Worst of the Worst

I watch a lot of movies, as anyone who has read this blog knows. Admittedly, I watch a lot of bad movies in my search for the good ones. And in the realm of sci fi/fantasy, my personal favorite, there is no shortage of badness. Watching bad movies isn't always a bad thing, of course. You've got your "so bad it's good" category, which includes Snakes on a Plane and Doom, among others. As an aspiring writer in the field of sci fi/fantasy, I also benefit from seeing bad movies just so that I can learn from their mistakes (Underworld, Bloodrayne, I'm looking at you here).

Compare, for example, Grindhouse and Shoot 'Em Up. Grindhouse, as I've said, was amazing. Made with the specific intent to be laughably bad, these movies embraced the badness and went for sheer entertainment value. I can respect that. The action was over-the-top and often pretty cool (particularly with Planet Terror), the plots were intentionally terrible, and all of it was pretty funny. By contrast, Shoot 'Em Up was a movie I'd hoped would fall into the first category, but ended up firmly in the second. It looked like it would be a smart, hip take on the mindless action movie, both an ode to action and a satire of action. Instead, it was just a failure. First, it wasn't funny. For a movie that was clearly made tongue-in-cheek, the writers have little to no sense of humor. Bad puns and air-quote "witty" remarks abound. Sure, make a line or two completely groan-inducing; don't make EVERY FUCKING ATTEMPT AT HUMOR groan-inducing. It's like they wrote up a script with a bunch of "insert joke here" lines, filled them in temporarily with bad jokes, then forgot to revise them before filming. And don't get me started on the whole gun control message. This movie should have had no plot; it would have been much better for it. Don't give me a plot - not in this type of movie. Just put me in the middle of some whiz-bang action, and send me on my way. That's all they had to do. But instead they tacked on some leftist political crap. It's like they wanted to celebrate gun violence and admonish gun violence at the same time. Frankly, it was fucking offensive to me as a viewer. Still, I could learn from those mistakes, and some of the action was passable, even entertaining. That's why I wouldn't rate this movie below a C- or D+.

But there are other movies -- unspeakably bad movies, where the badness has no redeeming value. Sometimes, to borrow a phrase, the movie is simply an unmitigated crap-gargle. And today I will list the worst of the worst. My worst of the worst, mind you; there are many necessarily bad movies I have never seen, and will not be on this list. For instance, I have never (and will never) watched any of the following:

Gigli
Norbit
Little Man
Glitter
Big Mama's House 2
Daddy Day Camp

With that caveat, here are the worst movies I have ever seen:

5. Judge Dredd
Laughably bad. The thing was, I expected this to be pretty good at the time. I was way wrong. "I am the law!" still cracks me up, though.

4. Catwoman
Saw this in the theater against my will. If you haven't seen it, I can't begin to describe how bad the plot is. I mean you've got Catwoman, a superhero, essentially, taking on...what? Sharon Stone, evil cosmetics lady? Um...why? And how is this lady supposed to be able to fight Catwoman? Because the makeup makes her face really strong? Seriously, that's what they came up with. Snore.

3. Van Helsing
What do you get when you combine the greatest and most memorable monsters ever created, a legendary badass monster fighter, a couple of decent stars, and a huge budget? Gypped. If this movie had ANY semblance of decent plot, or ANY semblance of story development, this could have been awesome. Instead, it sucked mega balls.

2. Ultraviolet
Not much I can say that I haven't already said about this one. Suffice it to say, this was one of the most monumentally stupid and plothole-leaden movies ever made. I wanted to fashion a rope out of my Twizzlers and hang myself, but there weren't enough in the bag.

1. Freddy Got Fingered
Hands down, the worst I've ever seen. Descriptions fail me. Oh hell, I'll give it a shot. Imagine your grandmother, right? Imagine nailing each of her hands and feet to a wall, then stabbing her in the neck with a broken shard of glass until her head falls off, then having sex with her severed head. That's about what watching this movie is like. (And, I'm told, that is actually one of the deleted scenes) Tom Green's writing process on this movie must have been something like this: "What is the most horrifying thing I can think of? That will be the next scene. Then, what could possibly be worse than what I just came up with? That will be the following scene." And so on, and so on.

Never, ever, ever watch this movie.