Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cylixd.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!bellcore!petrus!scherzo!allegra!ulysses!burl!clyde!bonnie!akgua!akgub!cylixd!dave From: dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: Still More on Totally Bad Movies Message-ID: <346@cylixd.UUCP> Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 17:55:59 EDT Article-I.D.: cylixd.346 Posted: Mon Oct 7 17:55:59 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 10-Oct-85 06:27:50 EDT Reply-To: dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) Organization: RCA Cylix Communications , Memphis, TN Lines: 227 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