Most folks put a lot of thought into picking their top movies. You see endless top-ten lists, especially in January, but the lists of a viewer’s least favorite flicks — although they do exist — are fewer and further between. Could it be that it’s tougher to pick the worst movies? After all, there are a lot more bad ones than good ones out there. Maybe it’s more difficult to define what a truly bad one is. Are the worst movies the ones that are poorly made, with shoddy direction and worse acting, with a script that was written by a catatonic chimp and editing that looks like a four-year-old went at it with his mama’s pinking shears? Or are the worst flicks the ones that offend at the most deeply visceral level, ones that leave you in the blackest pit of despair, without a shred of hope that you’ll ever see a good one again?
Joe Queenan at the Guardian gives this problem no small amount of thought. Mr. Queenan believes that there’s a difference between the truly bad films and the run-of-the-mill offal produced by Hollywood everyday. He writes:
Anyone can make a bad movie; Kate Hudson and Adam Sandler make them by the fistful. Anyone can make a sickening movie; we are already up to Saw IV. Anyone can make an unwatchable movie; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. And anyone can make a comedy that is not funny; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. But to make a movie that destroys a studio, wrecks careers, bankrupts investors, and turns everyone connected with it into a laughing stock requires a level of moxie, self-involvement, lack of taste, obliviousness to reality and general contempt for mankind that the average director, producer and movie star can only dream of attaining.
A generically appalling film like The Hottie and the Nottie is a scab that looks revolting while it is freshly coagulated; but once it festers, hardens and falls off the skin, it leaves no scar. By contrast, a truly bad movie, a bad movie for the ages, a bad movie made on an epic, lavish scale, is the cultural equivalent of leprosy: you can’t stand looking at it, but at the same time you can’t take your eyes off it. You are horrified by it, repelled by it, yet you are simultaneously mesmerised by its enticing hideousness. A monstrously bad movie is like the Medusa: those who gaze on its hideous countenance are doomed, but who can resist taking a gander?
Queenan goes on to name Micheal Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate as the worst film ever made. Why? Well, among other things it wrecked Cimino’s career and lost so much money it bankrupted an entire studio. But the deciding factor for Queenan seems to be the amount of hubris involved: the worst films are enormous follies, perpetrated by people who have monstrous egos and not a little dedication to the self.
Myself, I’m not so sure. Maybe we ought to be a little more objective in our judgments of film art (or the lack thereof). Maybe the ego of the filmmakers shouldn’t influence our critique, no matter how many self-aggrandizing interview the artist gives, or how many self-effacing ones. Seems to me that that if the artist’s personality can be overlooked when the art is good, the same should be possible to do it when the art is bad. Or, maybe not.
Anyway, what about it? Do you agree with Queenan, that not just any old bad movie will do? To be a truly bad movie, does it have to be a trainwreck? Does it have to be some over-paid, over-praised director’s biggest folly to qualify as a truly horrible piece of celluloid? Or are movies the sum of the qualities of their art direction, editing and sound?
On a related topic, do you — like apparently Queenan — gleefully go to movies you just know are going to be bad, do you hunt down the worst movies and then watch transfixed like a bug in the headlights? Or do you avoid them like the plague, not wanting to risk your hard-earned sanity (and cash) on a bad time?
Finally, what’s your pick for worst movie of all time? Inquiring minds want to know.
[Thanks to Jim Emerson for the tip--see the discussion of this topic on his blog Scanners here.]
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Bad Movie Mojo
Most folks put a lot of thought into picking their top movies. You see endless top-ten lists, especially in January, but the
lists of a viewer’s least favorite flicks — although they do exist — are fewer and further between. Could it be that it’s tougher to pick the worst movies? After all, there are a lot more bad ones than good ones out there. Maybe it’s more difficult to define what a truly bad one is. Are the worst movies the ones that are poorly made, with shoddy direction and worse acting, with a script that was written by a catatonic chimp and editing that looks like a four-year-old went at it with his mama’s pinking shears? Or are the worst flicks the ones that offend at the most deeply visceral level, ones that leave you in the blackest pit of despair, without a shred of hope that you’ll ever see a good one again?
Joe Queenan at the Guardian gives this problem no small amount of thought. Mr. Queenan believes that there’s a difference between the truly bad films and the run-of-the-mill offal produced by Hollywood everyday. He writes:
Queenan goes on to name Micheal Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate as the worst film ever made. Why? Well, among other things it wrecked Cimino’s career and lost so much money it bankrupted an entire studio. But the deciding factor for Queenan seems to be the amount of hubris involved: the worst films are enormous follies, perpetrated by people who have monstrous egos and not a little dedication to the self.
Myself, I’m not so sure. Maybe we ought to be a little more objective in our judgments of film art (or the lack thereof). Maybe the ego of the filmmakers shouldn’t influence our critique, no matter how many self-aggrandizing interview the artist gives, or how many self-effacing ones. Seems to me that that if the artist’s personality can be overlooked when the art is good, the same should be possible to do it when the art is bad. Or, maybe not.
Anyway, what about it? Do you agree with Queenan, that not just any old bad movie will do? To be a truly bad movie, does it have to be a trainwreck? Does it have to be some over-paid, over-praised director’s biggest folly to qualify as a truly horrible piece of celluloid? Or are movies the sum of the qualities of their art direction, editing and sound?
On a related topic, do you — like apparently Queenan — gleefully go to movies you just know are going to be bad, do you hunt down the worst movies and then watch transfixed like a bug in the headlights? Or do you avoid them like the plague, not wanting to risk your hard-earned sanity (and cash) on a bad time?
Finally, what’s your pick for worst movie of all time? Inquiring minds want to know.
[Thanks to Jim Emerson for the tip--see the discussion of this topic on his blog Scanners here.]