dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) (10/08/85)
The list of Totally Bad Movies, as of 10/7/85, stands at: *A Certain Sacrifice *Candy *Deal of the Century *Deathstalker *Dungeon Master Felicity First Family Glen or Glenda *Ghoulies *Grand Theft Auto *Hercules *I Spit on Your Grave *Inchon *Insignificance *Night Patrol *Protocol Silent Night, Deadly Night Sheena of the Jungle Star Crush *The Ninja Mission *The Return of Martin Guerra *The Trip *Winds of Change *Zelig (Asterisk means new nomination.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The nominations appear in alphabetical order on this posting, because there are so many of them I cannot begin to rank them according to awfulness. The list is getting rather long. I have not seen any of these movies except "Ghoulies," but I cannot believe there are this many totally bad movies around. Please, can anyone out there say ANYTHING good about ANY of these movies? I need your help in shortening the list. NOTES: (1) I have personally viewed "Ghoulies," and I cannot find anything good to be said for it. So I must add it to the list unless someone can point out something good about the movie. (2) Nomination of "The Ninja Mission" opens up a real can of worms. Now I expect to get flooded with nominations of various oriental martial-arts films, since there are so many of them, and since so many of them are truly totally bad. (3) To avert the situation in (2) above, I am adding the capability to nominate templates of movie names, so as to include several movies that are of the same type and of the same invariable badness. The templates must match the following rules, which were adapted from UN*X: Asterisk substitutes exactly one word. Double asterisk substitutes any number of words, including zero. To start things off, and to provide examples of each rule, I will nominate three templates: "Friday the Thirteenth Part *" "** Ninja **" "** Bruce Li" (4) "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" was nominated by two colleagues, but I excluded the movie because I saw it and found some above-mediocre scenes in it. My favourite scene is where the scientists are discussing what to do about the attack, and one scientist implies that the tomato is a vegetable. A japanese scientist pipes up with: "Tomato is not a vegetable. Tomato is a fag." A fellow scientist whispers in his ear, "FRUIT! FRUIT!" "Ah.. tomato is a fruit." This one scene made the whole movie almost worth watching for me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Following is a summary of the mail I received in support of the new nominations. "I don't think any of these could be much worse than 'Insignificance', an attempted comedy dealing with a hypothetical (?) affair between Einstein and Marilyn Monroe. Of course, my opinion is based upon the first fifty minutes only, after which I left." - Atul C. Khanna (However, Laura Clifford writes that the Boston Globe gave the movie four stars. Perhaps there are totally bad critics, too?) "I would like to add `Night Patrol' and `Ghoulies' to the list... and I'll pay five dollars to the first person to convince me there is any, any redeeming value in either." - Mike Esco "Bad movie nominee: The Ninja Mission (-4 all the way)" -Hunter Zuker "I nominate 'Inchon'. If not the worst movie ever made, clearly the most expensive of the worst movies ever made. Bad acting, bad camera work, bad direction, mediocre editing, bad soundtrack. 40 million dollars. It was done more recently, than 'Plan Nine', and so modern technology forced it to be better, and it doesn't have so much of the low budget look, but of the modern feature length 'serious' movies, this is the worst I have seen." - Anton Winteroak "How about 'Hercules'? This is the all-time favorite of mine for bad-movie- nomination. I am ashamed to say that it was my selection for the evening, and to this day, my spouse will not let me forget it (it's been 2 years...)!" - Shu-Ju Burgess "How about _Deathstalker_? This is a really *bad* movie. Plot: Muscular hero tires of the 'willing wenches' [so say the ads] of everyday life, so he ventures out to get the three parts of something or other: The Sword, The Chalice (I think), and The Third Thing, which I can't remember (probably the new Kate Bush album). Anyway, he runs into the evil emperor, who's holding a contest for all the warriors in the land (supposedly to decide who will take over the throne, but actually just so all the warriors will kill each other and not threaten the emperor). Blah blah blah Barbie Benton blah blah blah (I mean *bad*). There's only one 'good' scene: A pig-faced warrior is beating on some other sucker with his fist. He hurts his fist on the other guy's face, so he looks around for something else to hit him with. Seeing no obvious weapons, he proceeds to rip the right arm off of an innocent bystander, and whacks on his opponent with the arm. OK, OK, so I'm streching the definition of 'good.' And during some of the fight scenes in the forest, you couldn't even make out who was doing what to whom because the lighting was (as Leonard Pinth Garnell would say) 'putrid.'" - Seth Lipkin "I think there are some movies that have been unfortunately overlooked in the quest for bad movies. Certainly 'The Trip' with Peter Fonda is one of the worst. 'I Spit On Your Grave', alas, is in the same class as 'Plan 9...'. Here's some nominations of mine: 1) Zelig - boring, boring, boring, and damn disappointing, too. 2) Grand Theft Auto - starring Ron Howard, directed by same. 'Nuff said. His first movie, for Roger Corman. 3) Protocol - starring Goldie Hawn. Gag. 4) Deal Of The Century - Never have so many who were so funny been so boring. 5) The Return Of Martin Guerre - starring Gerard Depardieu. Incredibly boring frog-flick about medieval hijinks. In a word, it's sssssslllllooooooowwwww. 6) Candy - directed by Roman Polanski. Interesting from a historical point of view, to illustrate the differences between late '60s soft-porn in Europe and America. Basically, European sex flicks gave you all the sex at the beginning, and made you sit through incredibly Dadaist boredom for the next payoff. Which never came (not to make a pun). American sex flicks made you sit through annoying girl-meets-boy-to-stupid-music-in-bar for an hour and then gave you the sex scene. Candy is a classic European sex flick of its time - set in a villa, this young girl comes in after a rainy night, having to fend off a truck driver. Sex scene consists of girl taking her clothes off very slowly and admiring herself in the mirror, then semi- playing with herself. Rest of movie she is chased around the villa by a bunch of half-wit pseudo-Fellini-esque characters who play bridge, ping- pong in their underwear, and wear dresses over their spaghetti-stained undershirts. Poor, poor dubbing. Worse acting. Makes chop-socky look well-produced. Movie has no ending - Candy just walks out of the villa. Probably the best existentialist statement Polanski could muster up." - Davis Tucker "I liked to nominate Winds of Change. It was an horrible animated flick that came and went in about 2 weeks in 1980 or 1981. The plot?? concerned a series of short stories allegedly about Greek mythology. The animatation was some of the worse I have every seen. (worse than Speed Racer) and stories were unbelievably boring. It is one of only two films I have every walked out on. My other nomination is for Dungeon Master, reviewed about 1 month ago, medicore special effects, attrocious plot, and incrediably wooden acting. Neither, of this movies were so bad that they were good, like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or any off the numerous Teenage Sexplotation flicks shown on Showtime." - Clif Purkiser "In the NY Daily News, on Oct. 3, there was a review of Madonna's new/old movie, A Certain Sacrifice. Allow me to excerpt (without permission) from Jay Maeder's review: 'Small wonder that rising starlet Madonna has been doing her best to deep-six 'ACS,' the much fanfared basement art film in which she co-starred back in her scuffling days. ' [He goes on to say that it has just been released on vid-tape for $59.95!] '...This is in fact, the worst single picture one is likely to see anywhere. This is a film of such monumental awfulness as to redefine existing standards. This is hard to believe.' [It] is billed as a 'macabre, provocative R&R musical in the underground post-punk tradition of such as Liquid Sky... Oh, cut the crap.' And he goes on to generalize the scenes into their niches. He says that the male lead raking leaves in the backyard is the sole illustration of the Middle Class Horror he whines about. 'The picture is a sophomoric exercise in unrelieved meaningless.' 'His story means nothing. His title means nothing. His characters stand for nothing. His setup is empty and his denouement is pointless. His film doesn't have a brain in its head. His film is junk.' '...wretched lighting, crummy sound, glaringly inept editing, and an extraordinarily irritating score [of] dreadful songs chiefly composed and performed by Pattnosh [the male lead].' And finally, 'It is said that Lewicki [the producer] used to be in the Industrial furnace Business. He should get back into it. God knows he's got something that deserves to be burned.' --- With that, I offer Madonna's A Certain Sacrifice (pun intended) for our list of Worst Movies ever. You can't possibly justify the fact that it has some redeeming value since she is in it. She has no redeeming value." - Evan Marcus
emery@gypsy.UUCP (10/09/85)
(I can't find a mailing address for cylixd...) For totally bad movies, how about "The Monsignior"? This doggie starred Chris Reeves and Genevine Bujold (sp?), the former as an American Priest on a power struggle in the Vatican, and the latter as his TEEN-AGED? girlfriend. According to my wife, Chris Reeves was pretending to be an actor, and Gen Bujold was pretending to be a female. When the latter took her shirt off, it reminded both of us of a monkey... We practically blew our popcorn... Dave Emery Siemens Research princeton!siemens!emery
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (10/09/85)
I fear that this "bad movie" stuff is liable to turn into a very high volume topic very quickly. Do we really want to do this in a newsgroup? If we start taking network-wide votes and nominations and all these sorts of things, we could be flooded in no time. This topic, though interesting, has certainly been covered in many books and might not be the greatest topic to start churning away here. After all, it's almost totally based on pure opinion, and if we start flaming about opinions and trying to keep lists we're going to generate an awful lot of volume at exactly the wrong time! --Lauren-- P.S. I'll add one note regarding the previous list, and then try to drop out of this discussion. The movie "Candy" listed in that message is NOT the one that was shown at the SLC Usenix conference. The one shown at the conference is a superb, cult work with a screenplay by Buck Henry and an almost all-star cast. See? There are millions of comments like this we could make about these films. If we all start making them, we'll flood the network. I'd like to recommend that we end this "bad movie" discussion, or at least limit it in some manner, before it gets way out of hand! --LW--
flory@zaphod.UUCP (Trevor Flory) (10/10/85)
In article <346@cylixd.UUCP> dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) writes: >The list of Totally Bad Movies, as of 10/7/85, stands at: > ...[Long list of dubious movies]... >*Zelig Although someone stated that _Zelig_ was disappointing and a trifle boring I propose that it be dropped from the "Totally Bad" list. I distinctly remember laughing (or was it groaning) when I watched _Zelig_. On the grounds that it was supposed to be a comedy this is at least testimonial evidence that it achieved some of its purpose. Besides, the 1920's look of the film was pretty well done --for a farce that is. In terms of spoofing the rash of movie biographies that have appeared in recent years I think _Zelig_ did a commendable job. Not a great --or even good-- movie, but certainly not "Totally Bad." -- Trevor K. Flory UUCP: ...!ihnp4{!alberta}!sask!zaphod!flory Develcon Electronics Ltd. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, CANADA "... the play is the tragedy, `Man', And its hero the Conqueror Worm." Poe, c.1838
zuker@cxsea.UUCP (Hunter Zuker) (10/10/85)
> The list of Totally Bad Movies, as of 10/7/85, stands at: > > *The Return of Martin Guerra This move got excellent reviews when it came to Seattle, so it can be removed on that basis alone. I saw it. It was slow, but it had some interesting points to make about life in a non-technological society (which itself was slow and boring). > (2) Nomination of "The Ninja Mission" opens up a real can of worms. Now > I expect to get flooded with nominations of various oriental martial-arts > films, since there are so many of them, and since so many of them are > truly totally bad. > I have seen some of the other martial movies (even the Ninja movies) and I don't think any of them were as bad as "The Ninja Mission". It was a Swedish movie (poorly dubbed as usual). It consisted of a number of people dressed in black clothes (these were Swedish ninja), who went around shooting people and occasionally throwing shurikens at people. At one point these ninja spent a half hour of movie time (the movie was only an hour and a half long) shooting bad guys who died on sight. There was no martial arts in this movie. It has nothing to with the martial arts genre except the ninja name. There is nothing that I can remember (and there isn't much to remember from this movie) that could be considered worthwhile seeing. Hunter Zuker Computer X, Inc. Kent, Wa {{uw-beaver!ssc-vax}|mnetor}!cxsea!muaddib!zuker
dianeh@ISM780.UUCP (10/11/85)
>The list of Totally Bad Movies, as of 10/7/85, stands at: > >... >*Candy >*Deal of the Century >... > Felicity >*Zelig >(Asterisk means new nomination.) >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >...Please, can anyone out there say ANYTHING good about >ANY of these movies? I need your help in shortening the list. > >Following is a summary of the mail I received in support of the >new nominations. > >1) Zelig - boring, boring, boring, and damn disappointing, too. Couldn't disagree more. This film was innovative -- the matching of old footage and incorporating Allen into it was extremely well done -- and the story was funny and poignant. >4) Deal Of The Century - Never have so many who were so funny been so boring. Wrong, wrong. This has actually become one of my favorite films. I didn't see it at the theater because of the way it was originally marketed -- (See Chevy Chase be a buffoon in the `Wonderful World of Arms Dealing'-- so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it on cable. I've since seen it 3 more times and like it more each time. Chevy Chase actually gets good direction and *acts* instead of just being a pratfall, one-liner comedian. Gregory Hines is great, and Sigourney Weaver has some good scenes. >6) Candy - directed by Roman Polanski. Interesting from a historical point of > view, to illustrate the differences between late '60s soft-porn in Europe > and America...Candy is a classic European sex flick of its time - set in > a villa, this young girl comes in after a rainy night, having to fend off > a truck driver. Sex scene consists of girl taking her clothes off very > slowly and admiring herself in the mirror, then semi- playing with > herself. Rest of movie she is chased around the villa by a bunch of half- > wit pseudo-Fellini-esque characters who play bridge, ping-pong in their > underwear, and wear dresses over their spaghetti-stained undershirts. > Poor, poor dubbing. Worse acting. Makes chop-socky look well-produced. > Movie has no ending - Candy just walks out of the villa. Probably the > best existentialist statement Polanski could muster up." > - Davis Tucker It's a good thing you gave a description of *this* particular 'Candy'. At first I thought you were talking about the ``classic'' with Richard Burton, John Astin, Marlon Brando (``You can't bring a frozen guru into California!''), et. al. -- definitely one of my all-time favorites. Never heard of *this* one, though, so you may be right -- as long as a clear distinction is made, please. I have to agree with 'Felicity' (at least the R-rated version shown recently on Showtime). It's hard to imagine that the X-rated version had any redeeming qualities, though, unless you consider X-rated scenes redeeming. Really, it's true about their using the same ``local color'' footage over and over and over again. Except I think the estimate of 5 times may be too small; personally, I think it accounted for at least half the running time of the film -- at least it sure *seemed* that way at the time! Diane Holt Interactive Systems Corp. ima!ism780
clif@intelca.UUCP (Clif Purkiser) (10/11/85)
> The list of Totally Bad Movies, as of 10/7/85, stands at: > > *A Certain Sacrifice > *Candy > *Deal of the Century > *Deathstalker > *Dungeon Master > Felicity > First Family > Glen or Glenda > *Ghoulies > *Grand Theft Auto > *Hercules > *I Spit on Your Grave > *Inchon > *Insignificance > *Night Patrol > *Protocol > Silent Night, Deadly Night > Sheena of the Jungle > Star Crush > *The Ninja Mission > *The Return of Martin Guerra > *The Trip > *Winds of Change > *Zelig > > (Asterisk means new nomination.) > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Truely, an excelllent list of horrible movies. I suggest that you start collecting votes. A good vote counts for 2 bad votes (the burden of proof should be on proving that the movie was total bad) at the end of a month or so summarize the results as to the worst movie. My Voles: Bad Sheena Winds of Change (I nominated it) Dungeon Master (ditto) Hercules Inchon Good (or not totally bad) Deal of the Century (medicore) Zelig (not my favorite Woody Allen, but it is stilly a Woody Allen) -- Clif Purkiser, Intel, Santa Clara, Ca. HIGH PERFORMANCE MICROPROCESSORS {pur-ee,hplabs,amd,scgvaxd,dual,idi,omsvax}!intelca!clif {standard disclaimer about how these views are mine and may not reflect the views of Intel, my boss , or USNET goes here. }
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/12/85)
> >"I don't think any of these could be much worse than 'Insignificance', >an attempted comedy dealing with a hypothetical (?) affair between >Einstein and Marilyn Monroe. Of course, my opinion is based upon the first >fifty minutes only, after which I left." I, and many other people, liked "Insignificance". There are many, many things to be said in its favor, if one knows much about films, even if one didn't like it. Like some other new nominations, this one seems to be an axe- grinder, rather than in the real spirit of truly indefensable films. >1) Zelig - boring, boring, boring, and damn disappointing, too. A minority opinion. Another case of a person with an axe to grind. Even if you didn't find any of the many jokes funny (which seems unlikely), the superb special effects rule it out. Some people don't seem to understand that what is being looked for is the totally indefensable, films with absolutely no redeeming features, not just films they feel are overrated or which they didn't enjoy. > >2) Grand Theft Auto - starring Ron Howard, directed by same. 'Nuff said. His > first movie, for Roger Corman. > Come, now, hardly a good film, but certainly far from the worst film ever made. The car crashes are pretty well done. >3) Protocol - starring Goldie Hawn. Gag. One or two good jokes, Goldie Hawn wasn't bad, some of the other performances were OK, the technical values were typical of Hollywood. In short, not a truly awful film. (Though not a very good one, either.) > >4) Deal Of The Century - Never have so many who were so funny been so boring. > It didn't work. Sure, it's a bad film, but it did have one or two moments. Again, don't confuse your disappointments with milestones of awfulness. >5) The Return Of Martin Guerre - starring Gerard Depardieu. Incredibly boring > frog-flick about medieval hijinks. In a word, it's sssssslllllooooooowwwww. > Another minority opinion. >6) Candy - directed by Roman Polanski. Wrong title. Called "What?" in the US, another title elsewhere (I forget what). I thought it was funny. The dubbing wasn't good, but the photography was, and several of the performances were amusing. -- Peter Reiher reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher
absary@watmath.UUCP (Al Sary) (10/13/85)
> > The list of Totally Bad Movies, as of 10/7/85, stands at: > > ... > > *Deal of the Century > > ... > > *Hercules > > ... > > Sheena of the Jungle > > ... > > > > (Asterisk means new nomination.) > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Truely, an excelllent list of horrible movies. I suggest that you start > collecting votes. A good vote counts for 2 bad votes (the burden of > proof should be on proving that the movie was total bad) at the end of a > month or so summarize the results as to the worst movie. > > My Voles: > Bad > Sheena > Winds of Change (I nominated it) > Dungeon Master (ditto) > Hercules > Inchon > > Good (or not totally bad) > Deal of the Century (medicore) > Zelig (not my favorite Woody Allen, but it is stilly a Woody Allen) I think Deal of the Century should be taken off the list. I have seen the movie a few times, and it has its moments; I don't think it's a bad movie, and definitely not a totally bad one. I thought the acting was reasonably good; this movie is not Chevy Chase's best movie, but I thought he was quite good in it. I think Hercules and Sheena are very boring and very poorly done movies. Depending on what you really mean by totally bad movies, these two probably are good candidates for the list. Hercules was so bad I couldn't sit through it. That metal creature Hercules has to fight with is just out of this world stupid and obvious fake. Sheena's zebra is similar. By the way, where she got those nice bikini I'll never know. I haven't seen Zelig but I just can't see a Woody Allen movie being totally bad; maybe a letdown, but totally bad?
dsr@uvacs.UUCP (Dana S. Richards) (10/13/85)
> > 1) Zelig - boring, boring, boring, and damn disappointing, too. > Disappointing perhaps but Woody Allen's little mistakes are better than most films billed as comedies. It would have been a perfect 30-minute film. The special effects/film treatments were wonderful. > 5) The Return Of Martin Guerre - starring Gerard Depardieu. Incredibly boring > frog-flick about medieval hijinks. In a word, it's sssssslllllooooooowwwww. > I usually use this as an example of a superb film at all levels (though I would not recommend it to people who have not been weaned from TV.)
place@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (10/14/85)
I cannot think of any of the titles offhand, but any movie starring and directed by Hugo Haas in the 50's is a candidate for all-time worst movie. I am just starting to work on a filmscript of my own, exploiting everything I possible can, called "Kiss The Blood Off My T*ts." The title says it all. It will be followed by a Grey Panther martial arts movie to be called, "Knitting Needles of Death."
rcook@uiucuxc.CSO.UIUC.EDU (10/16/85)
/* Written 9:27 am Oct 10, 1985 by flory@zaphod.UUCP in uiucuxc:net.movies */ In article <346@cylixd.UUCP> dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) writes: >The list of Totally Bad Movies, as of 10/7/85, stands at: > ...[Long list of dubious movies]... >*Zelig Although someone stated that _Zelig_ was disappointing and a trifle boring I propose that it be dropped from the "Totally Bad" list. I distinctly remember laughing (or was it groaning) when I watched _Zelig_. On the grounds that it was supposed to be a comedy this is at least testimonial evidence that it achieved some of its purpose. Besides, the 1920's look of the film was pretty well done --for a farce that is. In terms of spoofing the rash of movie biographies that have appeared in recent years I think _Zelig_ did a commendable job. Not a great --or even good-- movie, but certainly not "Totally Bad." -- Trevor K. Flory UUCP: ...!ihnp4{!alberta}!sask!zaphod!flory Develcon Electronics Ltd. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, CANADA "... the play is the tragedy, `Man', And its hero the Conqueror Worm." Poe, c.1838 /* End of text from uiucuxc:net.movies */ Make that another vote for "_Zelig_ OFF" Rob Cook UUCP: {ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!rcook 'Life is just a cocktail party on the street' -Mick Jagger-