The absolute worst film you've ever seen

[Greg Cox]

I saw THE BLACK HOLE once, on Christmas Day, 1979. I remember getting a dirty look from some kid's mom when I laughed out loud during the cowboy robot's "tragic" death scene. Wasn't trying to be an asshole; it was just so goofy I couldn't help myself. (I was a college sophomore at the time, so maybe not the right age for the movie.)

The scary red robot was cool, though.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Probably the only movie where we actually get to see the bad guy end up in hell. I mean, how does a movie with an ending like that, get made by fucking DISNEY?

I think it's from a time period where Disney tried to prove that it didn't have to be kid-friendly all the time. They wanted to try being darker.

 

[Greg Cox]

I think it's from a time period where Disney tried to prove that it didn't have to be kid-friendly all the time. They wanted to try being darker.

The fact that it was PG-rated was semi-scandalous at the time, with people writing angry Letters to the Editor because a PG-rated Disney flick clearly meant that the world was going to hell in hand basket. Possibly why Disney invented the Touchstone label for later movies like SPLASH.

As for THE BLACK HOLE, I remember thinking that it suffered in comparison to Disney's 20,000 LEAGUES BENEATH THE SEA, which I dearly loved. (The classic James Mason version, of course.)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, The Black Hole is, for the most part, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea... in Space!

 

[Greg Cox]

Yeah, The Black Hole is, for the most part, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea... in Space!

That was certainly what I was hoping for back in 1979!

 

[Valenti]

Well Ishtar is the only movie you can rent in hell, as we all know.

Walked out on Prometheus. I want my $8 back.

 

[Owain Taggart]

The fact that it was PG-rated being semi-scandalous at the time, with people writing angry Letters to the Editor because a PG-rated Disney flick clearly meant that the world was going to hell in hand basket.

And likely spurred on by the success of 2001, with them wanting their own space epic. They must have been interesting times.

 

[Greg Cox]

And likely spurred on by the success of 2001, with them wanting their own space epic. They must have been interesting times.

Not 2001, which was more than a decade earlier. THE BLACK HOLE was a shameless attempt to jump on the STAR WARS bandwagon. Complete with cute comedy-relief robots.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'd totally forgotten about the robots! Yeah, surely a parallel to R2, though I'll say their version was less useful.

 

[Valenti]

If you can't beat it (Star Wars), buy it.

 

[Greg Cox]

The smash success of STAR WARS inspired a whole wave of space operas, some better than others: BATTLESTAR GALATICA, a new BUCK ROGERS (both of which got theatrical releases), a new FLASH GORDON, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, STARCRASH, THE BLACK HOLE, etc. Probably helped get EXCALIBUR green-lighted as well.

It also propelled STAR TREK to the big screen at last. And let's not forget MOONRAKER.

"Uh-oh. Folks want space flicks these days. Better put 007 in space--and give him a ray-gun!"

 

[Valenti]

Pretty soon we're all going to be owned by Disney - the Las Vegas for franchises - the end of a long road of bitterly fought wars and slight successes and a career dedicated to artistic pursuits.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Hold my beer?

I went to the cinema to see Mortal Kombat Annihilation. I was one of two people in the screening. The first Mortal Kombat was cheesy bad, but Annihilation was just bad...

There's a Hammer Horror called Hands of the Ripper which serves as a cure for insomnia.

A Kiss Before Dying, a Robert Wagner soap opera.

Hellborn, a Bruce Payne horror movie with Tracy Scoggins with a bad accent.

White Rush, a low rent drug thriller starring Judd Nelson as a good guy drug dealer, with Frankie Santana from the A-Team as a villain, and Tuvix as a police chief.

Martin, a modern twist on the vampire legend. Horror movies do tend to put me to sleep.

Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Mortal Kombat territory again. King Solomon's Mines with Richard Chamberlain was so bad it was good. The sequel just stank.

The Boost, an eighties 'drugs are bad, mmmkay' social commentary with James Woods and Sean Young.

KIchiku Dai Enkai: Banquet of the Beasts, a painfully bad Japanese student horror film that escaped its low budget origins and got a wider distribution, about the student protest movement.

Arctic Blast, Day After Tomorrow on a shoestring budget starring Daniel Jackson from SG1

Soul Plane, any Cheech & Chong movie, Morons from Outer Space, The Soul Guardians, Attack of the Joyful Goddess, NUmber One Longing, Number Two Regret, Grand Theft Auto starring Ron Howard, Red Sonja, Shutter, Casshern Live Action, Geisha Assassin, 12, Force of Five, Storm Warriors, Spider-Man 3, By The Will of Ghengis Khan, Yu-Gi-Oh 3D Bonds Beyond Time...

 

[Greg Cox]

Hold my beer?

I went to the cinema to see Mortal Kombat Annihilation. I was one of two people in the screening. The first Mortal Kombat was cheesy bad, but Annihilation was just bad...

There's a Hammer Horror called Hands of the Ripper which serves as a cure for insomnia.

I saw Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, mostly because I edited the adult novelization and the kid's adaptation. Yes, the first movie was much better.

As for HAND OF THE RIPPER, it's a thrill-a-minute compared to another Hammer film, THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL. One of the few Hammer films I could't finish. (Hammer's other Jekyll film, DOCTOR JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE, is much more entertaining, although hard to find on DVD these days.)

 

[Kilana2]

It's easy to slam The Black Hole for its bad science, but IIRC nobody really knew how black holes worked at the time. They had only just been discovered when that movie was made. Most of what we now know about them wouldn't be found out until much later.

The thing in the movie isn't a black hole, it's a wormhole. Back then, they thought those were both the same. In fact if you change the name of the movie to something like Wormhole, the science doesn't really seem so bad, does it? (as far as I know, an actual wormhole hasn't ever been discovered, so we can think whatever we want about them)

As for the movie itself, I loved it. Great music. Awesome visuals. A character played by "Maximilian Schell" ending up trapped...in Maximilian's shell. (Don't even TRY to tell me that was a coincidence.) And the thing with the humanoids being the lobotomized Cygnus crewmembers, creeped me way the hell out when I was a kid.

Probably the only movie where we actually get to see the bad guy end up in hell. I mean, how does a movie with an ending like that, get made by fucking DISNEY?

Actually the only real problem I have with the plot is, how easily Dr. Reinhardt overpowered the other members of the crew in the first place. There had to have been dozens of them, and only one of him. That bugs me worse than the "science". I mean, sure, there was Maximilian and the other police robots, but surely the crew could have defended themselves?

I loved Bob and Vincent. I didn't like the character who was played by Anthony Perkins. He was much better in Psycho.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

(Hammer's other Jekyll film, DOCTOR JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE, is much more entertaining, although hard to find on DVD these days.)

It's easier to find on Blu-ray! I don't know if it plays in Region A land though.

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Dr-Jekyll-and-Sister-Hyde-Blu-ray/185058/

 

[Greg Cox]

It's easier to find on Blu-ray! I don't know if it plays in Region A land though.

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Dr-Jekyll-and-Sister-Hyde-Blu-ray/185058/

According to Amazon, we're talking "NON-USA FORMAT." So let's amend that to "hard to find in the USA."

(I managed to track down an old, out-of-print DVD via a library in Pittsburgh.)

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ok, not the absolute worst I've seen, but I just finished watching The Florida Project. In the end, I felt wondering, "What the heck did I just watch?"

From previews and trailers, and the talk surrounding the movie, I'd have believed this to be a sweet movie, but turned out to be quite the opposite. First, the sound is quite bad and very uneven. You sometimes hear the environmental sounds more than the actual dialogue. Second, the story. What story? It just feels like we're following bratty kids around doing random things while the mother gets into trouble day in day out. The best thing about this movie is Willem Dafoe, but even he doesn't have very much to work with. He's the only character that is likeable. As a viewer, I kept hoping for their situation to let up, and at the very least give us something inspiring to work with, but it just keeps getting worse. The ending is another of those that just ends abruptly. In the end, it felt like an empty movie. I'm not sure how this movie got so much attention, but it's certainly on my list of the worst of the year.

 

[Australis]

Actually, having just wrote Hugo Weaving, I can think of a movie that he was in that was worse. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. I tried to stick with it for my friends sake, but somewhere amongst the annoying parents appearing in random locations and the jokes about robots scrotums, I lost interest (and the will to live). I got to the point I was so bored, I started de-lacing and re-lacing my shoes, just so I had something to do.

If you haven't seen it, go to YT and search out Lindsay Ellis. She has a 4(?) part series about Transformers which is funny and informative. Check it out.

 

[Forbin]

The rumor at the time of the Heaven's Gate fiasco was that it went overbudget from prodigious amounts of cocaine purchased.