The Silver Screen Oasis

I wish we could list films from the 1970s and beyond.

IMO, the golden age of rotten studio films was from the 1960s to the early 1980s. So many plump, juicy turkeys: those wonderful Irwin Allen productions...the Ross Hunter-produced "women's pictures"...the string of big-budget musical flops...Allan Carr...Pia Zadora...Liz and Dick (save Virginia Woolf)...and on it goes...

-Stephen

For me, the only criteria for determining "the worst movie ever" is to what extent it bores me. There is nothing more infuriating and frustrating than sitting through a horribly boring move.
That said, here's a quick list of some of the movies that have bored me to tears:
1. THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)
2. THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952)
3. AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (1956)
4. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
5. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
5. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
6. FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)
7. GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT (1947)
8. ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)
9. MARNIE (1964)
10. HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON (1952)

Well the 2 worst pre-1970 films I've seen weren't major studio pictures so they don't count for this. 1934's Maniac and 1966's Manos: The Hands of Fate are both completely awful, but they are so shoddily made that they move into the so-bad it's good territory.

As for films that were major studio pictures and I think are terrible, here goes:

Not So Dumb (1930) - I had really high hope for this given how much I love Show People and The Patsy, and King Vidor's work in general. But this movie was terrible. It was the first film that Vidor directed with sound(Hallelujah was filmed silent), and it's obvious he wasn't comfortable yet. Lots of bad takes, flubbed lines, and odd cuts. Marion Davies is ok, but everyone else is completely awful. I wonder what the backstory to the making of this is. One of the most poorly made films by an actually great director I have ever seen.

The Producers (1968) - Loud, shrill, and stupid. Mel Brooks annoys me.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - I wouldn't call it the worst, but it's the one classic film that is revered by so many, that I just can't get into at all. I've now seen it twice, and even watched it in a theatre, and still nothing. Long, slow, and no character development. I really like David Lean, but I never want to see this film again.

srowley75 wrote:
* The Gang's All Here (1943) - Busby Berkeley throws subtlety out the window and stages some choreography that'll blow your mind. Sigmund Freud would've had a field day. And if the choreography isn't wild enough for you, there's Carmen Miranda!

Rowley, old chum, you really bowled my over with this inclusion on your list!
I mean, with The Gang's All Here, you've got an opening performance featuring the incomparable Carmen singing "Brazil" (back when it was still a fairly new show-stopper), then we have Eugene Pallette surfing N.Y. nightclubs, Edward Evrett Horton & Charlotte Greenwood getting all maggie& jiggsish with each other, and Benny Goodman warbling through "Paducah".
And good old Busby is arguably just much more Busbylicious here than he ever was anywhere else! And really, did anyone ever expect Mr. Berkley to be subtle? If he ever had been, would Hollywood have ever mythologized his name into an international (if spoofish) recognition?
I know that different strokes make for better horse races, to splice my metaphors, but I can't imagine how this one could qualify for anybody's definition of "worst"!

Gone With the Wind. Four hours of a selfish woman behaving selfishly and ends up being selfish. Fiddle-de-de...

Difficult question, because I've always thought that the worst movie is no movie at all.

I film I currently cannot abide is "The Sound of Music" (1965) which used to be a favorite when I was in my teens.

A film I watched recently and I found terribly boring was "Bye, Bye Birdie" (1962). Ditto "Mardi Gras" (1958). Both flawed, with boring plots and with some bad, lackluster performances.

And -now many are going to lynch me for this- one film I could not finish watching because I could not stand any longer its characters and general unpleasantness -I tried hard not to turn it off but midway I was through with it- is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1967) Too stagy and claustrophobic, too histrionic performances, a neurotic atmosphere, sick people... I'm not even trying to give it a second chance. And the weird thing, as I've mentioned it before, is that objectively Taylor and Burton give terrific, tour-de-force performances, but they're unbearable. Same thing happened to me with Cronenberg's "Crash" (1996). It was a sacrifice to sit through the whole film and not leave the Cinema. But that's me.

Methinks people are naming movies they don't like rather than just plain bad movies. We're supposed to winnow out movies that might be redeemed by something outstanding. Such as Julie Andrews' singing, David Lean's direction, etc.. I would put "Citizen Kane" and "Rebel Without a Cause" near the top of my list because of my distaste for the two, but wouldn't call them awful movies.

That said, after much thought, I have to second John Wayne as Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror". Haven't seen it in years, but I alternate between shuddering and laughing when I think about it. Arg...

Try and find the common thread running through these "Classics!"

1. Panic in Year Zero (1962)

2. Beach Party (1963)

3. Muscle Beach Party (1964)

4. Bikini Beach (1964)

5. How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)

6. Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)

Goodnight all,

Hollis

P.S. Dewey, except for #5, #6 and #8, you nailed it!

Mr. O'Brady wrote:
That said, after much thought, I have to second John Wayne as Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror". Haven't seen it in years, but I alternate between shuddering and laughing when I think about it. Arg...

Ironic, though, and a touch bizarre, to consider that the locations upon which The Conqueror was shot had been previously used for nuclear detonation tests, and that many of the performers and location-crew members died of radiation-source diseases in the decades that followed.
It's enough to make me wonder if that had any accelerating effect on John Wayne's death by lung cancer, or on the rapidly declining mental & physical health of Howard Hughes during his last years.

Hollis put forth the challenge: Try and find the common thread running through these "Classics!"

Could it be that they all originated from the incredible American International Pictures? And you still think PANIC IN THE YEAR ZERO is worse than THE SOUND OF MUSIC????
Have a great Fourth, my friend!

I cannot tell you how pleased I am to read that quite a few people don't like The Sound of Music. So it's not only me????!!!! I had been pelted with virtual tomatoes in the past (on a different forum) when I mentioned that I found that film awful....

Another film, I would add to the list is The Inn of the 6th Happiness. I saw it once on British TV during a rainy afternoon. It was so unbelievably bad, I just giggled from beginning to end. Bergman's performance is a sight to behold. She spends the whole film running her arms extended and calling: "Chiiiiiiiiildren! Chiiiiiiiiiiiildren!", looking incredibly wooden....(OMG! where is the wonderful actress in Gaslight or Autumn Sonata...). I just couldn't stop laughing when Curt Jurgens arrived as a Chinese warlord!!!!

How about the exquisitely jaw-dropping African operetta Golden Dawn (1930)?

Or the so-called classics Random Harvest (1942) and An Affair to Remember (1957)?

In Random Harvest, poor amnesia victim Ronald Colman wanders around going, "goodness, I wish I could remember who I was," while his great love, Greer Garson, never tells him, because it might upset him.

In An Affair to Remember, poor crippled Deborah Kerr never tells her great love Cary Grant that she got hit by a cab because it might upset him.

By the way, you know how Cary becomes a Great Painter in that last film? Did you see those paintings? At the end Deborah tells him, "Darling, if you can paint, I can walk," and I said, "oh, hon, if he can paint, I can fly!"

Hey, Hollis --

The Immutable Essence of the Universe, aka Timothy Carey, is in two of your selections.

Now you've just gone too far!

Tut, tut, ChiO ---

Contrarian that he was, I'll bet that The Mighty Tim would have been pleased at the thought that he was in at least two of someone's least favorites.

Actually, maybe not. He was not amused that Frank Zappa once said (to Steve Allen) that he had written the music for "the worst movie in history", which was a reference to THE WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER, a film that Carey wrote, directed and starred in.

Of course, to put that comment into context, Zappa said it in the late-'50s/early-'60s, so it was before THE SOUND OF MUSIC was filmed.

"Contrarian"? Or simply an idiosynchratic, eccentric GENIUS?