it out of the DVD player and threw it across the room.)
Plan 9 from Outer Space is hilariously bad, but I’d also like to nominate Reefer Madness (1936) and Queen of Outer Space (1958), because they’re bad too. And then there is Master of Disguise (2002), a movie one of my children watched multiple times because she loved it so much. It’s really bad.
eta – I had completely forgotten The Thing with Two Heads. +1 on that.
I will nominate only one movie, the absolutely worst thing I’ve ever seen. Behold the cardboard MRI machine! AFTER LAST SEASON.
EDIT: Hmm, the URL didn’t post. Well, anyway, you can find it on Youtube. Witness the worst computer graphics ever! Thrill at the … I think it’s telepathy, but I’m not sure. AFTER LAST SEASON. Ask for it by name!