Worst Theatrically-Released Movies EVER
To qualify the movie has to be a theatrical release with a decent budget (although not necessarily a blockbuster). In other words, the movie can't be BAD simply because the low budget prevented it from being good.
If some obvious choices aren't present -- like "Heaven's Gate," "Mommie Dearest" and "Battlefield Earth" -- it's likely because I haven't seen them yet and therefore can't attest to their badness.
I will add to this list as I (unfortunately) stumble upon cinematic travesties.
If some obvious choices aren't present -- like "Heaven's Gate," "Mommie Dearest" and "Battlefield Earth" -- it's likely because I haven't seen them yet and therefore can't attest to their badness.
I will add to this list as I (unfortunately) stumble upon cinematic travesties.
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- DirectorDavid LynchStarsKyle MacLachlanVirginia MadsenFrancesca AnnisA Duke's son leads desert warriors against the galactic emperor and his father's evil nemesis to free their desert world from the emperor's rule.If you thought 1974's "Zardoz" was a sci-fi train wreck you ain't seen nothing till you've seen "Dune," perhaps the worst major-release sci-fi flick ever made. Actually, the movie starts out promising as Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) explains the basics, her head superimposed over a space background. The ensuing floating alien sequence is intriguing and well-executed. But the movie bogs down with Paul's tedious preparation for his mission to Dune. The next sequence switches to the home planet of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan) and it's so campy with its gay snuff scene that it seems cut & pasted from another movie. Every other scene with the hovering fat bastage is equally goofy. Then there's an uncanny folding-space-to-travel sequence that's cool, but at around the hour mark the movie goes off the rails and never recovers. It becomes so bad you have to see it to believe it. It's unfathomable that this was a major release and cost $40-45 million in 1984 dollars.
The basic plot, as described above, is actually simple and it's a good one that could've worked; not to mention, the cast, sets, costumes and many of the effects (for 1984) are stellar. There's a lot of eye candy here; Sting is in his prime as Paul's rival and Madsen & Sean Young are young and breathtaking, particularly the former; Francesca Annis is also striking as the hero's mother. There's some ear candy too with the score by Toto. But the devil is in the details. The overabundance of characters, the pretentiously muddled verbiage (intermixed with strange, long names you can't remember), the campy elements, the lousy F/X (even for 1984) and, mostly, the utter lack of story-thrust doom the film. By the second half I no longer cared about the characters and their story. I just sat and tried to enjoy the eye & ear candy till the end.
I want to emphasize that I can handle bad effects and campy or amusing elements in sci-fi, as long as the story is somehow engaging. The original Star Trek TV series is Exhibit A. But, like I said, "Dune" utterly fails to deliver the goods with a driving narrative, particularly after the first hour. If ever there was a move that was a chore to sit through, this is it. Be forewarned. - DirectorJohn FordStarsRichard WidmarkCarroll BakerKarl MaldenThe Cheyenne, tired of broken U.S. government promises, head for their ancestral lands but a sympathetic cavalry officer is tasked to bring them back to their reservation.The story focuses on what is known as the Northern Cheyenne Exodus wherein Chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland) lead over three hundred starved and weary Cheyenne from their reservation in the Oklahoma territory to eastern Montana. Google it and you can see the exact trail route. What's the problem? Well, director John Ford shot the picture entirely in his beloved Monument Valley and surrounding areas in Arizona. Evidently Ford thought that we're all doofuses and no one would notice that the desert Southwest looks absolutely nothing like the Great Plains where the exodus actually took place. Imagine a movie taking place in the northern Appalachians, but shooting it in the swamps of Louisiana; it's the same gross contrast.
I'm not suggesting, by the way, that films based on factual events always have to be shot at the actual locations, but shouldn't the locations at least remotely resemble the actual locations? For instance, although the story of "Cold Mountain" takes place in North Carolina and Virginia parts of it were shot in Romania, but it was okay because the geography and climate is the same. Or take 1953's "War Arrow," which took place in West Texas, but was shot in California; it worked out because the CA locations were an acceptable substitute for West Texas (not great, but at least acceptable).
If this weren't bad enough, the story as played out in "Cheyenne Autumn" is so dreadfully dull and the acting so melodramatic that you'll be seriously tempted to tune out by the half hour mark. And then there's this utterly incongruent sequence with Jimmy Stewart as Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, Kansas (which, again, looks absolutely nothing like Monument Valley).
Needless to say, this film's so godawful you have to actually see it to believe it. In fact, that would be the only reason for viewing it; that and maybe having a good laugh. It's a cinematic abomination. - DirectorVal GuestStarsVictoria VetriRobin HawdonPatrick AllenSanna escapes being sacrificed and meets Tara. Together, they live in a seaside tribe that worships the Sun God and survive the dangers of the creatures from the Mesozoic Era.Wow, this flick is painfully bad. I was seriously tempted to fast-forward through the second half. This was surprising because it's basically the follow-up to Hammer's most successful film, 1966's "One Million Years BC." Unfortnately, it's nowhere the same quality. Things go wrong right away when the camera switches from excellent Canary Ilsand locations to an obvious indoor set where it focuses on close-ups of the tribe on top of a hill. Worse, the story is dull and there's WAY too much cave-babbling, e.g. "Akita, AKITA!" The stop-motion F/X work is good, but there isn't as much as in the former film, like the great T-rex versus triceratops and the allosaurus sequences. While I like the friendly baby dino and Hassall is significantly hotter than the overrated Vetri, neither makes up for the movie's mortal flaws.
- DirectorAllan A. GoldsteinStarsLeslie NielsenOphélie WinterEzio GreggioMarshal Dix is to free US president from aliens on the int'l lunar base. A clone has replaced him in The White House. Can Dix prevent an alien invasion?The movie spoofs space shows/movies and anything else it feels like making fun of, like politicians and musicians (e.g. "Bill Clinton" is one of the characters). Leslie Nielsen stars as a Frank Drebin-like character and the movie shoots for the goofy humor of The Naked Gun trilogy, but fails. With the wealth of material at its disposal, I don't know how this movie could've gone so wrong, but it's rarely funny and often downright bad; and this is coming from someone who enjoys goofy humor a la The Naked Gun. It doesn't help that the 2-3 most prominent women aren't sexy; to me, anyway. Worse, the sex-oriented jokes are more gross and vulgar than funny. The third act is better than the first two, but that can't save it.
It can't be defended on the grounds that it had a low budget as it cost a whopping $45 million in 2000 dollars (!). Unbelievable. - DirectorWes CravenStarsBill PullmanCathy TysonZakes MokaeAn anthropologist goes to Haiti after hearing rumors about a drug used by black magic practitioners to turn people into zombies.Bill Pullman plays an anthropologist who goes to Haiti to investigate a rumored drug that can make people seem dead, but they’re really not. In other words, the plot addresses the reality behind the zombie myth. The story’s supposedly based (loosely) on factual material contained in Wade Davis’ book.
Writer Wade Davis reportedly wanted noted director Peter Weir to direct the film, but he got stuck with horror maestro Wes Craven. Wes is great for cartoony horror flicks, like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Scream" series, but he was apparently out of his league here. I hate giving bad reviews to movies because I realize no one intends to make a bad film. Making decent movies is expensive and takes a lot of work by scores of talented people. "The Serpent and the Rainbow" had the funds, talent, locations and music to make a quality film, but it horribly fails.
Over the years it's taken me four attempts just to get past the 20-40 minute mark. I finally forced myself to watch the entire film last night and it was a chore. It starts out intriguing, but immediately fails to engross. The story's fine, but the way it's told is bad, which includes the puzzling editing. It's incoherent and you soon find yourself bored watching interesting images and cool percussion-oriented music, but characters and a tale you don't care about, mainly because you were never allowed to comprehend it.
There's a shallow love story with the requisite beautiful native (Cathy Tyson) and the second act gets a little better with Brent Jennings as Mozart, but the third act spirals into to ultra-horror cheese. Some scenes are so ridiculously bad they're laugh-out-loud funny. For instance, a classy white woman suddenly jumps on the dinner table radically attacking the anthropologist; a torture-chair moves across the room by itself on a couple occasions; someone's head falls off; a scorpion walks out of someone's mouth; something alien and diabolic comes out of someone else's mouth (or head); etc. On top of this, there are so many dream/hallucination sequences that they become tedious. These scenes were obviously included to up the ante with horror props and – hopefully – jolt the audience, but they utterly fail because, after a while, you suspect that what's going on isn't really happening and it's hard to be scared by illusions. Most of the time, they just make you laugh, like the (supposedly) creepy hand coming out of the soup (rolling my eyes). Don't get me wrong, scenes like these CAN work in horror films, but they have to be done right and in the right context, which isn't the case here, unfortunately. - DirectorHugh WilsonStarsBrendan FraserSarah Jessica ParkerAlfred MolinaThe inept Canadian Mountie Dudley Do-Right chases after villain Snidely Whiplash and woos girlfriend Nell Fenwick.The movie was advertised as "brought to you by the producers of George of the Jungle," which of course implies that it might be in the same ballpark in quality. Unfortunately, that's not the case at all. While the two movies share a couple of the same producers they don't share directors or writers. "Dudley Do-Right" was directed and written by Hugh Wilson who directed/wrote the amusing "Blast from the Past," which came out six months before "Do Right." As such, you would think "Do-Right" would be a decent goofy comedy, but it's not. It's starts off with an overlong, irrelevant and pointless cartoon and never recovers. The zany jokes fall flat except for a couple and this is from someone who enjoys stoo-pid humor.
What's utterly amazing is that "Do-Right" cost a whopping $70 million in 1999 dollars. "Blast from the Past" only cost half that much and "George of the Jungle" (1997) $15 million less (than "Do-Right")! Where'd all the money go? You certainly don't see it on the screen or in the writing. Of course, Fraser is likable and fitting as Dudley and Molina eats up the role of Whiplash, but their jokes are lame and unfunny. Parker might have worked, but she's underutilized. Really, the only sequences that perked my attention are the Native American theater scenes and, in the third act, when Dudley morphs into a bad dude to beat Whiplash, but even these scenes aren't anything to write home about.
Simply put, "Dudley Do-Right" is a DUD, although it might be good for kids – real little kids - DirectorJay RoachStarsBen StillerRobert De NiroBlythe DannerAll hell breaks loose when the Byrnes family meets the Focker family for the first time.My wife and I saw this at the theater during Christmas in 2004, not because we wanted to, but because the movie we intended to see was sold out ("National Treasure") and the group we were with favored this movie. We adjusted and were prepared to see a funny picture (after all, "Meet the Parents" is pretty good), but that wasn't the case at all. We sat there in torture as joke after joke fell flat, which wasn't helped by the repugnant raunchiness of it all. Incredibly a mother in front of us brought her kid with her, who looked around 10 years-old. I think it was our worst movie-going experience.
- DirectorRobert AltmanStarsPaul NewmanJoel GreyKevin McCarthyA cynical Buffalo Bill hires Sitting Bull to exploit him and add his credibility to the distorted view of history presented in his Wild West Show.This is "revisionist Western," a "message movie" that Robert Altman uses to criticize popular ideas (myths) about the Old West. The titular hero (Paul Newman) is merely a showbiz creation who can no longer differentiate the truth from his made-up image. He's a blustering buffoon who asserts to be one with the Wild West, but lives in extravagance, play-acting in his Western circus. His hair is fake, he can no longer shoot straight or track a Native; and all his theatrical duels with owlhoots and Indians are fixed in his favor.
The theme is interesting and the ensemble cast is great. It should've worked, but it didn't. It's somewhat akin to "Little Big Man" (1970) but less of a comedy and nowhere near as entertaining. While the Wild West circus elicits some entertaining moments (e.g. rodeo stunts) they can't save the flick from being an arty, pretentious, tiresome bomb. Moreover, the principle Native Americans are ironically so one-dimensional and wooden I thought maybe Altman was making a snide aside about "wooden Indians." - DirectorPenelope SpheerisStarsDiedrich BaderErika EleniakJim VarneyNice guy redneck Jed Clampett strikes it rich when he finds black oil. He and his kin move to posh Beverly Hills.I've never really watched the TV series, although I've of course seen clips here and there. Unlike 1994's "The Flintstones" and 1995's "The Brady Bunch Movie" and their sequels, "The Beverly Hillbillies" doesn't work. The cast is good and there are a few amusing moments, but once the family moves to Southern California the story is uninvolving and you find yourself biding time waiting for the next gag. Sometimes it's downright bad, which is unforgivable for a blockbuster with a mega-budget and mega stars. It may not be as bad as the other flicks on this list but, considering the talent and big bucks involved, it's a stunning flop.