The All-Time Worst Movie Marathon A comedy article
by Dan Seitz 919 12 10/04/2011 12:26 AM 2322 views
Having already bled my way through the Parody Movie Movie Marathon, not to mention the Horrible Holiday Movie Marathon, I thought my days of bad movie marathons were behind me. But, just when I thought I was out, ZUG pulls me back in.
This time around, the five bullets I'm taking are the five worst films ever made, according to dear old Metacritic: Strippers, Tied to a Chair, The Singing Forest, Chaos and, of all things, Bio-Dome.
As I settled in for an entire day of cinematic torture, I thought to myself, are they really that bad?
Yes. Actually, some of them are a lot worse. Welcome to the bottom five movies of all time; a maelstrom of false advertising, bad acting, terrible directing and, for some reason, some guy named Jorge Ameer. Here's what I endured.
Strippers Metacritic rating: 5
I started it off with Strippers. A movie called Strippers. Hmm ... low-rated ... suggestive title ... and it's on YouTube! This will at least have some redeeming social value, by which, of course, I mean boobs.
Not so much.
Yes, that's Part 1. You can watch the whole thing. I'm assuming you'll only do so if you hate yourself.
Basically, Strippers is about some loser, who seems utterly incapable of having an emotion unless that emotion is "mugging," fantasizing about what would happen when various aspects of society come to take away all his stuff. They strip him of his material and emotional goods. They're strippers! Get it?
Director Jorge Ameer is truly an inspiration: if this talentless hack can get a feature made, anyone can. But what really stands out about this movie is Ameer's terrible taste in music. Seriously. Jorge Ameer has never met a badly composed club number he didn't immediately fall in love with, and put on the soundtrack of his movie. Having not met him, I don't want to judge, but I'm assuming he fulfills at least one aspect of the homosexual stereotype.
The movie even has a Facebook page, which currently has a whopping total of 8 likes. How can this get worse?
Tied To A Chair Metacritic Rating: 3
OK, so we've got a low rating and a title like Tied to a Chair. This one HAS to have some redeeming social value, by which I mean boobs. Tied to a chair.
And, yet again, we are misled.
I've been a film fan since birth. And in that time, I've seen some genuinely rotten movies. Like, horrible. Sub-MST3K awful. I've volunteered to go see Birdemic and done it with a grin. I own a copy of Plan 9 From Outer Space. There's not much that can flabbergast me.
This managed to pull it off.
It's about a woman who gave up her acting career to be a housewife, then dumps her husband and runs off to Cannes to revive her dreams. That's ... that's the best summary I can come up with. There are also terrorists. And a lot of asking yourself why you're watching this.
Looking at Michael Bergmann, who directed this turkey, his great talent seems to be convincing actors who really should know better to be in his crappy movies. Mario Van Peebles is his latest victim, but it looks like he's managed to trick Calista Flockhart, Olympia Dukakis, and Bridget Moynahan in front of his cameras as well. Let's hope this talent leaves him. Or at least somebody explains "humor" to him.
Man, how could this get any worse? Oh, wait, we could bring back Jorge Ameer! Here he is! And he brought some Nazis with him!
The Singing Forest Metacritic Rating: 1
Here's a better title: "Lots and lots of dudes porking. Then NAZIS!"
Look, I'm not faulting the gay community for this one. Just like us straight guys have Shannon Tweed, they have every right to terrible softcore of their very own.
I could have just really done without the Holocaust stuff, thanks.
Oh, yeah, Ameer goes there. The Singing Forest is arguably his masterpiece, in that he unintentionally crams in every godawful indie movie drama cliche into one movie. Multiple POVs? Check. Nazis? Check. Multiple eras? Check. Reincarnation? Check.
Competence? Umm, no, can't find any competence anywhere around here. They must have left that on the truck.
At birth.
I hate calling this movie "incomprehensible," because it does at least have a comprehensible plot. It's just a stupid one, and actually pretty offensive in that you'd think Ameer would at least try to approach the topic of the Nazi repression of homosexuals with some sensitivity. Being a gay man, you'd think he'd care about gays being treated badly.
Good luck figuring it out from this. Or maybe I'm not being fair. Maybe he was trying to figure out what televangelists see in their wet dreams.
Bio-Dome Metacritic Rating: 1
Bio-Dome is a lot of things. Hamfisted. Idiotic. Unfunny. A complete waste of William Atherton and Kylie Minogue. One thing it isn't, though, is deserving of being on this list.
Look, I'm not going to lie, there's exactly one funny joke in this movie and it's one only film nerds will get. Kylie Minogue's character is named "Petra Von Kant." The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a German art movie about lesbians. No, not the hot kind. The get-your-period-on-camera kind. No, seriously. That happens. I got graded on being able to watch that.
That said, it is at least competent. Nobody here comes off like they chugged three bottles of rubbing alcohol on set. It really doesn't deserve to be ranked with the absolute, and deserving, bottom of this list...
Chaos Metacritic Rating: 1
You spend enough time around film nerds, it's gonna happen. You're going to meet the guy who is just a little too into "70's rapesploitation" or "hardcore grindhouse" or "video nasties." He's the guy who talks at length about the subtext of rape scenes. He's usually a fat guy in a metal T-shirt, probably with a beard. Every now and then, one of them makes a movie and proves that women refusing to touch him, ever, was, in fact, an awesome decision on the part of femalekind.
Here's the thing about "Chaos": it wants to be offensive, and if you can take it seriously, it probably would be. But you can't take this movie seriously, because Don Knotts in a grease factory looks like a ballet of class and grace next to this turkey.
Here's the thing: DeFalco, according to Google, has defended this movie by saying, "Evil is really like this, so we should make movies about it." He might actually believe this, but I'm guessing he just wanted to make a really nasty movie and tick people off.
But in order to make that work, you really have to get viewers involved in the movie. We actually have to care about the characters. We really shouldn't be laughing at the acting, or thinking "Holy crap, is that Sylvester Stallone's kid?" Who, by the way, is in this.
Instead of coming off like a look at evil, it comes off as a look at a bunch of guys who are virgins and will remain so in the foreseeable future. Especially Sage Stallone. Acting talent is apparently not genetic.
What I Learned
In a way, my 11+ hour movie marathon was inspiring. I learned that bad filmmaking transcends race, class, and gender. Bad movies can be made by the big guys, or the little guys.
Oh man, I remember Bio Dome. That was the exact point in which I realized I never wanted to ever watch something with Pauly Shore in it. Ever.
Two of my favorite lines from your review. (I could not contain my laughter):
- I'm assuming you'll only do so if you hate yourself.
- And a lot of asking yourself why you're watching this.
(The "you'd have to be gay" lines - not-so-much, but maybe I would have to be gay to understand and appreciate them?)
Thanks for enduring the awfulness so that we may live free.
Every movie on that list is an epic, compared to the one film that makes Plan 9 From Outer Space look like Gone with the Wind. Only this movie doesn't have Plan 9's camp value.
If you dare, watch the movie R.O.T.O.R (1987) and count the many times you see equipment (there are many times where camera men are clearly in the shot)bad special effects (like seeing a still shot of a car that has aleady been wrecked "blowing up")
Throw in the bad acting, and you'll never want to see a movie again.
Or if you want to see a movie where people are killed off, then w/o explantion, re-appear later, an interstellar spaceship that has a boiler room, or watch a 41 year old woman play an 18 year old...then watch Space Muntiny.
The whole idea of a father and boy bonding over a robot that the father built for a "robot boxing" match...for some odd reason made me think of the Sly Stallone stinker Over the Top. You know, that immortal movie about a truck driving arm wrestler (Stallone) trying to reconnect with his son.
Sly made some really bad movies when he wasn't doing Rambo or Rocky
"women refusing to touch him, ever, was, in fact, an awesome decision"
As punctuation appears to have failed you here, I decided to say the rest of the article in the voice of James T. Kirk as that's how you seem to have written it. The, whole, article, improved, from, there.
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