5. Plan 9 From Outer Space (1956)
Plan 9 from Outer Space is Ed Wood’s masterpiece of bad film. It’s filled with extremely obvious bloopers, some of the worst acting ever recorded, awkward dialogue, and a nonsensical plot.
Just about everything in this movie is memorable, but I’ll do my best to describe it in terms of plot and the structure the film follows.
The film opens (after random Criswell narration, of course) with a woman rising from the grave and killing two people shortly after her funeral. Bela Lugosi was married to the deceased and he goes walking around and I guess he’s supposed to be hit by a car but you never see it. Anyways he’s dead now.
Some policemen investigate things at the cemetery, including Tor Johnson, whose words are horribly slurred to a point in which you can’t understand him. Tor is confronted by two zombies—the male of which is played by someone who clearly isn’t Bela Lugosi—and they’re on his right and left so naturally he can’t escape. He’s killed.
Then there’s this man and woman sitting out on their porch. The man talks about how he saw UFOs and the government swore him to secrecy. He says they looked like “big cigars” though if you’ll notice they’re just your average low-budget flying saucers with absolutely no resemblance to cigars. You see them frequently in the film and you see the strings they’re held on almost as much. They fly around sets leaving shadows on the background and occasionally shaking uncontrollably.
A UFO lands, the Army attacks it, it goes away. Yada yada yada.
In connection to the famed bloopers, there’s the painfully obvious night to day changes between shots, which also point out the clear difference between Bela Lugosi and his double, hiding his face hoping that you won’t notice. There’s the airplane set which is no more than like a cardboard wall with a shower curtain. But I especially love the graveyard cet. Headstones shake when people run by and in one instance, it completely falls over, revealing its wooden base.
I recommend this movie to literally anyone. It will not disappoint.
4. Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
When I first began this list, I thought it couldn’t get any worse than Jaws: The Revenge. It’s yet another Jaws film, this time with the absolutely ridiculous plot of the shark actually trying to kill every member of the Brody family for how they’ve wronged its ancestors in the past.
The opening credits continue the tradition of having the shark swimming and the camera in its point of view. But strangely it goes both above and below water. I don’t get it.
Then it bites of Sean Brody’s arm as he tries to free up a buoy or something. He doesn’t realize he’s missing an arm and then, in a fit of awful acting, begins to scream when he sees the blood and ripped sleeve. To save our ears, the shark kills him.
Lorraine Gary is back as Ellen Brody, now a widow, who argues with her only living son, Michael, about what they should do. She reveals that though Roy Scheider died from a heart attack, it was the fear of the shark that killed him. Why? He killed two sharks himself. She comes to the conclusion that this particular shark is after the family. Apparently the sharks are Sicilian.
She moves with Michael’s family to the Bahamas. I know what you’re thinking. MOVE TO FUCKING KANSAS OR SOMETHING!!!! AWAY FROM THE FUCKING WATER!!!! But oh, the fact that great whites don’t go to the Bahamas is reassuring enough.
An awkward romance develops between Lorraine Brady and Michael Caine of all people, whom I heard missed his acceptance of an Academy Award he won because he was filming this movie. That’s just sad; you never like to see that kind of thing happen. The extent of their romance is this really strange dancing scene on a beach with a bunch of native people that goes on for way too long.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention. When their plane leaves from New England to the Bahamas, there are shots of the shark trying to follow the plane. I am not kidding.
The shark attacks a banana boat trying to get at Michael’s five-year-old daughter and misses horribly, eating an innocent bystander. As you can imagine, the effects are laughable. As someone once put it, “the singing sharks from The Muppet Show were more convincing.”
So it all comes down to one final confrontation. Michael Brody and his Jamaican assistant on their ship versus the shark. They try to bait it and the Jamaican dude is horrendously and brutally decapitated when the shark leaps fifteen feet into the air and brings him down. Michael Caine and Ellen arrive in a plane that lands in water, then the shark proceeds to eat the plane as they swim to the ship. When Michael Caine gets on the ship his shirt is completely dry. So they gear up to take on the shark with…sound? Well they flash this light and it makes a noise and the shark comes out of the water and roars in what I guess is pain, sounding kind of like an African lion.
Eventually things get more intense and then Ellen sees black-and-white flashbacks of the first Jaws movie—how can she see this if she wasn’t there again?—and in the most mind-blowing ending to a film, the shark virtually just explodes for no reason. When I first saw this movie back when I was like ten or whatever, I rewound the DVD numerous times to try and tell what the hell happened. I STILL DON’T KNOW. There’s a brief shot of what looks like wood about to go into the shark which I assume is from the front of the ship but that wouldn’t kill it and it CERTAINLY wouldn’t cause it to explode.
As I said, there was a time in my life when I thought this was the worst film ever made. I didn’t think it could get any worse. I mean how could it?
3. Stan Helsing (2009)
Of all the spoof movies that I’ve seen, it is safe to say that Stan Helsing is the worst. I watched it out of mere curiosity, knowing it would be bad but wondering just how awful it could be. I couldn’t believe the results.
The film begins with our unlikable titular protagonist who works at a video store. He has to go clean up an infestation problem in the bathroom which is of course just a person in a bug costume, following a terrible gross-out gag with a woman taking a shit. It sets the tone for a tasteless film.
So Stan, his ex-girlfriend, Kenan Thompson, and some other girl have to go do something on Halloween night.
What ensues is Stan looking over while stuck in traffic to a car which contains a little kid and a Chucky doll. The Chucky doll then begins to mime a blowjob with the kid. Now I’m not against gross-out jokes completely. Some of them are funny enough to make you not want to pull your eyebrows out, but when it’s as tasteless as a doll/midget/baby pretending to blow a little kid, that just crosses the line. I should have stopped watching right there, and I definitely considered. But Satan must have told me to keep watching.
Okay, so all the big slasher villains are in this movie. Except they’re not. There’s Freddy Krueger, known in the credits as Fweddy. There’s Michael Myers, who for some unexplained reason is wearing a yarmulke. Jason is referred to in the credits as Mason, Leatherface as Pleatherface, etc. It’s embarrassingly cheap and painfully bad. I honestly threw up when this movie ended.
Then they smoke pot in the car while driving around for no reason and they get in a car accident or something and they stop at this weird town. They go to a restaurant in which they are served by Leslie Nielsen in drag. And yes, folks, this is the comedy legend’s FINAL FILM. His presence adds no laughs to the film, as he has no remotely funny lines to say.
Everybody thinks Stan Helsing is Van Helsing, who is of course the character from Dracula who killed Dracula, and who killed just about everyone else in the movie Van Helsing. By the way, he did not kill Dracula in the novel. That is often miss-cited. Apparently he’s a descendant of the legendary vampire-hunter/scientist/monster-killer. It’s not explained well at all.
The group of friends performs karaoke at the bar/restaurant thing and they sing Johnny Cash’s classic “Ring of Fire”. It’s the most tolerable part of the movie. However, when they’re done, the townspeople get pissed, saying their town was destroyed years ago by a fire. So apparently they like nothing to do with fire. Even candles. The fact that this is not only mentioned once but actually happens to be a recurring joke just screams the lack of creativity of these writers.
So the monsters come to town and the townspeople want Stan Helsing to defend them. But the monsters don’t really do anything. There is a karaoke competition between the monsters and the group of friends. The friends win and the monsters are voted out of town or whatever, leaving in shame after performing a no less than disturbing dance number. And that’s the climax, I shit you not.
So what’s wrong with this film? In short, everything. Not a single joke is funny. I spent the entire film not laughing. The jokes are not only not funny, but they’re quite disturbing at times. And I know this is just a spoof comedy, but come on, give me a fucking plot for Christ’s sake! What the hell was that?!
2. The Room (2003)
The Room is an impressive mess. Its story and dramatic elements could just about amount to an interesting tragedy—I could actually see this being a play—but the worst acting in any film ever made and some of the most abominable dialogue ever written make this a hilarious comedy.
It’s written, produced, directed by, and starring Tommy Wiseau who has become a cult icon for this film. The plot is that Johnny (Wiseau) is engaged to Lisa, who’s cheating on him with Mark, who happens to be his best friend. As one can imagine, everything falls apart, shit hits the fan, and Johnny kills himself. That’s basically it.
But to appreciate The Room one must look at all the details. Like how in every single scene centering on male bonding they play football…but they don’t really play football, they just awkwardly toss it around. And in one scene one of the guys is injured in the worst physical acting I’ve ever seen.
The Room is a film of awkward, disturbing dialogue. In one scene, Johnny starts a conversation with Mark by asking: “How’s your sex life?” In another scene, Denny makes it clear that he wants to watch Johnny and Lisa have sex. Talk about awkward. And Wiseau manages to literally write a scene backwards. When he goes into the flower shop, the order of the dialogue that ensues is basically the opposite of what would actually happen in real life. If you don’t believe me, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOdjtiOMGbA The Room is a film in which a bunch of random things are thrown at you that have ultimately nothing to do with the plot or outcome of the film. Perhaps most notorious, Lisa’s mother tells her she has cancer, though it goes on never to again be mentioned. And then there’s the scene in which Denny is in trouble with a drug dealer and Johnny fights away the dealer. The whole purpose of this scene is so that Johnny is supposed to look like a father figure to Johnny, but the scene is taken over by Lisa’s mother who does nothing but bitch at Denny for using drugs. She doesn’t even know him!
Let’s not forget Johnny’s friend who mysteriously disappears halfway through the film, only to be replaced by a different actor who plays basically the same character.
Oh and to top it off, let me describe to you Tommy Wiseau. He’s hideously ugly and somehow that adds to the appeal. Look up the poster, it’s like he has a lazy eye or something. And yes, we get to see his bare ass in a sex scene. His bare, disgusting ass. And his accent! I heard it was because he moved around to a number of European countries as a kid and was never able to pick up a normal accent, but I don’t know if it’s true. However, I can tell you that it’s German mixed with Italian mixed with Russian mixed with Swedish. It’s amazing just to listen to, and it makes every memorable line such as “I’m fed up with this world” and “you’re tearing me apart, Lisa” that much more funny.
1. Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2009 I think)
To any of you that are unfortunate enough to read this blog, you may be disappointed that I'm not writing anything new on the worst movie ever made. However, I ultimately believe that I can't add much to what I wrote a few months ago. On top of that, I do not want to re-live my viewing experience by writing another review. Deal with it.
http://www.patrickjmullen.blogspot.com/2011/10/birdemic-shock-and-terror-worst-movie.html
