Bad movies

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guido tkp

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Oct 1, 2009
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outside the dome
the only movie i ever payed to get into...and left was some THING called 'Spaced Invaders'...based, i believe, on the old video game....my kids, big video game fiends, wanted to leave just as badly...we made it through about 15-20 minutes before everyone wanted out so bad, we could taste it !!

too many other movies, on video, i've just turned off...but that one cost me $50...

i remember that sort of thing with a deep pain...
 

opundo

Active Member
Sep 25, 2011
38
87
Derry, Maine
I know enjoyment of movies is entirely subjective - there are movies the critics have loved which I have found awful: conversely, I have thoroughly enjoyed some movies which are acknowledged to be stinkers.

But there are undoubtedly movies out there where something went massively wrong between conception and execution, or where conception was fundamentally flawed to start off with. Here are two, with reasons:

Silent Bloodnight
This is a slasher movie. The main character is a busty girl with an enormous forehead, frequently in a bikini (the girl, not her forehead), reporting for the local TV station. Her father is the local police chief. Did I mention that this is a Austrian slasher movie, in lovely Austrian scenery? Did I also mention that the dialogue is in English, spoken by the cast in Schwarzenegger accents, possibly learnt phoetically (it is difficult to tell, since none of them can actually act)? This one is so bizarre that I recommend it.

Aquanoids
Seaside deaths due to a Black Lagoon-type creature. Yep, just the one, putting the lie to the plural in the title. This one must have had a budget of all of fifty bucks, though it is difficult to see where it went on screen. Bad acting, rip-off script, non-existent production values etc., all qualities I expected, are joined by technical ineptitude on a scale rarely seen. This one is so bad that I do NOT recommend it - it cost me 50p in a remainder bin, and I was robbed.
I was surprised that "She" had such high ratings. The story was too farfetched for me.
 
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Grandpa

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Mar 2, 2014
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Colorado
I guess I have to mention the arguably worst movie of all time, Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space. It couldn't be funnier if it was meant to be bad. It is wondrous in its ineptitude and the mystery of why anyone associated with it - actors, crew, financers, even Wood himself - could begin to think that there was a moment in the movie that made sense or had any redeeming artistic quality.

Yeah, I've watched it a few times. Just the off-screen death of Bela Lugosi, the sheriff scratching his head with the business end of his revolver, the shower curtain on the spaceship door, the complete ignorance of whether it was day or night from one scene to the next, the woman sitting out on her patio for an evening that apparently stretched for a week or two, the incomprehensible plot... I mean, beginning to end, a glorious orgy of incompetence.
 

fljoe0

Cantre Member
Apr 5, 2008
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120 miles S of the Pancake/Waffle line
I'm not sure what Charles Bronson was thinking, but he made a string of awful movies in the 80s. Some of them are so bad, they are fun to watch. They have logic holes you could drive a truck through and production issues that you can't believe someone didn't correct before the movie was released.

One that I saw recently was Death Wish 3. You can catch this on netflix streaming. The story is ridiculous and villains are waaay over the top. The plot of the story is that the police have given up on stopping crime and just decide to give the Bronson character a free hand to kill as many bad guys as he sees fit. There is one scene where he guns a guy down in cold blood and the neighbors all start cheering. Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds and it's a great way to kill 90 minutes.
 

Grandpa

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Mar 2, 2014
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Back in the '70s, there was a movie that really caught on at the time, Billy Jack, and I'll confess that I liked it a lot. Now it's hopelessly dated and, frankly, rather embarrassing, sort of like the powdered-blue patterned tux I wore at our wedding, along with the blue ruffled shirt (unfortunately, a true story).

But little known at the time, there had been a first "Billy Jack" movie called The Born Losers where the Billy Jack character was introduced. No one had heard of it (the movied) at the time because it was dreadful and presumably never made it past the producers and their families. I remember one good sequence that was about 30 seconds of an interesting nugget in a mountain of dreck.
 

SutterKane

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Jun 7, 2014
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Jack Frost, the movie where Ron Howard's brother plays a killer snowman. I caught this on hulu one night at about 4 in the morning when I spent the night on a friends couch and couldn't fall asleep. It couldn't even manage to cross over into the "So Bad it's funny" lane that I expected it to. It was just plane awful.

Later, they made a sequel where the snowman goes to hawaii.

SMH
 

Neil W

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May 27, 2008
1,203
2,592
Isle of Wight UK
Dawn Of Sex (2007)

Ishbo is an unsuccessful caveman. He yearns for the gorgeous Fardart, but his successful brother Thudnik steps in and grabs her for himself. But Ishbo hasn't given up on Fardart.

An eclectic cast includes Ali Larter as Fardart, David Carradine as the tribe chief and Ishbo's father, and Talia Shire as his mother, with Gary Busey as a rival tribe leader, with Carol Alt, Tom Arnold and Lin Shaye in assorted other roles. Wow, what an eclectic cast! Ishbo is played by Adam Rifkin, who also wrote and directed.

There is a problem here, in that Rifkin has written, directed and starred in a comedy which, unfortunately, is not even slightly funny in any respect whatsoever. Rifkin plays Ishbo as Woody Allen without the trademark tics, but that doesn't make his performance funny despite his hilarious (by which I mean "not hilarious") wearing of spectacles. To be fair, the script doesn't give him much of a chance since none of the gags are actually funny. Given who wrote the screenplay, there is only one person to blame: Adam Rifkin.

Poundland had this on its shelves, priced at, yes, one pound. That is precisely two pounds more than it is worth. I award it 3 out of 10 - one for boobage, one for Ali Larter looking good in cavewoman gear, and one for creating some on-screen production values out of what is clearly a minimal budget.
 

Neil W

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May 27, 2008
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Lightspeed (2006 TV movie)

This is (nominally) a superhero movie.

The good news is that the Python (villain) makeup is quite good. Shame that they used up the entire budget on it.

The bad news:
1. The leading man (Jason Connery) projects middle age;
2. Lee Majors projects old age;
3. SFX - rubbish;
4. Hero's super costume - truly rubbish;
5. Plot - risible;
6. Dialogue - execrable;
7. Heroine - having been extracted from trouble immediately puts herself right back in it;
8. Acting - at best no better than average. At worst (Python guy) - absolutely awful. And I COULD do better, and I'm no actor;
9. Python's death scene - huh? What happened?

I suppose Nicole Eggert is moderately decorative.

Stan Lee (this is also known as "Stan Lee's Lightspeed" for reasons which aren't entirely clear) is going to wear out his not inconsiderable goodwill in the comics community if he continue to put his name to drivel like this.
 

Neil W

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May 27, 2008
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Cavegirl (1985)

Victimised High School nerd and loser Rex goes back in time and falls in with a group of cavemen and a pretty cavegirl.

Let's admit at the start that Cynthia Thompson is a pretty girl - she has a very genuine looking smile, a nice figure, and you get to see her boobs.

That's about it, folks.

Rex, who is supposed to be a sympathetic character is never, at any point in the proceedings even slightly sympathetic - his character is badly written, directed even worse, and appallingly acted (plus he is clearly at least a decade beyond high school age).

The film is loaded with humorous routines which aren't. Let's smash the torch to bits, that'll be pretty funny (no, it isn't). Let's have a hilarious condom-inflating gag (no, it isn't). Let's have a hysterically unfunny edible shaving cream routine, and then stretch it out for what seemed like half my life, getting less and less funny with each passing hour-long second than it wasn't to start off with.
The cavepeople are all ugly neanderthals other than fashion model Thompson. Yes, that makes sense (no, it doesn't).

Take my word for it, if this comes on TV then find something else to do - doing ANYTHING with your time is a better use of it than using it to watch Cavegirl.
 
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Neil W

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May 27, 2008
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Tyrannosaurus Azteca (2007)

So Cortes and a small band of Spaniards plan to steal stuff from a tribe of half a dozen Hawaiian Aztecs who have a bad CGI T Rex and a megalomaniac shaman on hand to generate some random slaughter. There are some love triangle shenanigans going on involving the psycho shaman, one of the Spaniards, and a very freckly Hawaiian Aztec princess (played by a half Australian, half Tibetan actress), the latter two of whom indulge in a swift knee-trembler at the most inopportune moment.

That deals with the plot.

I do not understand how a tribe so small (half the members of which have been killed by the end of the film) manages to survive.

The Hawaiian scenery is lush and gorgeous.

The CGI would have been better if even a slight attempt had been made to integrate the T Rex with the background. The blood round the T Rex's mouth alternates between red and greeny-brown.

The cast are all thoroughly committed, although the shaman chews the scenery somewhat - he might as well have a sign reading "VILLAIN" hanging round his neck.

The slaughter - of which there is plenty - is hilariously over the top.

In short, this film is everything you might expect a movie called Tyrannosaurus Azteca (aka Aztec Rex) to be ie. not very good.
 
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Neil W

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May 27, 2008
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The Naughty Stewardesses (1975)

Connie Hoffman is very pretty and is attractively topless at times.

That's it, folks. That is the sole reason for even considering whether to watch this film or not.

These 70s sexploitation period pieces are sometimes entertaining by virtue of their very datedness (flared trousers, big hair, Zapata moustaches etc.). This one isn't.

The script is bad, the acting is bad, the direction is bad, and the idea of having a senior citizen as the romantic leading man (aged 70 at the time the movie was made) is exceptionally bad.

The title, hinting at a sex comedy, is grossly misleading.

I heartily recommend avoiding this one like the plague.
 
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Grandpa

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Dawn Of Sex (2007)

Oh, man. That reminded me. Grandma, I, and a friend of ours were at the drive-in watching a double feature. This would've been around '76, '77. We were there for the main movie, and after it ran, the second one came on: "Flesh Gordon."

We didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified. It was goofy, it was funny in spots, it was really stupid most places, but you could tell the cast and crew had their hearts and other parts into it. There was the dashing blonde guy as the titular character, his right-hand woman who managed to stay undressed for most of the movie, and a nerdy scientist. The villain was Emperor Wang, and he was trying to curse the earth by using the evil Sex-Ray on it. His subjects addressed him as "Your Holiness," except they put three letters in front of the second word. The rocket ship that was used by our hero rather looked like something you'd pick up in the adult store. We left before the movie hit its climax, mostly I think because Grandma and our friend were embarrassed for each other.
 
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Neil W

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I remember seeing Flesh Gordon around the time it first came out. My fondest memory is of them duplicating a scene from the 1933 King Kong (which was cut from release prints, but you see stills of it) where Kong curiously pulls Ann Darrow's clothes off. In Flesh Gordon, the animated monster (not an ape, but a giant, er, manhood) is pulling Dale Ardent's clothes off in an exact duplicate of the scene. Only, unlike Kong, it speaks: "I just want to look at your t*ts."
 

Neil W

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Looking back through these, I note that there appears to be a bit of a boob theme going on. Well, yes, and I feel no need to apologise for it, but by way of explanation, the two movie genres which tend to result in really bad movies are a) horror and b) sexploitation. And I cruise around the late night channels which specialise in such stuff. Although, admittedly, Dawn Of Sex was a DVD from Poundland.
 
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blunthead

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Aug 2, 2006
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The Creeping Terror is considered by experts to be one of the worst movies of all time. It gets my vote for that despite my having seen Plan 9 From Outer Space. The following is the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode with it...

 
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