Worst film ever?

[tea42]

The Double by Richad Ayoade. We walked out....

[AF62]

The Double by Richad Ayoade. We walked out....

I remember that. I quite enjoyed it...

[Slarti]

I don't know if it the worst film I've ever seen, but the most overrated was The Exorcist.

I fell asleep in the middle of it when stone cold sober.

Goodness! It quite spooked me - I was scared on the way home in the dark.

I think that I dozed off quite early on as it was such unbelievably twaddle, so I probably never saw the "scary" bit.

Slarti

[bionichamster]

The film later disappeared off the face of the earth and I’ve never met anyone who’s seen it or even mentioned it. But thanks to the internet I can at least confirm I didn’t imagine it. I get the impression that the pet shop boys aren’t that proud of it and may have just conveniently brushed it under the carpet; where it should stay.

Wikipedia

"It Couldn't Happen Here was available on VHS but this has now been discontinued. A Laserdisc release was also available in the US and Japan but was discontinued.

Pet Shop Boys have mentioned an eventual DVD release on their official site when questioned by fans, but nothing has been announced."

Yeah I know what Wikipedia says, believe me I checked when someone once doubted my claim that the pet shop boys had made a movie!

But after it left cinemas it really did seem to disappear as if it had never existed. They may well have churned out a couple of thousand vhs tapes snapped up by PSB fans and now festering in parental attics next to cabbage patch dolls, hacky sacks and back copies of Smash Hits, and a a dozen laserdiscs (one wonders how much overlap there was between laser disk owners and the potential audience for this film), but As I said I’ve never met anyone who’s heard of it let alone seen it.

I’m not surprised they never released a dvd, they’d never recoup the costs of mastering it for the format and it would probably not do them any credibility favours, unless being laughed at for making a crap movie that the world forgot is what they want. I suspect it won’t appear any time soon. Dvd’s Have been around how long, and it hasn’t happened yet?

BH

[panamagold]

The film later disappeared off the face of the earth and I’ve never met anyone who’s seen it or even mentioned it. But thanks to the internet I can at least confirm I didn’t imagine it. I get the impression that the pet shop boys aren’t that proud of it and may have just conveniently brushed it under the carpet; where it should stay.

BH

Yet THIS track, from the said movie, has captured 22 million hits.

[didds]

The ones that really spring to mind are "Con Air" and "In Love and War" - former just 90 minutes of my life i will never get back, and the latter a total doughnut.

I suspect I must have seen worse but maybe my brain has scoured the memory to save my sanity. I seemt o vaguely recall a musical about a bunch of explorers (?) that discover a lost/undicovered tribe/land in the arctic or Antarctica or certainly frozen wastes, and how the male lead eventually goes back there . Total twaddle. I cant even find it with a google search.

Exorcist? Boring AF. Cant see what the fuss was all about. The book wasn't any better (or it wasn't any better than the book if you prefer).

Ooo... I was once one of three in a cinema screening of "Series 7 - The Contenders". One of the other two being my wife.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251031/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

That was pretty bad. Though in many ways much superior to the above .

didds

[zico]

Pleased to see that "Holmes & Watson" has made it into the short list for Worst Film at the 2019 Razzies.

Other films were - Gotti, Happytime Murders, Robin Hood and Winchester.

[XFool]

I remember the worst film I ever saw. At least, I remember the occasion (decades ago) but not the title or what it was about. At the time, one of the people I was flat sharing with - a bit of an intellectual - persuaded me to accompany him to see a film. Why not? It turned out to be some 'serious' intellectual film by, I think an Italian director. At least I think it was set in Italy, people were riding around on scooters.

I have no further recollection about the film, it was unutterably boring. After about 20 minutes I just got up and walked out - I wasn't the only one! I went home, leaving my flatmate in the cinema. I remember later he told me: "It wasn't quite what I was expecting." Quite.

I once had a more 'interesting' cinematic experience, in the 1970s - the film was Jules & Jim. But it wasn't about the film...

I went with (I think) three girls (fortunately?), one of whom was particularly keen to see the film, to a cinema called The Biograph in Victoria.

We arrived a bit late, so bought tickets quickly from the box office and rushed in. Only things I really noticed on the way in was it looked pretty down at heal, and the tickets were sold by a quite elderly man. We went in, it was dark. No, it really was very dark, you couldn't see a thing. So dark we couldn't even dark adapt to it and had to feel our way around, apologising as we stumbled across people, until we all got our seats together.

Something seemed 'odd', but I couldn't say what - apart from the darkness. There seemed to be a good sized audience. But hang on, if it was dark, how did I know that? I seemed to somehow feel the presence of a large throng, a kind of general but not loud murmuration. As the film went on more noises became apparent: the continual banging of the door to the gents, to the left of the screen. The women's toilet door, to the right of the screen was, by contrast, mercifully silent.

As we watched - accompanied by the projection breaking down every 10 minutes or so - the truth gradually made itself apparent. The Biograph, whilst indeed being a cinema, had a secondary function (or primary function); it was a gay knocking shop.

When first the projector broke down and the lights came on one couldn't help but notice a couple of things. There was a sudden cacophony of seats slamming down and, rather than the audience then making a noise, it all fell rather quiet - quieter than when the film was showing! Also, I couldn't help but notice the three girls I was with comprised 75% of the female audience. At least, I only spotted one other female in the audience, all the remainder being male. When the lights went down and the film continued, the audience sprang into life again. There was a kind of seething, people were moving about in the dark, clambering over the seats - we had apologies from somebody clambering over into our isle. Then there was that incessant banging of the door to the Gents. Every time the film broke down (frequently) and the lights came up, all activity stopped; only to resume again as soon as the lights went down.

During one of these lights up, the rather elderly man from the box office appeared bearing his sparse collection of refreshments in a tray illuminated by a dim and flickering lamp. Apparently he did double duty as the usherette.

The film staggered on to its conclusion, the lights came up and there was a general stampede for the exit. Having avoided being crushed to death in the rush, we made our way out through the foyer. The last thing I remember being the elderly 'usherette', now back in the box office, regaling the departing audience with his opinions: "I don't know why you bother coming here. Why would anyone want to come here?"

Monty Python in real life?

[PrincessB]

it was a gay knocking shop.

I can't match that. I can try but I can't match it.

Pale Rider - Which is a pretty decent film except when I saw it at the pictures.

In a half full cinema we had: Bear in mind this is the old days and smoking was allowed.

Back row - quite a few guys with dreadlocks and joints.
Middle row - The one with the cough
Further forward - Me & soon to be split up with partner

The sound - Someone had turned the bass up and the Dolby on backwards. As we all know 'old Dolby used to boost the higher spectrum range of the audio and then when played back would reduce it again to make the sound normal' when you turn it off, you get a super boosted metalic noise from rivers, rain, and anything else high frequency.

With the bass boosted out, the cinema shook when horses hooves hit down. The downside of this acoustic mess was that I could barely hear the dialogue.

Not a problem as the man with cough would try to barf up a lung at 90 second intervals while the smoking possie would add handy coments such as 'Clint Eastwood man' while lighting another joint.

At the halfway point, the coughing man had such a huge spasm, the entire row of seats collapsed.

Everyone took it really well, he moved to another row and carried on coughing, the smokers kept going to the point where it was getting properly foggy in the cinema and with the sound so out of kilter I don't think anyone had much idea of what was going on with the film proper.

It's been well reviewed so I might revisit it. Seem to recall it had Jaws from James bond and some really impressive shots of old style gold mining using water jets to break up the soil.

B.

[UncleIan]

I'll never forget when some git in the cinema dropped a real humdinger of a silent fart during 'The Da Vinci Code' - just at the moment when Tom Hanks was telling the lassie that she was the Saviour.

Kind ruined the film for the audience.

You were watching it in your home cinema on your own weren't you.

[bungeejumper]

Aaaah, the weird and wonderful films we used to watch back in early seventies Birmingham, where I did my first degree. A couple of miles up the road from the university was a very scruffy cinema called the Cinephone, which sat on a plot of scrubby land that was clearly waiting for the loadsamoney developers to buy it up for a high-rise estate.

The Cinephone was widely known as the Pornophone, and not just because it had painted its entire outside wall in a vibrant shade of blue. A clear hint to its potential clientele, who would travel in from all over town to watch such soft-porn classics as Emmanuelle IV, V or VI, or Run Virgin Run (a peculiar German hybrid that resembled an extended Benny Hill oompah band romp, but with real boobs and bums. Er, allegedly. )

But that wasn't why we visited the Pornophone. Every six weeks or so, it would put on a seriously good art film for one night only - Fellini, Truffaut, Bergman, Antonioni, Wim Wenders, Bunuel, the whole gang - and we'd go down to see it. We never quite understood why the cinema punctuated its usual dirty-raincoat regime with these wondrous offerings, unless it was trying to make the occasional quarterly tax loss? But it sure as hell confused the usual clientele!

There'd be maybe 200 dirty macs in the stalls when the film started, and within 15 minutes there'd be a lot of coughing and grumbling, and within half an hour they'd all have banged their seats and left the cinema in disgust at the obvious lack of tits and bums. Not to mention all these foreigners talking earnestly in subtitles. What was the world coming to?

And by the time the lights went up again there'd be just the student audience left - maybe thirty of us - and the front of house would already have shut up shop and gone home, and we'd have to leave via the fire escape.

Ironically, it was at the Pornophone that I first saw Last Tango in Paris. Equally ironically, the notorious butter scene had been taken out by the local censors, leaving a gaping non-sequitur in the plot where the turning point of the story ought to have been. You can't rely on anything, can you?

BJ

[Itsallaguess]

Just reading on Roger Ebert's film-review site this morning that a Jan 2019 release called 'Serenity' has already been labelled worst-film of the year, and we're only 4 weeks into it....

The premise of the awfulness hinges solely on a huge twist at the end of the film, but given that it's a relatively high budget number, with a host of star names, then I think it's got to be worthy of a mention on this thread, even if none of us have actually seen it yet.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who does so, although given that I have read about the twist already, and given it's large impact on the film, and the viewers by all accounts, then I suggest that we perhaps try to keep a lid on that aspect if at all possible....

Of course I can't wait to watch it...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[mickeypops]

City of Angels. Nic Cage - why?

[Percol351]

I suspect I must have seen worse but maybe my brain has scoured the memory to save my sanity. I seemt o vaguely recall a musical about a bunch of explorers (?) that discover a lost/undicovered tribe/land in the arctic or Antarctica or certainly frozen wastes, and how the male lead eventually goes back there . Total twaddle. I cant even find it with a google search.

didds

Was it - The island at the top of the world - starring Donald Sinden ???

Regards,

Percol

[didds]

I suspect I must have seen worse but maybe my brain has scoured the memory to save my sanity. I seemt o vaguely recall a musical about a bunch of explorers (?) that discover a lost/undicovered tribe/land in the arctic or Antarctica or certainly frozen wastes, and how the male lead eventually goes back there . Total twaddle. I cant even find it with a google search.

didds

Was it - The island at the top of the world - starring Donald Sinden ???

Regards,

Percol

could be! Im not prepared to pay £9 on amazon etc to find out though! LOL

didds

[OLTB]

Maid in Manhattan - my 11 year old (at the time) step daughter wanted to watch it and I fell asleep very quickly.

God it was awful.

My Dad also walked out of Cats about half way through the performance muttering something like 'waste of money' and 'absolute drivel' and waited in the bar for everyone else. What a star

Cheers, OLTB.

[PinkDalek]

Was it - The island at the top of the world - starring Donald Sinden ???

could be! Im not prepared to pay £9 on amazon etc to find out though! LOL

Here's a free trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjHnvAHr3is

Don't think it was a musical but the score was by Jarre.

[tea42]

Apart from the Double, La La Land..

[SalvorHardin]

For me it has to be "The Phantom Menace". I mean how badly could you screw up Star Wars?

Spaceships, blasters, chases, snappy one-liners? No. It gave us trade disputes and turned The Force into a disease.

The Simpsons were right on the money when they did a piece on the new Cosmic Wars film ("Worst Cosmic Wars ever"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lPG1u6EbiY&t=63s

So bad were the sequels that The Simpsons had another dig with Cosmic Wars episode 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHoRl5rAs8U

[didds]

ah - no then. the film i was thinking about was definitely a musical

didds