[ad_1]
It’s hard well-nigh impossible to argue their value is anything like that of good movies, but there is value in watching bad movies. Sometimes they’re so-bad-they’re-good, and fun. Sometimes their productions are tales of hubris. Sometimes it’s great for an aspiring filmmaker to have a good idea of what not to do.
According IMDb’s infamous Bottom 100, these are the 10 absolute worst movies in the history of the planet. Take whatever you can from these historically, unanimously panned dumpster fires.
10. ‘Battlefield Earth’ (2000)
Battlefield Earth is a notorious flop that doesn’t really have any visible defenders today. This a deeply awful film on every level, though it’s surely so-bad-it’s-good, at least at times. Based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard‘s book of the same name about a human uprising against seemingly superior aliens in the year 3000, everything in the execution here is awkward, sometimes shriekingly hilarious.
Battlefield Earth swept the 2000 Razzies with seven wins including Worst Picture. It was later awarded Razzies’ “Worst Drama of Our First 25 Years” and “Worst Picture of the Decade,” setting a new record for Razzies won for a single film.
9. ‘Epic Movie’ (2007)
A craze of spoof movies launched in the very early aughts with Keenan Ivory Wayans‘ original slasher parody Scary Movie, a lowbrow but undeniably hilarious farce that was, for a time, the highest-grossing movie from a Black director. More “spoof” films, if you can even call them that, got lazier and lazier, bottoming out with a run of films from Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg that include Date Movie, Meet the Spartans and this artistically bankrupt mashup of scenes from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter and other popular IPs of the time.
Epic Movie is so shapeless, so aggressively unfunny, so unpleasant, it makes something like, say, Scary Movie 2, look like Airplane!. There is exactly one element that isn’t atrocious, and that’s Jennifer Coolidge as villain “The White B*tch.” The movie gives her less than nothing to work with, but this is an actor who can’t not be funny.
8. ‘Saving Christmas’ (2014)
Growing Pains star and Golden Globe nominee Kirk Cameron‘s yuletide clunker has a surprisingly convoluted plot about a Christmas party, quarreling in-laws, and purging Christmas of materialism. Cameron has gone on record theorizing that the film’s unanimously poor critical and fan reception was the result of a conspiracy.
It isn’t fair to outright knock faith-based movies. 2021’s American Underdog was a touching, well-acted hybrid of faith and sports film, and that’s just one example. But Saving Christmas, like many faith-based movies of modern times, is cinematically anemic. The irony here, or at least some of the irony, is that a movie ostensibly about restoring Christmas spirit comes off as chilly and cynical. Depressing, even.
7. ‘Son of the Mask’ (2005)
Let it be known throughout the land: Never ever make a Jim Carrey movie without Jim Carrey. Over a decade afterThe Mask was a mammoth hit with critics and audiences (it was Oscar-nominated and grossed over $350 million), this cash-grab stunned critics in all the wrong ways, and didn’t even cross the $60 million mark globally.
Jamie Kennedy was charming as hell as fan-favorite Randy in Scream, but it’s unfair to expect any performer to match Carrey, in any context—much less in a sequel to one of his breakthrough hits. The star is done no favors by the script that reduces his character to a bumbling moron (Carrey’s Stanley was a well-meaning, lovable loser). Son ofthe Mask has terrible, lazy makeup effects. It’s a VFX eyesore, and despite a PG rating it makes one feel unclean. There’s Mask sperm in this movie. Shudder.
6. ‘House of the Dead’ (2003)
Video game movies deserve their reputation for being cursed. For every Sonic the Hedgehog or Detective Pikachu (and there are, count them, two of those, and one Sonic sequel), there are seemingly innumerable game adaptations that offer nothing but numbing, lame action and ineffective fan service.
Arguably the very worst of the bunch, though it’s got some competition from Alone in the Dark, also directed by Uwe Boll, is House of the Dead, a movie that’s somehow more repetitive than the arcade rail shooter it’s based on. House might ultimately have the edge as the worst of the genre for an infamous, excruciating creative decision to simply lay moments from the game over scenes from the film.
5. ‘The Hottie and the Nottie’ (2008)
In 2005, Paris Hilton appeared in Black Adam director Jaume Collet-Sera‘s House of Wax. Due in large part to Hilton’s public image and notoriety at the time, that film, an uncommonly good slasher, received negative buzz it didn’t deserve. The Hottie and the Nottie marks a big-screen return for Hilton (now in a starring role), and this one is, truly, a remarkable stinker.
With a title that obtusely presents truth in advertising, The Hottie and the Nottie is about an attractive twentysomething who refuses to go on a date until her less-hottie best friend finds a suitor. It’s kind of like a modern-day fairy tale, gone to hell. The Hottie and the Nottie is as morally deficient as it is narratively inept.
4. ‘Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2’ (2004)
Oof. The worst movie of one of the best years for cinema ever, 1999’s Baby Geniuses was a critically panned exercise in misery. The 2004 sequel (it’s probably worth mentioning 2004 was also an uncommonly strong year for great film overall) is considerably worse.
More Uncanny Valley effects that will haunt your nightmares, halfheartedly crude gags and phoned-in adult performances are just a few of the noteworthy offenders in this groaner about enhanced toddlers trying to thwart a media mogul (Jon Voight)’s nefarious scheme to alter minds.
3. ‘Birdemic: Shock and Terror’ (2010)
It’s like The Birds, without Alfred Hitchcock… and it’s terrible. Special effects that evoke a screensaver from a quarter-century ago, an unconvincing romance, and an environmental message are all ingredients in a would-be thriller that’s been appreciated as a fun disasterpiece since its release.
It’s a bad-movie-night essential, risen to infamy in the same era as The Room. It’s not as unintentionally pleasurable as that, but this definitely is squarely in so-bad-it’s-good territory. A sequel was released in 2013; a threequel is reported to be in development.
2. ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ (1966)
A classic of claptrap that’s held up, or “held up,” for all the wrong reasons for nearly six full decades, Manos: The Hands of Fate is a low-fi eyesore (and earsore) about a family that runs into a sacrificial cult after taking a wrong turn in Texas.
Manos: The Hands of Fateis hard to endure on its own, despite running just over one hour. With the right group of friends who love bad movies, it’s a glacially-paced party. It’s also, famously, the butt of the joke on one of the all-time best episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
1. ‘Disaster Movie’ (2008)
A movie placing atop this list could appear to suggest it’s so-bad-it’s-good. In the case of Disaster Movie, that simply isn’t so. Another Friedberg and Seltzer mashup of dated references, without a single actual joke—ya know, set up and payoff, like jokes have always been—in sight. Here are 90 minutes of cultural hooliganism strung together with a plot about twentysomethings encountering disasters of nature and man-made origin. This is an uncomfortable, even grueling watch.
Whether Disaster Movie is truly the worst movie ever made is, maybe, debatable. But damned if it isn’t at least worthy of consideration of that mantle of ill repute. This is where creativity goes to die.
[ad_2]
Source link