Chuck double-dog dared me a couple weeks ago to come up with a better(?) listing of the worst movies of all time than the BBC did. Belatedly, and after a great deal of soul searching and garment rending, I have done so.
Most of us have an idea of what would go on our own personal craptacular flick list, even if we've never written it down. Mine used to change weekly, depending on what low-budget straight-to-video offerings I'd subjected myself to over a given weekend, and it was while reconfiguring my rankings one day (does "Backwoods" go above "The Silo Killer?") that I realized I'd been going about the process all wrong. So, I suspect, have many of you.
The rest of this entry covers the methods by which I arrived at my own hierarchy of dreck. If the thought of sifting through that particular pan of brain silt doesn’t make you all warm and tingly, I suggest you put on your boogie shoes and head over to the next entry, which actually contains the lists themselves.
Now then...
Anyone can go the Internet Movie Database and cobble together their own list from the Bottom 100, or Maxim, or what have you. Copying someone else's list is the easiest way to make your own, therefore one requirement for creating any list of the Worst Movies of All Time should be that you've actually seen the films you're condemning. This sounds insultingly obvious, and it is, but believe me when I say that plenty of abysmal/superlative reviews have been written by individuals who never bothered to watch the film in the first place. Honestly, do you think everyone who put "Gigli" on their "worst" lists actually sat through the whole thing? Maybe regular moviegoers can be forgiven for bailing on a shitty film, but true critics are expected to possess fortitude beyond the ken of mere mortals.
And most of them get paid, anyway.
Unlike with Best Movies lists, a collection of the worst films of all time should mostly consist of films that received a relatively wide release and had a decent operating budget. Why is this? Because while it's pretty rare for a low-budget, independently released movie to garner widespread critical appeal, it's about as hard as walking into a wall for these same films to bomb. Anybody can make a "bad" indie movie: plenty of those I've reviewed qualify as such simply because the filmmaker couldn't afford decent acting talent and got friends and relatives to appear in their film, for example. Sometimes the dialogue is atrocious, or the movie looks like ass because the director only had access to a secondhand camera he had to "borrow" from the local film school.
To have your pick of A- or B-list talent, a budget in the millions of dollars, the backing of a major studio, and still make a bad movie...well, that's not too tough either, really. Dozens of them are released every year. But to make a film that will echo through the vaults of time as historically repugnant… a film that will cause future archaeologists to burst into unholy fire from simply viewing it on their vid processors…that is something special.
A truly bad movie must also aspire to goodness. Cheesy big budget throwaways ("Charlies Angels," "Wild Wild West") don't cut the mustard. Pretension and deadly earnestness are crucial to any film that hopes to plumb the depths of true suckitude.
[Comedies are the exception to this rule. Comedies that want to be included on the Roll Call of Cinematic Ignominy have to pass one simple test: they can't be funny. At all.]
The worst movies of all time have absolutely no redeeming qualities. If you chuckled once (at a comedy, that is - I probably laughed uncontrollably through half of "Armageddon"), or ended up engaged in the plot at some point, or actually found yourself giving a rat's ass about any of the characters...that movie doesn't qualify. Sorry to be so strict, but there are, literally, thousands of awful movies out there. Distilling that heap of ordure down to only ten nuggets of blackest filth takes work. Hot, sexy work.
Which brings me to my (thank Christ) last point. It’s not enough to include a movie in your “10 Worst List” if you merely dislike it – hell, I dislike over half the movies I end up seeing – you’ve got to hate it. And I don’t mean that watered down vitriol you hear bandied about these days (“I hate it when the barista doesn't doesn't give me a cup sleeve”), I’m talking about Dark Side, rage-a-holic, Bill Hicks levels of hate. If you can’t bring that to the table for a movie, it doesn’t belong on your list.
Next up, the Hall of Shame.
Hrm. Apparently, my 10 Worst list consists of 10 copies of Legends of the Fall.
Maybe if I sleep on it, I'll think of one or two more.
I'm gratified, though, to see that your requirements are almost exactly what I had come up with on my own for such lists. Too many people don't seem to get that "worst" isn't something you peel off the bottom of your shoe and hold up to say, "This is awful!"; that it only really counts if someone else absolutely and without irony adores it.
A point of clarification. Do you actually have to watch the _entire_ movie, or can you just make a serious effort to watch it and finally give up?
I just ask because I recently tried to watch "Jeffereson in Paris", which was so spectacularly bad that I couldn't make it more than about twenty minutes in without feeling that my time, even unemployed, was worth more than that. I'd like to put it on my 10 worst list, but not if it actually means sitting through it.
David...OF COURSE you have endure the film until the closing credits, chock full of embarrassed members of SAG, limp pathetically across the screen.
You can't claim credit for suffering full-sensory suckliness if you bail like a Grade A Wuss when the going gets tough.
So it is written.
Pete: Do the rules allow one to hate a "made-for-TV-movie"? 'Cause I've got a hate-on for Mazes and Monsters that eclipses the weak emotion normal people call 'hate'.
I don't think I hate any movies by this definition. When I think they suck, I leave or pull them out of the DVD player.
"Life is too short to drink bad beer."
If the rules don't let me hate "Soul Man", which I saw in the theater and departed in disgust midway through, then the rules are wrong. I agree with Ginger - I can't get my money back, but I can recover an hour or so of my life before it's too late.
Hmm. Under Pete's criteria, which are certainly reasonable, then I think my number one and two soul-rottingly awful films are Eyes Wide Shut and Dungeons and Dragons.
Unfortunately, The Phantom Menace can't make the list, because the movie's Jedi Action Figures with New Ass-Kicking Power rocked. Everything else about the movie was 'teh suck' as the k1dz with their loud rock and/or roll music are apt to say.
You absolutely have to sit through the entire thing. A movie deserving of inclusion should compel you to watch it, like those surgery shows on TLC. If you're indifferent enough to turn it off, you don't hate it.
I didn't include TV movies, but I understand Michael's pain. I guess one slot can be taken up with a designated made for television flick, provided it stars a future Hollywood player.
Greg, I guess we disagree on "Eyes Wide Shit." Er, "Shut." I don't remember having that strong a reaction to it, but I fell asleep for a few hours there.
Thanks to an earlier double-dog dare on my part, Pete has not only graced us (if that's the right word)......
| --Posted to Off the Kuff on Dec 2, 2003 2:21 PM:. |
Well, I'm up to two. Legends of the Fall and Falling Down.
I want to add Les Miserables (f/ Liam Neeson), but I simply don't have the fortitude to make it all the way through.
Kodi, I'm seeing a pattern in your selections all ready: Legends of the FALL, FALLing Down... Maybe you could use this to spark your (repressed) memories of other bad films, such as,
Legends of the Fall --> Falling Down --> Down to You --> You've Got Mail, etc.
Much like Dave Barry when he did his Bad Song Survey, I was rather overwhelmed by the response to my......
| --Posted to Off the Kuff on Dec 4, 2003 9:13 AM:. |
I noticed that, too. I went ahead and checked IMDB, though, and I have NEVER seen a movie which had a title beginning with "Down" or ending with "Legend," except of course "Legend" which I rather liked.
Maybe I need to start watching some of them to find more unfavorites.
Oh, and the "Oscars" discussion in the other thread reminded me that I hate "Going My Way."
OK, Pete at Perfectly Cromulent has laid down some ground rules for his conceptualization of a listing of movies that really suck. However, I don't like it. The reason is in the rules ... one of which is that it......
| --Posted to GregsOpinion.com on Dec 4, 2003 11:26 AM:. |
You've didn't like "The Legend of the Rollerblade 7"? Sigh... I guess there's just no accounting for taste. Still I think that its a movie that deserves MUCH wider distribution.
My list of the movies I hate: [rules] 1) Legally Blonde 2 [my sister and mother subjected me to this last week] 2) Grease [I've hated this one since middle school] 3) Star Wars Episode I [need I say anything?]......
| --Posted to The Audhumlan Conspiracy on Dec 4, 2003 9:26 PM:. |
Easily "Serendipity". Oh, "Before Sunrise" but I didn't actually make it all the way to the end of it, though I did try.
i can come up with two:
in the company of men: putting aside any ideological differences with the director here -- dude, is this an infomercial? it looks like it was directed by a crew of naked mole rats!
masked and anonymous: huh? wha? whuzzah? i don't get it.
if i had the fortitude to sit through 8 mile i would have included that. i had to shut it off after i realised the moral of that story is that it's okay -- nay, a work of genius -- to beat your wife if you live in a trailer park.
how could i forget dark city? steals from metropolis (take that, you matrix-haters), poorly acted (who's worse, jennifer "deer in headlights" connelly or kiefer "shut the fuck up!" sutherland?) and the most crack-influenced editing ever. for the love of god and all that's holy, please put the editor through detox. kthx, c.
Get on with the damn list already!