The 10 Worst Films You've Seen

[Hatshepsut]

John Waters sits at the right hand of Bo. Do not say this again.

PINK FLAMINGOS IS ONE OF THE TWO NASTIEST FILMS I'VE EVER SEEN.

Just to clarify, CairoCarol, is your ire raised at someone calling PF nasty, or at the implication that there is another film that is equally nasty?

Because your statement and SpazCat's are not mutually exclusive.

Well, the truth is there is no ire at all, of course - that wording was just a joking reference to heavy-handed modding.

Now, to clarify my feeling about the movie Pink Flamingos - absolutely, it is totally disgusting. (For those who aren't familiar with it, it ends with Divine, a 300-lb transvestite, eating the feces just pooped out the back of a small dog. While this is the most revolting scene, it has some pretty strong competition.)

But it is a brilliant movie, nonetheless, and shouldn't make any list of "10 Worst." What makes it so extraordinary? The sheer audacity of its grossness, for one thing. (You think the stuff in that film is taboo now - try dealing with it in the early 1970s.) But what I find most remarkable about the John Waters films from that time (the Trash Trilogy) is his obvious affection for the losers and misfits he films. Who else would have taken the "egg lady" and turned her into a much-beloved cult figure? And this not by denying her freakishness, but celebrating it?

Seriously, I know it sounds corny, but I love John Waters because his movies embrace (or did, anyway - he's mainstream now) people who are completely bizarre and on the fringes of society (hell, way beyond the fringes) and gives them an emotional home - sure, it's a crazy and grotesque place, but it's also a place that offers friendship, camaraderie, acceptance, and a sense of purpose. I'm guessing that for a lot of the people appearing in the Trash Trilogy, making those films were the best days of otherwise pretty sad lives.

[Batman]

I forgot to post my other five:

Lady In The Water - Worse than The Happening since at least in that Shyamalan had the common courtesy to kill himself.

Star Trek: Insurrection - Just a two hour episode of the series, and a bad one at that. It was painful to see such a great series like TNG suffer a slow death in the big screen.

Die Another Day - Madonna, an invisible car, and a Korean turned into an Englishman.

Elektra - Boring. Besides Garner, I don't think anybody in it was actually a professional actor.

Ultraviolet - I looked forward to this one because it was by the same guy who made Equilibrium, but he somehow found a way to ruin his Futuristic Faux-Nazis With Swords genre.

[jali]

The Sphere
- - I hated this movie mostly because I loved the book so much and they just fucked it up.

Garygnu, I saw this on TV today. It was painful. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen.

"Did you go into the Sphere".
"No."
"Are you sure you didn't go into the Sphere?"
"No."
::long dramatic look::
"Did you go into the Sphere?"
"No."

[Tuckerfan]

Dungeons & Dragons
- - I didn’t watch every minute of this one, but just watching the little that I did I couldn’t believe somebody greenlit this movie.

The director was your stereotypical D&D douchenozzle. He was apparently living in his mom's basement, whiling away his time playing D&D, when he decided that they needed to make a D&D movie. So, despite having zero qualifications to make a movie, he went to Hollywood and proceeded to bug the everliving shit out of everyone for something like a decade, telling them that they needed to make this movie, and that he was the only person capable of bringing it to life on the silver screen. I suspect they gave him the money so that he'd shut up and leave them alone.

[SpazCat]

Well, the truth is there is no ire at all, of course - that wording was just a joking reference to heavy-handed modding.

Now, to clarify my feeling about the movie Pink Flamingos - absolutely, it is totally disgusting. (For those who aren't familiar with it, it ends with Divine, a 300-lb transvestite, eating the feces just pooped out the back of a small dog. While this is the most revolting scene, it has some pretty strong competition.)

But it is a brilliant movie, nonetheless, and shouldn't make any list of "10 Worst." What makes it so extraordinary? The sheer audacity of its grossness, for one thing. (You think the stuff in that film is taboo now - try dealing with it in the early 1970s.) But what I find most remarkable about the John Waters films from that time (the Trash Trilogy) is his obvious affection for the losers and misfits he films. Who else would have taken the "egg lady" and turned her into a much-beloved cult figure? And this not by denying her freakishness, but celebrating it?

Seriously, I know it sounds corny, but I love John Waters because his movies embrace (or did, anyway - he's mainstream now) people who are completely bizarre and on the fringes of society (hell, way beyond the fringes) and gives them an emotional home - sure, it's a crazy and grotesque place, but it's also a place that offers friendship, camaraderie, acceptance, and a sense of purpose. I'm guessing that for a lot of the people appearing in the Trash Trilogy, making those films were the best days of otherwise pretty sad lives.

I respect that, but I grew up around trashy people like the ones in PF and Gummo and I don't really care to revisit them in film. Hell, I can't even watch Napoleon Dynamite because it's only a slightly funny version of Gummo.

Garygnu, Aristocats is the only Disney cartoon that bored my Nephew N to tears when he was three. That's a sign of absolute celluloid dreck.

[Harlequin]

Captain America
- - I was about eleven when this one came out, just the right age for a superhero movie. I recognized it as shit even then.

I didn't know this existed until it came on TV one very late night a few months ago. As it progressed I understood why I hadn't heard of it.

[Rube E. Tewesday]

"Author, Author" -- did anybody else besides me and my girlfriend of the time see this back in the eighties? Al Pacino as a playwright, a bunch of kids, and ...and what? God, what a was of celluloid.

From around the same time "Butterfly" - the movie that made Pia Zadora famous -- as a joke. Incoherent story telling, with creepy incesty stuff.

"Riddler's Moon" -- OK, I know nobody but my wife and I saw this, on Canadian cable. Kate Mulgrew, aliens I think, and no story, no action, NOTHING! brrr.....