OMGJeremy

the OMGJ Staff Lists “Thirteen Bad Movies”

Originally this was going to be a mighty series of five installments that spoke of the Fifty Worst Movies – much like the Fifty Worst Video Games series.  But we had some setbacks.  In fact, we started compiling this list months ago, and we still only managed to write about a measly thirteen movies.  What happened, you ask?  Well, first we realized that we all watch movies for different reasons, and have different Film Tolerances.  When the Worst Games Articles were written, they were written by Gamers.  But none of us are really what you would term Film Enthusiasts.  Billy and Jeremy P delight in “B and lower grade than that movies.”  Jeremy and Amanda don’t really watch that many movies at all; Jeremy used to enjoy bad hentai whereas Amanda tries to only watch good movies.

Also good and bad films are highly subjective.  The B Movies are enjoyed by many and hated by many.  Some of our writers wrote of genuinely bad films – bad in production value, acting, plot or lack of one, etc.  Amanda mostly only wrote about films that made her angry and she thought for whatever reason that they were truly bad.  But they were also critically acclaimed and lauded by most of the people she knows.  So realizing that this would require a trace of Thought, we naturally lost steam.  We didn’t include a bunch of things because we second-guessed ourselves (sorry Lost in Translation!), or hadn’t ever finished watching the movie in the first place (many apologies, Crash Test), so we didn’t feel right including them.  Also, things started sounding redundant.  How many different ways can you describe something accurately as being a heap of some sort of poop without seeming sad?  As it turns out, probably about five times, but kids, we took it to thirteen anyway!!  Read on.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 (1993) – Jeremy

Just as a heads up, most of the movies I put on here will mostly be shit I watched as a kid. Mostly because that is the point in my life where I watched a TON of movies. TMNT 3 only qualifies as a movie in the loosest sense of the word, though. While I genuinely love the original TMNT movie (and still consider it one of the best comic book movies of all time), and even have a weird place in my heart for TMNT 2, I have absolutely nothing but sad pity for TMNT 3. It seems that whoever had creative control over Turtle movies at that point had long since tossed any notion of entertainment out the window, and was far more concerned with how many of the characters could be used for the toy line. The generic time travelling plot could have almost been cool if it weren’t for the fact that everything not involving the Turtles was painfully awful to bear witness to. And this was coming from a twelve year-old kid. I could only imagine the pain that the adults in the theater were enduring. It was a sad end to the Turtles movies, and an even more depressing ride home.

Here it is, the saddest trailer in the world:

Cube (1997) – Amanda

Now I am not going to be much help in this series of articles because I hate movies very easily.  I have a hair-trigger hate for cinema.  One instance of stupid plot or insufferable actress, and I am usually out the door.  So I have a lengthy list of movies I have stopped watching, but very few that I have sat through.  One such movie that I did watch in its entirety, and I have no idea why, was CUBE.  For ninety minutes, I watched people I couldn’t stand wander in and out of the same room with different lighting or occasionally a prop or something and try to act and make some sort of plot that I can’t remember because my brain angrily created its own bleach to scrub itself with when I failed to do the right thing and pour it into a hole I should have drilled through my skull instead of watch this thing.  I disliked this movie so much that I can’t even write clear, succinct sentences.  I hear that some people enjoy this waste of film, but well some people like eating dogshit as a daily routine.  I see no difference here.

In a rare change from the normal ways, this trailer makes it look way neater and more interesting than it really is.  I hated every second of the real film because the characters were intolerable.

Scarecrow Gone Wild (2004) – Billy

Rest easy knowing that this movie isn’t an hour of peppy scarecrows flashing tits.  This film is the usual story of teenager falling victim to a hazing gone wrong from a bunch of jocks that never have any character established because you know they are just going to get picked off one by one anyway.  After the young man is tied to the title Scarecrow and left for dead, his spirit somehow possesses the evil Scarecrow (yeah it happened to be an evil scarecrow) and he goes on bloody oh so bloody revenge.  Learning that the only way to stop the Scarecrow is to bring the owner of the soul out of his coma, they do so and things seem to be okay.  Then of course things are not okay, and there is a final battle and the goddamned Scarecrow somehow learns how to shoot LIGHTNING from his hands.  Though apparently his power is not UN-LIM-IT-TEDDDDDD and when somehow another soul occupies the scarecrow he does the honorable thing and offs himself, thus ending the scarecrow’s reign of terror.  I didn’t provide any spoiler alerts because you obviously don’t give a shit about anything if you watch this.  I own it on DVD, and have seen it enough times to admit it has some charm, but when Ken Shamrock has top billing… you’ve got a good idea of how the acting and he overall film is going to pan out.

Here is a trailer for it.

Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) - Jeremy

Already covered in a Netflix Instant Queue from a few months ago, I can still barely comprehend what I saw on my TV. A mishmash of a teen drama, and disgusting children’s comedy, nothing about GPK makes any damn sense. While I didn’t expect much from it, I at least felt that it should offend me on the same level that most awful children’s entertainment does. Amazingly it went even further than that, and somehow mesmerized me with its absolutely nonsensical compilation of scenes that barely fit together. All culminating in one of the most amazing climactic scenes in terrible cinema history. GPK The Movie is the very epitome of a car crash that you can’t stop staring at in movie form.

Feast your eyes on a small clip of cinemaaaagic!

Invaders from the Inner Earth (1974) - Jeremy P

This movie was the first thing I thought of when asked to add to this.  I found this movie in a $2 bin in Kmart back when I was in high school, and it’s possibly the most watched movie I own.  Not because it’s any good, mind you… but because it’s possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen.   Filmed in the 70s and costing about $14, Invaders from the Inner Earth is simply the story of a group of people, stranded out in the middle of a frozen nowhere while… well, something happens to the rest of the world, and their survival following this incident.  I think at least… that’s where the story starts out, but since nobody in this movie can act and the script might have been scrawled out on a McDonalds napkin, I’m not really sure what the whole point of the movie is.  Are they the last people alive? Possibly.  Nobody is at least nearby. What caused humanity to run randomly around the street while sirens blare at the start of the movie?  I’m not sure, but since the alien / invader presence is a red light shining on the wall, I’m not sure exactly what is causing anyone to react with more than a passing “huh.”  Speaking of which, why are the red light aliens even attacking the earth?  Somehow after 90 minutes, none of these questions are answered, but we do get to watch people drive in circles in their snowmobiles for about 20 minutes of it.  Still, I’ve watched this movie probably 50 times since the first painful viewing, and I never get tired of just how bad this thing really is.

"This image is not at all from the movie. I just couldn't find anything else for illustration. SORRY." -- Amanda

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) - Jeremy

After seeing the first completely not bad Mortal  Kombat movie, I was pretty excited to see what the next installment could come up with. After all, MKII was an amazing improvement over the original MK, so the movies should follow the same path, right? Wrong. MK Armageddon is a travesty of a movie that literally has not one redeeming quality to it. Not even a mud wrestling scene involving Sonya and Mileena could bring anyone in the theater’s interest above a mild “meh.” The rest of the movie devolved into a shitty techno music video with no semblance of continuity between each choreographed fight scene. The movie does manage to save the best for last, though, with an amazingly hilarious fight between Shao Khan and Lui Kang. Featuring some of the worst CG that has ever been put into a movie, it was as if the movie was going out of its way to make sure that you knew that it knew just how bad it was. It was like an extra kick in the stomach for the seven bucks I wasted seeing this pile.

The trailer is enough.

Hackers (1995) - Amanda

I am here to offer another unpopular opinion!  I despised this absolutely shitty “cult classic” and “longtime favorite” of many of my friends.  I have had to see this movie two or three times I think, never all at once because I would invariably leave in a rage, but I think if you put all the experiences together, I have seen the whole thing.  The subject matter was painful, the actors were annoying, my hatred of Angelina Jolie began within the first twelve seconds of seeing her smug fucking face in this goddamn movie.  Why did I have to live with people who thought this was so great??  They were such nice people except for this.  “Hey let’s watch Hackers again because we relate to the characters or something!”  I am not a grudge-holder but I am so close to holding one for having had to see this cinematic and cultural excrement.

Watching the trailer made me ball my hands into ANGER FISTS!

Solarbabies (1986) - Billy

I figured this might be a winner since the son of DOM DELUISE is in it… but sadly not.  Solarbabies is a very strange story that tries to fit in so much shit and fails on every level.  It is the future, and as usual in movies the future absolutely sucks and everyone is better off dead.  There is no water to be had, once again a common theme a few suckass films share.  Then you have this evil corporation.  This corporation is so evil (HOW EVIL ARE THEY?)… THEY ARE SO EVIL that they have opened up a series of orphanages with the intentions of recruiting children to their cause.

Then you have a bunch of kids who play “futuristic” street hockey who stumble upon a magical orb that does things like make a deaf kid able to hear, and produce rain indoors.  Evil corporation wants this thing, chases after kids who have it, rag-tag group of kids somehow defeat an entire army, and the orb returns to space (as apparently it is a living thing) and leaves behind a shit-ton of water.  The day is saved, and your mind is left rendered a puddle.  This movie is only proper for those who favor pure 80’s shittiness, or it could make for a fine drinking game whenever “Bodhi” (the name of the orb) is mentioned.  You’ll drink yourself to death, and you’ll be much better off for it.

Awful:

Masters of the Universe (1987) - Jeremy

I barely remember this movie at all. What I do remember is that it was on Cinemax a LOT when I was a kid, though. And that it had virtually nothing to do with the actual He-Man series I grew up watching. Dolf Lundgren played a fairly anemic looking He Man, while Skeletor looked more like a burn victim than the awesome villain from the cartoon. It also seemed that the idea of making an entire movie based in the He Man fiction was on the same level as snorting six pounds of coke, so the movie saw fit to introduce – yep – time travel. So instead of what kids actually wanted (cool He Man action and Battlecat. Mostly Battlecat, though), we got to see He Man and friends have wacky hijinks with some annoying teenage girl in an 80’s pop culture-filled world. I wish I could explain to you how little this made sense to me. This coming from a kid that could sit for hours and hypothesize why you could totally become a super hero if you fell into radioactive acid. The movie eventually found its way back to the He Man universe for a fairly cool final battle, but the damage had already been done. What could have been a cool fantasy/action movie for kids was relegated to listening to a whiny 80’s teenage girl have her period for an hour and a half. You know, what every eight year-old boy was into, right?

Kids (1995) – Amanda

Kids, I don’t even remember how popular it was but I saw it when I was about fifteen and it made me hate all of humanity for about five solid days.  It’s some RAWWW film about skateboardist teenagers who are sexually active and it rawly shows the raw stark reality of casual irresponsible sex between raw teens and their raw lives being raw.  It was strange being in the teenaged age bracket while watching this and feeling very stridently just how annoying teenagers really are.  I mean, probably by the end of the opening scene, I had developed a disdain for the foolishness of youth that makes the curmudgeonly adult version of myself darn proud.  It was a ridiculous movie that over-hyped itself on “keeping it real” and then being all OH NO THE AIDS IS EVERYWHERE that it was just, it was just the Worst Movie I was ever forced to sit through.  I really had nowhere else to go and I will never forgive Kids for making me despise all of my peers.  Although maybe I should be thanking it for making me construct an icy wall of hatred to keep all of their teenAIDS away.  Fuck off, Kids.  I still hate you.

The Happening (2008) – Jeremy P.

Dear M. Night Shymalan,

Fuck you.

I know it’s cool to hate on you currently, but I had defended you up until you released this pile of baboon excrement.  Everyone liked Sixth Sense, and nerds like us loved you for Unbreakable.  I personally didn’t care for Signs, but other people stand by it.  The Village sort of sucked, but at least it was worth watching, even if by this point everyone was looking for “the twist” that most of us figured out in roughly 30 seconds that time.  I might be the only person I know that loved Lady in the Water, but trust me — I loved it.  If that would have been released when I was younger, it would have held a place in my heart next to Labyrinth and the Never Ending Story.  But then you showed up smiling with The Happening, and you managed to throw together a trailer that made this movie look amazing… and then I saw it opening weekend and almost threw up in my mouth out of anger.

I’m not sure how you managed to throw together this perfect blend of complete mediocrity and wasted potential, but you deserve some sort of medal.  The first ten or so minutes of this movie are incredible… and then slowly it begins to dissolve.  I know it’s not your fault that Mark Wahlberg can’t act very well, but somehow under your watchful eye he is essentially a cardboard cutout.  Then you add in an amazingly bad performance by Zooey Deschanel, somehow making her completely charmless — no small feat indeed.  You could have still done alright with this, poor performances aside, I know I had faith that you could… but then  you take what could have been one of the best introductory sequences to a movie ever and completely wipe your ass with it.  Seriously, we’re going to watch Mark Wahlberg and his estranged wife wander the countryside while people wait for trees to move in the wind?  And then, after you trick me into watching the first 90 or so minutes of this trash — it just fucking stops?  Seriously?   I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry at a movie that it made me retroactively hate one’s entire body of work until I saw The Happening.

I hope you are happy sitting on your pile of ill-earned money, I see that you just released a movie about the devil in an elevator… well, I don’t think it’s possible to make it any worse than The Happening, so congratulations on your step back up, no matter how small it is.

Sincerely, Jeremy P.

Sunshine (2007) - Amanda

Hey do you guys like science fiction movies involving an array of characters who are all sort of annoying, but will die in exactly the order of which ones you hate the least, leaving only the ones you despise to live the longest?  Do you like intensely boring scenes and a ridiculous plot twist in the last I don’t know, ten minutes or so?  A plot twist that seems so random that it appears to be from an entirely different genre suddenly?  God and so stupid.  It was stupid.  Do you like these things because it seems like a lot of people do like it.  “Amanda, it was symbolic and artistic.”  Get out of my face because if that’s how it was meant to be seen, they really did it very badly and made a movie I never wanted to think about again into a movie that I hated so much that it was all I could think about for a while.  However, it was slightly watchable because that one actor looks like a lollipop and it is kind of funny to pretend that he really is a lollipop who works in films.  I just looked it up, I am talking about Cillian Murphy.

I have no problem with Cillian Murphy, generally speaking.  He’s good people.

Caress of the Vampire 2:  Teenage Ghoul Girls a Go-Go (1996) – Billy

When a film’s biggest (and only) claim to fame is that it co-stars (for about 2 minutes total)  a young Austin Scarlett, you can probably assume it has some troubles.  In my opinion, this is probably the gold (or in this case off-yellow) standard when it comes to shitty films.  Essentially the film revolves around a once-famous vampire who plans to land back on top of the entertainment world by forming a band consisting of a bunch of “go-go ghouls”.  Throw in some decent tits, some nasty tits, some flat tits, a doctor with a foot fetish who forcefully dry-humps a patients foot, and a guy who goes from having a heavy redneck accent in one scene to being normal for the remainder of the film… and you have a whirlwind of poo.  If it says anything for the film, the only way I could find it on DVD was as an EXTRA on the Caress of the Vampire 1 DVD.  Caress of the Vampire 2 also does not pick up where 1 left off, as 1 was pretty much 90 minutes of two vampire chicks going at it.  I’m not sure if you owe it to yourself more to watch it, or to stay away.

The only sample my cursory search could find on the youtube.  It is of a foot orgy.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Es2FUf9l4