As I was trying to think of a top ten for this week I was drawing blanks. Then, I watched Death Wish for the first time. After all, if Sylvester Stallone wanted to remake it I felt it must be decent right? I had forgotten all about the comparisons made between last year’s The Brave One, which unfortunately dealt me the death blow.
Death Wish is a travesty of a film. It is so bad I didn’t even finish watching it. It pained me. I felt it was made to punish the audience as opposed to the baddies in the film. However, it’s not a film I would call the worst ever, not by a long shot. After all, at home it is always easier to stop a film before watching the entire thing. However, how often do you leave the theater before the film is over? Especially now days with ticket prices what they are?
The only film I ever paid for and walked out was the 1991 Steve Martin flick L.A. Story. I was with three friends and we collectively agreed it was time to leave as soon as Martin’s character started talking to a billboard. Is it the worst film I have ever “seen”? Does it qualify if I didn’t technically watch the entire thing? Hmmmm…
Following L.A. Story, the majority of films I paid for in theaters I enjoyed, but then again I didn’t go to a ton of movies until I started RopeofSilicon.com. I did the meat of my movie watching at home, where I felt I wasn’t wasting my money and my friends and I would go to the theater for the blockbusters, which weren’t always great, but the odds were normally better.
Since starting RopeofSilicon I have seen plenty of bad movies, and I sat through all but one of them, believing it was my job and my duty to the readers to suffer so they could live better lives.
The one movie I walked out of was 2004’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It took only a matter of five minutes for me to know this was going to be one of the worst movies I had ever seen and there were 115 minutes left. There were only a handful of us in the theater and I felt it would be rude to leave. Then it happened, an older critical couple stood up and left. I quickly followed and prayed for the well-being of that couple. They had saved me from certain doom and I only had to withstand 15 minutes. Again, since I didn’t watch the whole thing is it the worst film I have ever seen? It could have gotten much better, but based on the fact that there is only one positive review for the film I am sure I could get away with it. But I still am not sold.
Picking the worst movie you have ever seen is not easy. At least not for me. The trouble is that in the right situation even the worst movies can be entertaining. Take for example 88 Minutes. I slapped that flick with an “F”, but you give me a six pack and some friends and you can have a lot of fun with that flick. Hitman is awful, but same deal goes for that one.
Recent terrible films that I considered were Stealth and Over Her Dead Body. These are films that include no redeeming value. You can’t make fun of them they are so bad. Stealth actually almost made me quit this site (18 people gave that a positive review, 18 people I will never ask for a movie opinion).
I don’t watch a lot of spoof films so I can’t speak to their quality, but I can say Scary Movie and Scary Movie 3 were shit, but I dug the opening to the third one and chuckled a couple times in the first one so they don’t count. Jenny McCarthy’s Dirty Love involves Jenny running around a grocery store looking for tampons while dripping and slipping in her own blood… that one was pretty bad.
The Star Wars prequels are bad, but far, far away from the worst movie I have ever seen. Same goes for the much loathed Catwoman. Then you have the films people love to hate: Plan 9 from Outer Space, Showgirls and anything by Uwe Boll (I tried not to mention him, trust me), but the passionate hatred for these flicks only seems to make them more enjoyable.
