This is a movie about the town Donald Trump's family came from in Germany. It was without a single interesting scene. Truly. It reminded me of the sort of documentaries they used to make us watch in assemblies in middle school. The people were dull: they made wine, they butchered hogs, they practiced for a play. Not one interesting comment was elicited by the film maker.
There was so little going on in this town, in fract, that they took some of them to Pittsburgh (Kallstadt is also the ancestral home of Heinz (ketchup) where we watch them go through the Heinz factory and then sit at a Pittsburgh Pirates game. Then on to New York where they march in a German-American parade and admire Trump skyscrapers.
You would think this might have been quaint or quirky or clever. It was not.
Trump is in a few scenes where he says his dad was great, his grandmother was great, the town was great. He's great. Horrible waste of two hours.
However, not everyone agreed with me. This film won an award for best first documentary by a woman.
What was the worst movie you ever sat through?
39 comments:
Even the bit you shared told me I'd not want to see this, Patti. It sure doesn't sound like anything that would capture my attention. Sad, too, because documentaries can be so interesting if they're done well.
Oh, there are so many. The 1980s was a time when I would watch almost anything, and I have lists of movies seen that I rated BOMB after BOMB.
One that stands out among the terrible Japanese horror and other crap was a little gem called THE ALPHA INCIDENT, starring a nearly comatose Ralph Meeker, made by the hideously untalented Wisconsin "auteur" Bill (GIANT SPIDER INVASION) Rebane.
See, this space probe brings back spores which could destroy all life on Earth as we know it. (After watching this, I wished they had.) They are being transported across country by train, but when this is discovered a lonely desert train station (where Ralph "works") is quarantined while scientists look for a cure. If you fall asleep your brain expands and explodes so you need to take amphetamines to stay awake. I wished I had some.
The entire cast is Ralph, apparently the station master, a toothless Gabby Hayes wannabe who broke one of the spores, an obnoxious stud and a girl ("Introducing Carol Irene Newell" - possibly the worst actress in history) stranded there, and a scientist or two. A highlight was Ralph falling asleep, followed by his brain falling out! (I know, this makes it sound way more entertaining than it was.)
Finally, the scientist falls asleep, but it turns out he's immune, but in an "ironic" twist (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT) that is the most blatant NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-ripoff ever, he is blown away by government men. (END SPOILER)
Leonard Maltin gave this dreck TWO STARS! His review, it has always seemed to me, indicated that he'd read the summary rather than actually watching it.
I thought I was the only one noticing that, Jeff. I used to get his book every year until I figured it out.
I love docs and we saw a good one called OBIT about how the NYTs writes their obits.
There are too many Bad Movies that would qualify for an answer to your question. I'm going to go with REDS with its "Intermission."
Perhaps, Monster a go go was the worst film I ever sat through in its entirity
I can't imagine why you chose to go to that film, Patti. Was it the only one available? Jeff, for a film that was really awful, you sure spent a lot of time telling us about it! Not sure what the worst film I ever saw is, but HEAVEN'S GATE is certainly up there, as is PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.
Sometimes I intentionally watch a bad movie because it has the dubious distinction of being so bad it's entertaining. Unintentional hilarity. PLAN NINE and everything that Ed Wood, Jr made are good examples. But for a movie that I sat through thinking it would improve or just because I didn't have the guts to walk out of the theater (which I have done only three times in my life) I would pick a movie called THE SINGING FOREST. It tells the story of a gay man who believes he is a reincarnated Nazi and is also convinced that his daughter’s fiance was his gay lover in a past life. A tasteless and stupid plot if ever there was one. It's also probably the most technically inept movie I've ever had the misfortune to endure. There is horribly sentimental classical music taken from ancient recordings played at deafening levels over dialogue, a scene shot at a rocky sea coast where the sound of the waves drowns out every line of dialogue, the bad lighting in every single interior scene, and a scene where a dog barks non-stop in an apartment next door making it a ludicrous distraction and yet none of the actors once comments on it even in a sarcastic aside or ad lib. It's so awful it made me angry. Yet I watched it to the end sort of fascinated and horrified at how inane and inept it all was.
Rick, I figured few here would have seen it and I was able to look at a critique I wrote for a friend in 1985.
Heaven's Gate would be on my list, as would another that many profess to love, Eraserhead, which gave me a huge migraine.
Some slasher-type horror movies can be entertaining, especially if they have a sense of humor. Then there is evil garbage like Maniac, starring Joe Mantell, which was just sick and degrading, and left me wanting a shower.
Rick, I figured few here would have seen it and I was able to look at a critique I wrote for a friend in 1985.
Heaven's Gate would be on my list, as would another that many profess to love, Eraserhead, which gave me a huge migraine.
Some slasher-type horror movies can be entertaining, especially if they have a sense of humor. Then there is evil garbage like Maniac, starring Joe Mantell, which was just sick and degrading, and left me wanting a shower.
Correction - Joe Spinell.
I guess Viva La Muerte doesn't count because I walked out on it less than half way through. Wretched excess doesn't begin to describe it. The movie that pops into my head as the worst I ever sat all the way through is The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Food, sex, nudity, and violence--not necessarily in that order.
--Deb
I walked out on Lethal Weapon, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I know, I know. The last was a mistake.
Hated the COOK too and might have bailed on that.
"His dad was great, his grandmother was great, the town was great, he's great."
Hmm. I heard somewhere they are all YUGE!
"Horrible waste of two hours."
Potentially, a horrible waste of four to eight years.
@TrumpSacrifices
The older we get, the more likely we are to walk out of a movie. In the theater, we've also walked out of shows at intermission.
The last movie I remember walking out of was the one all the critics loved where people were zombies but still sort of functioning without killing everyone they came across. Our review: we're too old for this.
Found it: WARM BODIES.
Let me try this again. My postings don't always show up on your blog.
I walked out of Scent of a Woman and recently Swiss Army Man. I like David Lynch but wouldn't sit thru Eraserhead again.Never thought Heavens Gate was that bad just self indulgent with scences going on way too long.
In didn't mind SWISS ARMY MAN but hated SCENT!
I usually only watch movies on Netflix these days. It's so much easier to just pick another one rather than having to actually get up and leave the movie theatre. What happened to all the lovely movies we had a few decades ago that were actually entertaining?
Ann
Patti i know you admitted it was a mistake to walk out on "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" but...but...HOW COULD YOU ! ?, Catherine Deneuves astonishing ethereal beauty combined woth Michel LeGrands magical score and the incredible use of colour make that film a masterpiece. Next time you watch it try veiwing it in a double feature with Jaque Demys ludicrously under-rated follow-up "The Young Girls of Rochefort" it to is a quite joyous and beautiful movie, happy veiwing.
Yes, that was my cynical period!
Patti-the 8:36 posting under my name is not mine.
Here we go again!
Re: WARM BODIES. It was more of a teen romance/comedy but I enjoyed the film.
As I noted on FaceBook:
In a theater, CRASH, the Oscar-winning one (I rather like the Cronenberg adaptation of the Ballard novel). The most aggressively smug piece of pseudo-profound garbage ever to waste a decent cast (and one decent scene, thanks to the cast rather than the script or direction) I've suffered through...I"m still not sure why I didn't simply walk out.
[Hey, Charles!] On television, probably MONSTER-A-GO-GO, Herschell Gordon Lewis's attempt to package a no-budget amateur film where the crew ran out of what spare change they had halfway through the production, which he bought, tacked on a nonsensical non-ending to, and circulated to drive-ins. Seen thanks to MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, where I agree with some of the staff that it's actually worse than MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE or Coleman Francis's similarly inept films, which also have some MST3K creatives' votes for the worst films they presented. Though the Francis films were among the most mean-spirited they handled.
Worst films sat through in the so bad they're entertaining category on home video include REPTILICUS, the Dutch giant monster movie which remains the worst such ever, even given all the SyFyllis Channel attempts to to top it, and FANFARE FOR A DEATH SCENE, a busted pilot from some of THE OUTER LIMITS folks which uses a pretty brilliant cast to tell a deranged sort of espionage story...script as if Babelfish-translated back and forth several times in several different languages. Worst fully-professional films: both versions of FUNNY GAMES...the original the more direct insult to much of its audience, the latter less effective in part because the loathsome Michael Pitt stars.
I've been tempted a number of times, but have only walked out of three films I recall (so far)...THE FOOD OF THE GODS, CHILD'S PLAY (the Chuckie one), and NIGHTFALL (the first and marginally worse one with David Birney). That I was with other people who were as upset as I was, if for different reasons, probably tipped the scale.
Jeff puts me in mind of another insane made for TV movie, WHERE ARE ALL THE PEOPLE?, which one can usually see on YouTube...one of the most aggressively stupid sf films I can imagine, right up their with such anti-classics as JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (you see, there's another twin Earth on the other side of the Sun, only all the writing is backward, at least in English...). Lewis John Carlino wrote WHERE? and kept trying to get his script from Heinlein's overrated STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND made into a film in the 1970s...I suspect no one's sorry he failed. And Cimino chat reminds me that the ridiculous script passages in HEAVEN'S GATE were anticipated in his co-authoring the script for the aggressively stupid theatrical sf film SILENT RUNNING...
I have a copy of the soundtrack LP of YOUNG GIRLS OF R. Atrocious, one of the worst records in my parents' collection which I inherited. Never have tried to see either film for more than a few minutes. Might revisit. Doubt it. WARM BODIES didn't bother me too much, but I'm still middle-aged. Get off my housemate's lawn.
Pacino pretty insufferable in ANGELS IN AMERICA, too. The HBO version debuted the same weekend as the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA reboot. Two of the most overrated tv productions so far. Even if my appreciation for Mary Louise Parker (pre-starvation) and Katee Sackhoff is great.
Maltin hasn't written his book by himself for decades...Bill Warren has done a Lot of the fantasy/sf/horror films over the years, for example. Dunno, of course, how many they Just Don't Get To. But what's terrible to one can Very easily be mediocre to another.
Sorry, the Carlino idiot-film was co-written by him from his story, and is actually titled WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE? (Note: clumsier.) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072400/
What gets on my nerves is how critics sometimes delight in trashing movies specifically because of how entertaining they are, Michael Bays Transformer movies for instance are quite staggering and mind-blowing in their cinematic magnificence and visual grandeur and yet the critics dismiss them as garbage, i always thought THE most important thing for a movie to do was to entertain the audience ! ! !.
James-Transformer movies entertaining? Not to anyone over 15.
Normally if a movie is really bad, I just get up and leave. But I've only ever done that in a theater a couple of times, believe it or not. So I maybe have a tolerance for such things. Ha.
It's much easier, though, while watching at home, to just stop the thing and move on. Which I do - often. Especially with television shows. There is just so much drek.
Worst movie I ever saw: Well, one of them, at any rate, SECONDS starring Rock Hudson. I truly do believe this was Hudson's attempt at winning an Oscar. But the acting is so overwrought that it mucks up the whole movie and actually made me cringe. The whole thing just fell flat - and it should not have.
ELIZABETH - The Golden Age, a kind of sequel to the first ELIZABETH movie which was no great shakes to begin with. I stood this one for about 45 minutes, but when Clive Owen (as Walter Raleigh) started making goo-goo eyes at the queen, I had to turn the thing off and heave a sigh of relief. Nice costumes though.
Oh, and I'd add A CLOCKWORK ORANGE which I gave ten minutes of my life to - ten minutes I can never get back.
SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY is another Brit. movie I detested. Tried to watch it because everyone recommended it, but jeez. BORING doesn't quite cover it. More time wasted that I can never get back. The older I get, the less time I have to waste, let's face it. HA!
I'm sure there are some others, but my mind is wandering. :)
I think the overwrought performances in SECONDS were part of the point, but I can see how it could seem like bad camp to some.
Steve, i happen to think a lot of people over the age of 15 DO find the Transformer movies marvelously entertaining, if you look at the world box office for those films its obvious it cant all be 13 year-olds who are paying a billion dollars to see each one ! ! !.
Yvette just verified what the imposter commenter said, namely that ALL British made films are garbage, cheers Yvette. BTW, SECONDS is certainly dodgy in certain ways but it is a cult-item par-excellence.
One things for certain, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE, and ROBOT MONSTER do not, repeat DO NOT deserve to be called the worst films ever made, those three movies always make me fall about laughing whenever i watch them so to say that they are rubbish is an absurd contradiction.
I can't remember the title of the worst movie I ever saw. Something like Revolt of the Trapezoids. It was so cheap there was no dialogue, just word balloons as in a comic strip. Turgid pacing, no plot to speak of, and Z-grade effects.
The trolls are back.
Bob-that sounds bad enough to be fun. How do these things get made.
Clearly one funster under various pseudonyms. Meanwhile, Bob's film is Sins of the Fleshapoids
, a boho-camp ripoff of a slightly more professional ripoff of Jack Williamson's novel The Humanoids (The magazine two-parter had a better title: "With Folded Hands" "...And Searching Mind"). The film's "auteurs" the Kuchar Bros. are nowadays cult favorites and teaching film at the college level...
Why not come here and comment under your own name. The comments are (usually) fine but using false names is a bit off-putting.
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