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Question for bad movie aficianados

post #1 of 55
4/9/12 at 6:42pm
Thread Starter 

Hi all! I hope this topic isn't a repeat, I couldn't see anything comparable on here.

 

 I'm working on a series of video reviews for a blog on the theme of notoriously bad movies, or movies with a particularly interesting or troubled production history.

 

I think I've hit all the usual suspects but I know there's probably a world of unknown gems and I was curious if anyone out there had a particular favourite. Things that went completely under the radar, odd outings for otherwise mainstream cast/crew, movies made under bizarre circumstances, I'd love to hear about them. 

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post #2 of 55
4/9/12 at 6:49pm

What have you got so far?

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post #3 of 55
4/9/12 at 6:57pm
Thread Starter 

Right now I've got...

 

Dinoshark (tracing Roger Corman's career up to 2012)

Death Racers (about The Asylum's marketing strategy)

Repo! (mostly for the rocky production history and its fierce adoption from a small group of fans)

The Man Who Saved The World AKA Turkish Star Wars (foreign knock-off industry)

A Serbian Film (The whole culture of shock movies)

Fantastic Four (1994) (The ridiculous circumstances under which it was made)

D-War (Shim Hyung-Rae's crusade to 'save' the South Korean film industry)

Lifeforce (mostly to talk about Dan O'Bannon's career)

House Of The Dead (Have to talk about Uwe Boll at some point)

The Return of Captain Invincible (Ozploitation, and the way this movie predicted superhero trends that came much later)

 

Hopefully that gives you an idea of the sort of things I'm looking for. 

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post #4 of 55
4/9/12 at 7:33pm

There is Heavens Gate. It killed a whole studio

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post #5 of 55
4/9/12 at 7:53pm
Thread Starter 

Ooh, good call. I've actually never seen Heaven's Gate, I should look into that!

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post #6 of 55
4/9/12 at 7:57pm

Cutthroat Island did the same thing.

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post #7 of 55
4/9/12 at 8:01pm

Well considering one of the discussions going on around here, I'd say Dino DeLaurentis is needs some representation...


220px-King_kong_1976_movie_poster.jpg

(which then leads into a very special kinda awful in its horrific sequel)

 

...and of course...

7.JPG

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post #8 of 55
4/10/12 at 12:27am

The Room.

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post #9 of 55
4/10/12 at 12:40am

Two movies I haven't seen and not planning to:

 

DELGO

The anti-El Mariachi. Director Marc Adler raised money from investors for an independent animation project that ended up one of the biggest commercial failures in history.

 

 

THE LAST MIMZY

The head of New Line lost his mind and used the money LOTR trilogy brought to the studio to realize a new-age-children's fantasy that almost killed the studio.

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post #10 of 55
4/10/12 at 12:55am

Plan 9 from Outer Space. It is often called the worst movie ever. There is also Battlefield Earth. You could file that under actors passion projects gone wrong...very wrong.

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post #11 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:01am
THE CONQUEROR - a Genghis Khan biopic starring none other than John Wayne.
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post #12 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:14am


 

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rain Dog View Post

Well considering one of the discussions going on around here, I'd say Dino DeLaurentis is needs some representation...


220px-King_kong_1976_movie_poster.jpg

(which then leads into a very special kinda awful in its horrific sequel)


Not to mention the numerous quickie productions that attempted to cash in on it, notably Mighty Peking Man...

2ezhcw1.jpg

 

and A*P*E, which even ripped off the De Laurentiis poster.

4814603837_4244e95d8d_z.jpg

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post #13 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Episode29 View Post

THE CONQUEROR - a Genghis Khan biopic starring none other than John Wayne.


Also interesting is the backstory to this: They shot on a desert site previously used for nuclear testing. Within 20 years nearly half the cast/crew had died from various cancers that were linked to the shoot.

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post #14 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:32am

That (famous) rumor has been pretty thoroughly debunked:

 

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4238

 

 

Quote:
what science has found, contrary to what's reported in virtually every article published on the subject, is that any link between the film crew's cancers and the atomic tests is far from confirmed. First of all, the numbers reported by People are right in the range of what we might expect to find in a random sample. According to the National Cancer Institute, in 1980 the chances of being diagnosed with a cancer sometime in your lifetime was about 41%, with mortality at 21.7%. And, right on the button, People's survey of The Conqueror's crew found a 41.4% incidence with 20.7% mortality. (These numbers make an assumption of an age group of 20-55 at the time of filming.)

 

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post #15 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:50am

Oh Troll 2 it is the king of Bad movies.

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post #16 of 55
4/10/12 at 4:32am

The Bonfire of the Vanities hits "notoriously bad" and "troubled production history." There's even a book about it, The Devil's Candy by Julie Salomon.

 

Really, it's just as if someone had set out to assemble a really talented cast and crew, start with a great book, and then make every wrong decision possible.

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post #17 of 55
4/10/12 at 4:33am

Full mainstream backing but went bad anyway: GIGLI.

 

Go to the Razzies site and see who won what. CATWOMAN's in there.

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post #18 of 55
4/10/12 at 4:38am

Lady in the Water - the movie's bad, not awful, but there is a lot of really bad blood surrounding it. It's a cautionary tale about what happens when a director gets too big for his britches.

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post #19 of 55
4/10/12 at 5:10am

HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING

 

They filmed it in Argentina to save money.  Midway through production, the economy changed and the producers lost their shirts.  The completion bond people took it over and...we got what we got.

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post #20 of 55
4/10/12 at 5:41am

The Happening, Manos: Hands of Fate, and Birdemic: Shock and Terror are the three worst movies I've ever seen.

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post #21 of 55
4/10/12 at 6:14am

"Pulgasari" would make an interesting counter to "D-War"

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post #22 of 55
4/10/12 at 6:22am

 

Howard_The_Duck_(1986).jpg

 

Hideously expensive, beset with technical problems, poorly written, badly acted, featured a human/duck love scene, and was such a colossal bomb that it almost bankrupted George Lucas, and led to the head of Universal quitting.

 

A weird twist of fate, though: Lucas was counting on the film being a smash so he could pay back the money he owed from the construction of Lucasfilm Ranch. When the movie flopped, he was bailed out by Steve Jobs who bought Lucasfilm's fledgling CGI animation studio. A humble little gang who would go on to middling notoriety under the name Pixar.

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post #23 of 55
4/10/12 at 6:28am

Wild Wild West also belongs in this discussion.  Confuses big and loud for entertaining every step of the way.

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post #24 of 55
4/10/12 at 6:39am

wickerman_cover.jpg

 

 

No nightmarish production stories come to mind, but never in history has so much concentrated WhatTheFuck been crammed onto celluloid. When even Nic Cage thinks your movie is 'absurd' you know  you've dropped an apocalyptic heap of garbage, and while the film didn't strictly destroy Neil LaBute's career, his reputation was never the same after this.

 

I still can't work out whether the last 45 minutes of this film is the worst thriller ever made, or the greatest surrealist comedy known to man.

 

 

This genuinely happens.

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post #25 of 55
4/10/12 at 6:50am

I know it has its defenders around here, but WATERWORLD really belongs in your discussion. Not a good film, and was infamous for its troubled and expensive production.

 

Wasn't ISHTAR also known for production troubles?

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post #26 of 55
4/10/12 at 6:55am
Thread Starter 

Thank you to everybody for the responses! Informative and hugely helpful.

 

Dino De Laurentiis King Kong - I was actually oddly enamored by this. I think the people I was watching it with had set my expectations so low that I couldn't be underwhelmed. But I thought the visual effects were just the right balance of epic and campy.

 

The Room - So much of this has already disseminated, I'm trying to keep away from movies that everyone has already had some exposure to (if only in meme form) unless I can think of some fresh take on it. Though I will most likely get to it at some point.

 

Delgo - I love the 'anti-Mariachi' sentiment. Never seen this one either, is it any good on its own terms?

 

The Last Mimzy - Again, perfect example, and I never knew about the history. Thanks!

 

The Conqueror - This has been on my mental list for a while, I really need to get around to watching it.

 

A*P*E - I'm guessing that image doesn't ever actually occur...

 

Troll 2 - Totally agree in terms of infamy, but I think 'Best Worst Movie' has already closed the book on that one, I feel like anything I could say would be redundant at this point.

 

Lady In The Water - Agreed, that would be a great 'in' for talking abut M. Night's ballooning ego and everything.

 

Manos & Birdemic - Are both on my vague mental list, I'm trying to think of an interesting angle to examine them from. Apart from being made on a bet, does Manos have any other weird circumstances surrounding it? I guess 'made on a bet' is probably weird enough.

 

Pulgasari - I have a copy of it, planning to watch soon. Definitely one of the best 'weird production history' stories.

 

Howard The Duck  - I have a crazy theory about this movie where if all of the dialogue was delivered in deadpan instead of telegraphing every joke in a sitcom way, it would be hilarious. It's also on my mental list, it definitely fits that bill of just blowing your mind with the amount of money and effort spent VS product. Especially with that fantastically realized stop motion at the end.

 

 

 

Thanks again for the suggestions, you are kings among message boarders.

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post #27 of 55
4/10/12 at 9:37am

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by sobaditsgood View Post

Manos & Birdemic - Are both on my vague mental list, I'm trying to think of an interesting angle to examine them from. Apart from being made on a bet, does Manos have any other weird circumstances surrounding it? I guess 'made on a bet' is probably weird enough.

 


One of the actors in "Manos" had to wear leg prosthetics throughout the shoot to make him look like a satyr. Unfortunately, he wore them wrong and they caused him crippling pain that he had to treat with painkillers before ultimately committing suicide.

 

"Great White" (aka "The Last Shark") is a spectacularly transparent ripoff of "Jaws," one that Spielberg himself lobbied (successfully) to have pulled from theaters. Hard to find, but worth it.

 

No discussion about obscure bad movies is complete without mentioning producer Edward L. Montoro. Facing bankruptcy due to the failure of one of his films, he embezzled $1 million from his production company and fucked off to South America. He hasn't been heard from in over 25 years.

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post #28 of 55
4/10/12 at 9:45am

I actually think they're good and way underrated, but Catch-22 and 1941 were also widely-derided films with turbulent productions.

 

I hope your approach isn't going to be just straight-up "these movies suck, ha ha." Every great movie has at least one flaw and every terrible movie has at least a tiny something that went right. Focus on the tiny something that went right; don't be yet another internet guy kicking movies when they're down (and have been down for years, sometimes decades). Don't do it to be "nice"; do it because it's a fresh approach to generally acknowledged stinkers.

 

Then again, I'm the guy who had good things to say about at least three of the movies mentioned elsewhere in this thread. When a movie arrives with near-unanimous critical bashing, I find myself in its corner, rooting for it to reveal itself to be misunderstood in its own time, or something; it really has to work hard at being bad to lose my good will. One that did lose it was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Christ, that stank on ice. Bonfire too.

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post #29 of 55
4/10/12 at 9:55am
Thread Starter 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Blank View Post

don't be yet another internet guy kicking movies when they're down


Nah, I'm a staunch supporter of a lot of them. My whole angle is to use them as springboards for analysis. I agree, the vast majority of reviews tackling these kinds of movies are just exercises in contrived metaphor that work out to 'boy, that sure does suck'. And the video reviews are just lightning fast 'worst-ofs' punctuated with redundant 'haha, wasn't that stupid?' (when they're not awkwardly framed webcam footage).

 

I'll admit, watching things like Dinoshark it's sometimes tough. But at the very least I'm trying to enter into discussion about them rather than just pan them off with cheap shots.

 

Ooh, I'm gonna try and track down The Last Shark.

 

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post #30 of 55
4/10/12 at 1:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Blank View Post
When a movie arrives with near-unanimous critical bashing, I find myself in its corner, rooting for it to reveal itself to be misunderstood in its own time, or something; it really has to work hard at being bad to lose my good will. One that did lose it was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Christ, that stank on ice. Bonfire too.


I'll back up Cowgirls on three points: They depicted the thumbs accurately, k.d. lang's score was good, and Pat Morita was inspired (though squandered) casting as The Chink. But it was a book that never needed to be filmed.

 

Sobad, you might also want to check out Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops over on the Onion AV Club. I like his classification system: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success.

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post #31 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammerhead View Post


I'll back up Cowgirls on three points: They depicted the thumbs accurately, k.d. lang's score was good, and Pat Morita was inspired (though squandered) casting as The Chink. But it was a book that never needed to be filmed.


Yeah, that's the thing. People always seem to think that cinema is the end-all be-all. "This book would make a great movie." No, it's a perfectly fine book that doesn't really need to be translated into another medium. As if, you know, "Ah, this book is okay for what it is, a mere book. But if it were a movie, THEN it would achieve the glory it deserves!"

 

Which, sadly, is not entirely wrong on some level, since far more people will see even a flop movie than will ever read the book it's based on.

 

And so you get stuff like Bonfire and Cowgirls and Breakfast of Champions. Books that should've been left the fuck alone.

 

The thing is, movies like Bonfire and Cowgirls and Breakfast of Champions are noble failures. The latter two, at least, were made out of love for the books. They're ambitious failures. They're not pieces of commercial shit that aimed low and missed. I'm glad they were made. I'm glad someone tried.

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post #32 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:55pm

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post #33 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:55pm

Some not-great movies that I still find fascinating...

 

FAT GUY GOES NUTZOID (aka ZEISTERS) 

Two New Yorkers kidnap (sort of) a mental patient they call The Mouka and go on a road trip.  Has many similarities to RAIN MAN and predates it by at least two years.

Has some thoroughly questionable humor and bizarre performances.  And The Mouka vomits.  A lot.  Note: I soooooo wish this were on DVD with commentaries.

 

TWO IDIOTS IN HOLLYWOOD

The directorial debut of Steven Tobolowski. (!)  The title says it all.  A couple of goofballs try to make it in pictures.  A much more "normal" film than the above.  The leads,

Jim McGrath (channeling the late 70's Steve Martin) and the more well-known Jeff Doucette are fun.  But the movies loses steam about 30 minutes in.  Love the recurring

Werewolf bits, though.

 

TICKER

The unlikely teaming of Steven Seagal & Tom Sizemore is an amazement.  Featuring scenes shot on green screens of people simply sitting in cars, and footage from

other films like FRANKIE THE FLY, this one succeeds by being far more than the sum of it's hugely disparate parts.  Many call this the beginning of the end of Seagal's

big budget A-picture career. I call it the beginning of something more fascinating: his second, "whatever works" DTV career.  This film should not be.  But thankfully, it is.

Directed by the low-budget legend, Albert Pyun.


Edited by Engineer - 4/10/12 at 9:37pm
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post #34 of 55
4/10/12 at 2:57pm

Also, Rape of the Soul. My friend was managing a theater in Harvard Square. He had a full house for a screening of this. And then nobody showed up for it. Except the director. Who had bought all the tickets and was trying to hand them out to people on the street for free. 

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post #35 of 55
4/10/12 at 3:06pm

Oh yeah, and The Conqueror starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Bad movie, and they shot most of it over land that was used to test atomic weapons. Many members of the cast and the director got cancer and died not long after. Somewhat of an urban legend; they could have all died of cancer just because they were smoking and drinking so much, but still an interesting theory. 

 

And that Warren Beatty/Diane Keaton movie Town and Country supposedly had a horrendously bad production history. 

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post #36 of 55
4/10/12 at 4:36pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parker View Post
My friend was managing a theater in Harvard Square...

 

Small world!  Harvard Square's like ten minutes from me.  Which theater?  The Brattle?  Sony (AMC) Harvard Square?

Or maybe the old Janus or Orson Welles? 
 

 

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post #37 of 55
4/10/12 at 4:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Parker View Post

Oh yeah, and The Conqueror


Post 14, friend.

 

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post #38 of 55
4/10/12 at 4:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammerhead View Post


Post 14, friend.

 



Gah, sorry!

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post #39 of 55
4/10/12 at 4:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Engineer View Post

Quote:

 

Small world!  Harvard Square's like ten minutes from me.  Which theater?  The Brattle?  Sony (AMC) Harvard Square?

Or maybe the old Janus or Orson Welles? 
 

 



The AMC theater, formerly Loews.

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post #40 of 55
4/10/12 at 5:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Engineer View Post

TICKER

The unlikely teaming of Steven Seagal & Tom Sizemore is an amazement.  Featuring scenes shot on green screens of people simply sitting in cars, and footage from

other films like FRANKIE THE FLY, this one succeeds by being far more than the sum of it's hugely disparate parts.  Many call this the beginning of the end of Seagal's

big budget A-picture career. I call it the beginning of something more fascinating: his second, "whatever works" DTV career.  This film should not be.  But thankfully, it is.

Directed by the low-budget legend, Albert Pyun.


This was on TV in the UK only a few days ago. Took me two whole scenes before I realised Dennis Hopper was playing Irish. Amazing.
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post #41 of 55
4/10/12 at 6:10pm

I want to see that movie. But only in the company of friends with healthy amounts of adult beverages at hand.

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post #42 of 55
4/10/12 at 8:27pm

TICKER is beautiful.  In one meta scene, Seagal plays two characters at the same time.  One Seagal has a fake beard and is singing the blues in a bar room that the other Seagal is passing through. Yes, TICKER... is beautiful.  

 

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post #43 of 55
4/11/12 at 7:20am
Thread Starter 

Man, I knew this was the place to come for this kind of info. Thanks again, guys

 

I'm a huge fan of Nathan Rabin, the My Year Of Flops book is one of the most dog-eared I own. I'm in awe of his ability to be simultaneously breezily easy to read while being insightful in an almost offhand way.

 

And I'd totally echo the sentiments about book adaptations being put on an unnecessary pedestal. It's like the existence of the movie, even the suggestion of the movie, legitimizes the book in a way it really shouldn't. The book should be its own legitimizer. I'm trying to think of any other two media that could apply to. Your poem is only really good if someone paints a picture of it, etc...

 

The Manitou! I can't find this thing anywhere. I've wanted to see it for so long. I think it's time to give in and order a DVD.

 

Engineer - Your three suggestions all sound brilliant, thank you!

 

and as soon as I'm not sitting in a public place I'm gonna click that Rape of the Soul link.

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post #44 of 55
4/11/12 at 8:09am

From Wikipedia:

 

Pulgasari is a North Korean feature film produced in 1985, a giant-monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla series. It was produced by South Korean director Shin Sang-ok, who had been kidnapped in 1978 by North Korean intelligence on the orders of Kim Jong-il, son of the then-ruling Kim Il-sung.

Teruyoshi Nakano and the staff from Japan's Toho studios, the creators of Godzilla, participated in creating the film's special effects. Kenpachiro Satsuma – the stunt performer who played Godzilla from 1984 to 1995 – portrayed Pulgasari, and when the Godzilla remake was released in Japan in 1998, he was quoted as saying he preferred Pulgasari to the American Godzilla.[

 

 

 

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post #45 of 55
4/16/12 at 9:02am
Thread Starter 

Pulgasari - I've always been curious about this one based on that information. So, the director was kidnapped into making this movie, but how coercive was it? Was he directing at gunpoint or once they got him over the border did he just sort of shrug it off and say 'well, at least I get to direct a movie'? I mean, that becomes even stranger with the guys from Godzilla working on it. I can't seem to get a bead on exactly how much this was just a film production under somewhat weird circumstances vs. the result of some crazed dictatorial influence and forced product.

 

Ticker is another one I can't believe I'm only just hearing about now. Thanks for the info!

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post #46 of 55
4/16/12 at 9:24am

I think that the social landscape of North Korea is such that you don't need to keep a gun pointed at anyone to coerce them. Wikipedia ( I wish there was more press on it, but that may be due to the nature of North Korean censorship) says that he was kindnaped in '78 and  was imprisoned for five years before he even knew why he was being held.

 

At that point in '83 Kim Jong Il allowed his wife to be with him in N. Korea if he made the movie.

 

Although not exactly like the stories of Phil Spector pulling guns on people in the studio, it's still pretty compelling.

 

There are more details here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/apr/04/artsfeatures1

 

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post #47 of 55
4/16/12 at 9:28am
Thread Starter 

Absolutely compelling. Thanks for the article, that is a great read.

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post #48 of 55
4/16/12 at 9:33am

http://badassdigest.com/2011/12/19/pulgasari-kim-jong-ils-kaiju-film/

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post #49 of 55
6/4/12 at 4:08pm
Thread Starter 

For anyone who was curious about the end result of all of this, our video blog went live recently with the first episode focusing on Syfy's Dinoshark but also touching on Roger Corman and the state of b-movies in the modern movie landscape.

 

Hopefully if you're a fan of bad movies and analysis thereof you'll get a kick out of it. http://www.sbigreviews.com

 

And thanks again, everybody, for the help and the info. We're beautifully awash in potential right now thanks to y'all.

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post #50 of 55
6/5/12 at 1:46am

I really enjoyed that. Awesome clip coverage, informative, really well done.

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