Finally, here’s a stunt book whose stunt I wouldn’t mind doing myself. Every day, for 365 days, Aussie EMPIRE magazine critic Michael Adams watched at least one bad movie, in hopes of finding a flick worthy of the dubious honor as cinema’s all-time stinker. His efforts are chronicled in SHOWGIRLS, TEEN WOLVES, AND ASTRO ZOMBIES: A FILM CRITIC’S YEAR-LONG QUEST TO FIND THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE.
Mining the bottom 100 on the IMDB and taking recommendations from well-versed industry folks like John Landis, Joe Dante and a couple of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 vets, Adams assembled a list, grouped them into niche batches, and let a bingo game determine what he’d watch next.
With chapters divided up into months, Adams recalls all the pain and suffering that followed. For the most part, each film is discussed briefly, with many as short as a paragraph and some as little as a sentence, often leaving you want to hear a bit more about a particularly hideous feature.
The movie-a-day concept has been done before (such as in Bryan Senn’s all-horror A YEAR OF FEAR, which I have not read), but what Adams brings to it that’s unique is, whenever possible, getting the skinny straight from the source, talking to those responsible for the atrocities. Among those sharing what the hell they were thinking are BABY GENIUSES‘ Bob Clark, HOWLING II‘s Philippe Mora and HOUSE OF THE DEAD‘s Uwe Boll.
Of less interest is the personal narrative Adams weaves into it, such as his wife losing her job and his attempts at landing a TV gig. No offense, but I just wanted to read about bad movies. With some exceptions, such as his comments on DA HIP HOP WITCH, the book isn’t what I’d deem funny, but more along the lines of friendly. (And with the author being Australian, it’s odd to see words like “po-faced” and “pilloried” bandied about.)
Adams’ big mistake is approaching the book as if it would be read by newbies to the world of lower-echelon cinema, whereas those most interested in it are likely to be fans of bad movies already, who don’t need to be told Ed Wood’s backstory again. It’s like he’s preaching to the choir.
With its share of plusses and minuses, SHOWGIRLS, TEEN WOLVES, AND ASTRO ZOMBIES left me feeling iffy toward it. To borrow an oft-employed phrase from Adams, it wasn’t terrible. —Rod Lott
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d throw my support behind Waterworld….there are worse movies, but none that combine awfulness with interminable length…that has to be factored in…
There’s a ton of dreck out there, more than any one person could ever watch. But a truly bad film is one in which the people involved aspired to make something much better. That’s why the Ed Wood films stand alone as some of the truly bad ‘bad films’–because of his earnestness in making these films. And that’s why I would pick Lost in Translation as the worst movie ever made–because they thought they were making something great instead of one of the most shallow and pretentious films imaginable (Mystic River is a close second).
Any film that begins with a close-up of Scarlett Johanssan’s barely-covered backside is AUTOMATICALLY disqualified from being the worst anything.
That said I REALLY get uncomfortable when people start writing these kind of comments, because they always insist on doing so in a manner that suggests that are writing an objective fact rather than a subjective opinion. In so doing they say much more about themselves than the subjects of their ire.
LOST IN TRANSLATION isn’t the worst movie ever made, because there is no such thing as “the worst movie ever made” and if there were that judgment would have to come from a person who actually saw every single film ever made in order to make the accurate comparison. What there is instead is a well-made (unless you’re willing to suggest that the film fails on a technical level as well, which I think could be argued as being objectively inaccurate), occasionally transcendent work of one woman’s personal expression that you personally didn’t care for. The only way for it to be considered the “worst movie ever made” would be to ignore the opinion of everyone else who had seen it in deferment to your own and that strikes me as being on just the wrong side of overly ego-centric.
of course I was only using the title of the book that Rod was reviewing; i.e; ‘A Film Critic’s Year-Long Quest to Find the Worst Movie Ever Made’. And I was trying to make the point that really bad movies aren’t the dreck that’s delivered by the truckload to video stores, but the movies that are meant to be great but fall far short, and of course I was just using an example that fell far short for me, and of course I was just having fun with the whole thing. Should’ve been pretty obvious to everyone but a complete nitwit, but your response sure says a hell of a lot about you.
Sadly, I remain an incomplete nitwit. I’m still three credits short.
And I apologize Dave, you were the unfortunate victim of what happens when I’m in a grumpy mood and someone on the internet pushes one of my red buttons. Of course, you’re right to say your intentions were obvious, but as obvious as they were they still annoyed me and I vented instead of counting to 3 and letting it go….
C’mon, we all know the worst movie ever made is the John Edwards sex tape.
Really? I found his performance to be both playful and insouciant.