Desert Island DVDs

[davywavy]

The idea of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs is a simple one; every week, a guest of the show (usually a celebrity or politician of some stripe) is put in the hypothetical situation of being trapped on a desert island with only their eight favourite records. they're asked which records they'd take and then chat about what each one means to them in between excerpts of the music.

Let us today imagine that the castaway is you, dear reader. With an awful glugging noise your ship is vanishing beneath the waves and you haul yourself up a lonely beach as the sole survivor. Lost and bereft with naught but the bare essentials for life. But wait - what's this? A crate containing a freeplay hand-cranked DVD player and a box of films is drifting ashore from the wreck. At least you shall be entertained during your exile.
But it's not all good news. Opening the box reveals eight of the worst films you've ever seen. Films which, when watched over and again in the coming solitary years, will drive you slowly insane.

Here's mine:

1) Ultraviolet. Milla Jovovitch's Sci-fi/vampire/rebel movie, and very possibly the worst film I've ever seen. When I saw it in the cinema there came a point when I realised I was actually punching myself in the face as an instinctive reaction to watching it.

2) Inseminoid. A Sci-fi action-horror, Inseminoid opens with a lady astronaut being raped by a zombie alien and her day doesn't improve much from there. One of the very few films I have been unable to watch all the way through.

3)Highlander 2: The Quickening. As a student, I used to keep a diary. One day in 1991, the only entry reads "Don't go and see Highlander 2 again." This from a period in my life when I thought Predator 2 and Robocop 2 were good films should tell you all you need to know.

4) Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Not one of the worst films ever by any means, but the crushing weight of disappointed expectation that falls upon me whenever I hear the words "Meesa Jar-jar Binks!" is enough to ensure I never watch it again.

5) Battlefield Earth. Something of a no-brainer, this one - and adding it to the list was fairly obvious too. John Travolta and L. Ron Hubbard team up to produce a film that's 'so bad it's bad!". I actually own a copy.

6) Butterfly and Sword. I've sat through a lot of chop-socky movies, and this has to be the worst of them all. So bad, I was disappointed that the director didn't walk on at the end and apologise for wasting my time.

7) Batman & Robin. Another film I foolishly spent money watching in the cinema, when someone spoke to me later the same day and asked me what I'd been doing I had already forgotten I'd seen it and had to be reminded. Utterly witless and instantly forgettable.

8) Eraserhead. Some will tell you this is s great film. They're lying. It is dire, unwatchable shite. I've tried to watch it several times and failed every time. I've fallen asleep during it twice.

Your turn.

Comments

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

1) Shoot 'Em Up It features a breast feeding prostitute. From that moment on I was too squicked out to actually watch the film, but remained trapped there, as my lift home had no intention of leaving.

2) Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. Utterly grim and depressing. There was not a single sympathetic character in it, bad stuff happened to all of them and I came out wondering why I'd spent two hours of my life in their company.

3) La Haine. If I wanted to spent my time in the company of a bunch of psycho thugs, I'd start dating some of my exes again. I understand it is very arty and gritty, but I just really loathed all the characters.

4) Catwoman. I never knew that Halle Berry could somehow, through force of sheer bad acting make herself look like a fat role playing chick in a corset with a badge saying 'appearance 5'.

5) The Avengers. The film that raped my childhood and spat upon the glorious memory of Diana Rigg and Patrick McNee.

6) Hoodwinked. I walked out of this film. I don't do that too often. Does that say how bad it was?

7) Batman and Robin. Oxbridge Academy? Alicia Silverstone playing an alleged British girl with no attempt at an accent? The endless parade of awful villains? SO bad. So very very very bad.

8) Serenity. It stole two hours of my life with bad dialogue, cliched plot, hackneyed villains, and all the bad bits (with none of the good bits) from Firefly, and then at the end of it people told me it was a fab film that I should be happy to have seen?!?!? I think the reaction of others around me is what catapulted this film from 'meh - a bit crappy' to 'we hatessss it, we hatesss if forever...'

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I had completely forgotten the Avengers film. Lucky, lucky me.

Until you reminded me, that is...

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I didn't hate Serenity as much as you - it just reminded me of a bad RPG made into a film, like Dungeons and Dragons - the Movie (which almost made my list).

I have to do an RPG/deconstructing Firefly post at some point.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

1. King Arthur
The only film I've ever walked out of in a cinema, the opening claim to historical accuracy gave me a sinking feeling, nothing improved from there. It's only piece of saving grace is I didn't see all of it.

2. Highlander 2
Quite simply the worst sequel, if not the worst film, in existance. It's bad, the acting is terrible, the plot is laughable. After the sheer joy of the first film. One of the laughing faces from the film haunts me still. The only wonder is how I actually managed to sit all the way through it without clawing my eyes out.

3. Scream
The film I wished had walked out of at the cinema. Predictable, pointless and about as funny as being poked with a razorblade. Yes I know it's meant to be a parody of the genre but frankly I didn't really like the genre in the first place. It's not clever, it's just shit.

4. Existenz
It had promise, it really did, bio mechanical weapons, Jude Law, sci fi and everything. Then, then after about 30 minutes I realised that nothing was really going to happen that I couldn't see coming ten minutes away, the action was pointless and the ending just effectively opened the lime pit and threw the cast in. Utter crap.

5. American Pie
Why the hell did I buy this? WHY?

6. DAWG
Denis Leary and Elizabeth Hurley, I had hopes. 10 minutes later I put it back in the box never, ever, ever to open it again. That'll be why it was two quid.

7. What lies beneath
It had Harrison Ford, I was weak. The story was weaker. My god it was predictable. My god the only twist was that Ford had never played a bad guy before. I only have it because it was free. Free I tell you. FREE!

8. Signs
Aquaphobic aliens who can travel light years across the galaxy but lack the ability to open a door. They can create a f*cking spaceship but they can't wear a bio suit? They get squirted with water but they can still move through a DEW FILLED FIELD? Who wrote this? WHO? I want to slap them. Hours of my life, wasted, wasted I tell you.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

5. American Pie
Why the hell did I buy this? WHY?

The same reason I bought Battlefield Earth?

[elbly.livejournal.com]

8. Signs
Aquaphobic aliens who can travel light years across the galaxy but lack the ability to open a door.

The thing that pisses me off about that film is this:
You're aquaphobic? Then why come and try to take over a planet that's eighty fucking percent water? It's even in the air for crying out loud! Humidity? HELLO!!!!

And my boyfriend at the time LIKED the movie, he actually thought the plot twist was clever and well thought out! You see why I had to dump him?

[bringeroflight.livejournal.com]

King Arthur could have been made glorious by the addition of three to five seconds of additional footage.

Remember the bit at the beginning, with the "Now his true story can be told"?

That should fade out.

Then up should come another bit, scrawled on in a Mel Brooks fashion;

"But this is not it..."

[fonnparr.livejournal.com]

Men in White - an absulutely awful childrens movie.
I thought I was renting a sequel to Men in Black.

Having said that, the real sequel wasn't much better.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

No, the real sequel was awful.

Any chance of a lift on Saturday?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I do go back and watch Revenge of the Sith from time to time, because Ian McDairmid gives such a fantastic performance it's almost possible to forget that Darth vader is being protrayed by a length of knotty pine.

[elbly.livejournal.com]

I actually have a high tollerance for bad movies but I'll do my best:

1. Return to the Blue Lagoon.
Oh dear god! Never again!

2. Battlefield Earth
You've covered this I know but I have to say: You own a copy? What haven't you used it as a coaster already? Jeez! You deserve mocking in the most pitiless way possible!

3. Conan the Barbarian
I do not buy into this "It's so bad it's good" crap - that film was shit!

4. The Devil rides out
I had no idea it was possible for Christopher Lee to be a dreadful actor... now I know.

5. Carebears the Movie (and any sequal there in)
Having an aunt with Downes Syndrome I have been subjected to these films more times than I care to remember. What I DO remember is going to see it when I was about 5 and thinking it was shit then... I even remember a parent getting up after about 10 minutes of the film and asking if anyone else thought the film was crap.

Okay, I think I've stopped... if I think of another 3 throughout the day I reserve the right to list them later.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I actually really like Conan - the soundtrack is genuinely excellent and the film itself isn't half bad. 'fraid I've got to disagree with you here!

[raggedyman.livejournal.com]

1) Happiness. A black comedy that forgot to have any comedy in it and instead presented characters so repulsive and horrid that I could only watch the first half willingly and then finished off the second part as Laura decided we both had to go through the pain. The 'funniest' moment is when a paedophile is talking to the police and forgets which child victim they are talking about, and thus I rest my case.

2) The Phantom Menace. Utter bollocks, simple as that. J*h-J*h-MOTHERFUCKING-Bin*s is why old Georgy boy is now destined for the lake of fire, and frankly I expect to see God, Jesus, and the holy ghost taking it in turns to dunk him in there.

3) House Of Flying Daggers. Looks very very nice, and thats about the best that could be said for it. With careful editing it could be trimmed to be some sort of overly depressing episode of Scooby Doo. More reasons why cinematographers should be kept on incredibly short leashes.

4) Napoleon Dynamite. It isn't funny, at all. There is no humour, the humour has been removed, it is an ex-comedy. Anyone who says otherwise has been brainwashed by MTV into thinking the absence of humour somehow makes you laugh, which is like helping someone get over the flu by cutting off their head. Noone in it can act, you cannot care about any of the characters, and it so utterly badly directed and shot that even the bits that should have been funny are not - quite possibly on purpose as that somehow makes it even more hipply unfunnily funny.

5) Devil's Advocate. A film so dull, so utterly boring, so incredibly drab, and so unbelievably up itself that it thinks its somehow edgy that it has the prestige of being the only film in history which has caused me to walk out of a cinema just to get away from it.

6) American Pie. I am not good with cring/social embarrassment movies, but this one I've never been able to watch for more than 10 minutes without turning it off to somehow save the characters/actors from humiliating themselves any further. Amusing only in the same way paying a penny to laugh at an autistic person was back in the 1800's.

7) The Howling II. The Howling was a horror classic, a masterpiece of cinema that brought about the modern werewolf myth and made us scared of nature all overagain. The Howling 2 was a pants awful cash in with shit plot, acting, and direction. It also had some bugarse awful bit at the end where it replayed most of the movie in some edited recap, including the same breast shot from the werewolf 'sex scene' being shown about 20 times, and then showed the credits, thus trying to make you watch the same shite twice.

8) House Of 1000 Corpses. One of the worst horror movies I've ever seen, and trust me I've seen a lot. No plot, no reasoning, just objectionable and brutal violence all the way through. Most likely I despise it the most for all the people who rave on about it being so ultimately cool and brilliant, especially the large number who try to act all clever by calling it 'Sexy'. Note to you sad fuckers - rape, torture, and brutal assault are NOT Sexy!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I could watch House of Flying Daggers again just because it's so pretty. I'd probably have to turn it off before the "if you pull that knife out of your heart you'll die!" (presumably she'll be just fine if she leaves it there) scene.

[silver-blue.livejournal.com]

1) King Arthur - Frankly I could put this at places 1 to 8 and be satisfied. I blogged recently (http://www.babbleandstuff.com/2007/12/king-arthur-remembering-awfulness.html) about quite how dire it is.

2) Sunshine - This was initially quite promising, kinda cerebral and curious 2001 type film. So Danny Boyle turned it completely randomly into an appalling slasher pic halfway through for no reason.

3) Ma Mere - To summarise this from the point of view of the main character, "I want to fuck my mum, she kinda wants to fuck me, but she also wants to kill herself. Eventually she does both at the same time, so I wank over her corpse."

4) Starship Troopers II - A budget so limited that they bring back a cast member from the first film, whose character had died, and make her the leading role with an entirely new character.

5) Either Matrix cash-in - "No, honestly, we really did plan three films. That's why the first one finishes properly and the other two are complete kludges. Nothing to do with wanting to cash in on a massively successful franchise."

6) Final Destination - which is an oddly highly rated film. Equates to "let's come up with a bunch of really dull and obvious ideas about killing people in 'clever and funny ways' with zero plot."

7) Alexander - Director's Cut - by "cut" they mean random rearrangement of six half hour segments into any order. This is bad essentially just for being utterly utterly shambolic.

8) Ghost Dog - I wish I could fall asleep but I seem frighteningly hypnotised by the utter ennui. Though that being said I have happily had the mental strength to turn it off and go to bed instead (or indeed stabbing myself in the eyes would be preferable than watching it in its entirety).

Umm, I numbered them but actually they are in no particular order (apart from King Arthur being at number 1, every time).

[silver-blue.livejournal.com]

Also realised I own four of the eight (largely after "discovering" them in £3 bargain bins before I'd ever watched them).

[akcipitrokulo.livejournal.com]

The other 7 I'll have to think about - number 1 is easy.

I, Robot.

It was a bad film as a stand-alone - very cliched & generally crap. Hoever, could live with that if it hadn't tried to claim to be an adaptaion of I, Robot!

I had bad feelings about it... the two worst things were the complete ignoring of Asimov's whole poit about robot stories, and Susan.

I love Susan Calvin. She is wonderful, prickly, scarily intelligent, about 70-something, not generally what is thought of as attractive.

They made Susan the love interest.

That made me scream.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Not having read the book, I just took it as another instantly forgettable action movie with an unconvincing plot - and there's a lot of them out there :)

[commlal.livejournal.com]

1. Highlander 4 Rented for free by my lovely flatmate so no money changed hands for us to watch that turgid piece of crap. Really bad, you though 2 was bad, multiply that by 100 and then turn it up to 11, you may get close.

2. Beautiful Mind I'm likely to become violent if anyone suggests to me that I should watch it again. Really poor directing, script, acting and everything else. *twitch*

3. Anchorman Will someone please tell Will Ferrel that he is just not funny. People say to me "Ah you must have loved the jazz flute bit" No, no I didnt. I wanted to throw the DVD out of the window.

4. Signs Gah... My eyes, my brain. What a stupid concept for a movie.

I'll think of more later

5

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I thought Highlander 4 better than 2, but it was close - I almost put 4 on the list rather than 2 so I uderstand where you're coming from.

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

1. The Postman - a film so bad that the cinema staff warn you going in. Kevin Costner should not be allowed near sci-fi.

2. Battlefield Earth - leverage x1000

3. The Doom Generation - again warned by the cinema staff

4. The assassin - La femme Nikita, only really, really bad

5. X3 - take what should have been the climax of the trilogy and make it a flat, dull waste of acting time

6. Rush Hour 3 - so unfunny, such poor action scenes.

7. Envy - take Jack Black and Ben STiller, fail to edit them and make me stop the movie fifteen minutes in

8. Superman IV: The quest for peace. Nucular Man?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

1) I actually rather liked the Postman. In some ways, I thought it better than the book.
5) Good point. Complete waste of my time and money going to see it.

[bringeroflight.livejournal.com]

See, I've got quite picky lately, and so I don't end up watching that many awful films in the first place...

Still...

1. House of Flying Daggers. I very nearly didn't go and see Hero (one of the best ever pro-totalitarian bits of propaganda I've ever seen) because of this dreary bit of boring. Just die already!

2. Anything with Owen Wilson in.

3. _Almost_ anything with Will Ferrell in.

4. Braveheart. Actually used in my War Studies lecture as an example of how medieval battles weren't fought.

5. The remake of the Italian job. Didn't need remaking. Didn't need remaking badly. 'Nuff said.

6. Star Wars Episode II. Worse than I. Only people I had empathy with in the entire film was the Clone Trooper who helped the Princess to her feet at the end, because he was made to be thrown into a pointless battle for political ambition.

7. Matrix Sequels. What Robin said. With Bells On.

8. The US trend for embarrasment comedy. All of it.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I liked House of Flying Daggers more than I did Hero, because at least HOFD didn't have the awful, awful, awful "Or things could have happened like this!" ending, which Waynes World had satirised ten years before it was even made.

[hiromasaki.livejournal.com]

So essentially you want the 8 films that, were one in the shoes of Joel or Mike on the Satellite of Love, you wouldn't even want to sit through with the help of Tom Servo and Crow?

Hrm... This will require some thought.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I've never watched MST3K, although sharing a house with neilhist and godzuki was a similar experience, I'm sure.

Critically-bad vs. personally-bad

[applez.livejournal.com]

I'm entertained the most people selected personally-bad movies, that is, films they sought for its promise, and were so sorely disappointed by that it is permanently fixed in their memories of just how bad they are.

Rather than the rational critical-bad alternative of selecting the most-Raspberry'd films of all-time.

Re: Critically-bad vs. personally-bad

[elbly.livejournal.com]

Well Davy did ask for films that would send you insane - so I guess that means films that are 'personally-bad' as there are some films that have been acclaimed dreadful that I'm happy to sit through.

[hiromasaki.livejournal.com]

1) Harry and the Hendersons I only vaguely remember the movie, but I remember it being tedious and dull... So much hope for a sasquatch comedy, only to be foiled.
2) School of Rock I have such hope for Jack Black movies, and then usually have them dashed... This was unfunny and just tedious until 1/2 an hour before the end. Whoever directed and edited that movie should be shot.
3) Manos: Hands of Fate When even a Frank Zappa reference by Mystery Science Theater can't save a movie...
4) Titanic I refuse to watch this (successful) attempt to make large quantities of money off of hundreds of people's deaths. Wars? That has interesting interaction between people both as a cause and effect of the war. But the Titanic? A navigational error, and senseless in the extreme.
5- 8) ???

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That was one of the things I didn't like about Titanic - "Hundreds of people dying, but Leo...he's so dreamy! Sigh..."

My 8

[applez.livejournal.com]

"Cultural impropriety"

1. Memoirs of a Geisha: for the offense of a pile o' Chinese playing Japanese for an ignorant Western audience. Yes, pay another $10.50 da bi ze.

2. The Last Samurai: Tom-fucking-Cruise saves Japan? What what? (oh, and the director totally hacks Kurosawa...poorly).

3. Kill Bill: Quentin-fucking-Tarantino hacks a million better original movies to cobble together this Frankenstein monstrosity without sufficient depricating-irony to cover his arrogant hiney.

"Sequel Crapness"

4. Matrix 2: For ruining the original's promise, itself being crap, and by the added torture of reminding me of the more-crapness-to-come in Matrix 3.

5. Star Trek V: Because it rates as perhaps the worst Star Trek movie ever. With the added torture of being confronted with the maddening desire to watch a proper better ST film to rinse my mind of that crud.

6. Star Wars I: Phantom Menace: I wager watching the film would lead me to make every coconut on the island a Jar Jar Bings face to be destroyed in effigy. I would soon starve after that.

"Hours of Your Life You'll Never Have Back" (Because I really could have made a fire, built a shelter, or gone fishing instead.)

7. Battlefield Earth. Nuf said.

8. Gigli: I've never seen it, but I suspect it would make me suicidal.

EDIT: One possible substitution: just about any film by Uwe Boll.

Re: My 8

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Kill Bill could ahve got a reference in my original post, because of a film called The Warlords, also starring David carrdine, which almost made my list. I was going to say something like "David Carradine in a low-budget stinker before he went onto highy-budget stinkers like Kill Bill."

[silver-blue.livejournal.com]

Made me realise I should have put The Two Towers in my list.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

How odd - TTT was my favourite LOTR film. Almost certainly the only non-Star Wars film I've seen in the cinema more than three times.

[song-of-copper.livejournal.com]

The trouble with lists of this kind is that once you've struggled to write down 8 rubbish films... you instantly remember about 53 others that you wished you could forget! (I'm sure that will happen to me shortly, but off the top of my head, the 8 that occur to me are as follows...)

1. Domino. My nomination for 'worst film ever made'! I am unfortunate enough to have seen this almost twice. (Not through choice - the first time, I decided it was bad, and completely confusing. Unfortunately the person I watched it with found it *so* confusing they watched it a second time, straight away. I think I went into a minimally-conscious state for a while...)

2. Memoirs of a Geisha. For reasons previously mentioned... and because it was extremely boring! The film equivalent of expensive wallpaper.

3. Electra. I spent a lot of time looking at my watch during this film. There seemed to be an awful lot of explaining and not much plot. Zzzz...

4. The remake of 'Alfie', starring Jude Law. (Need I say more?!)

5. The remake of 'The Producers' (can you spot a theme developing...?). I love the original - it's a favourite. This new version is like watching an amateur dramatics version of the original. It is like hearing some idiot quoting furiously. And I'm not very keen on Uma Thurman.

6. Talking of which... Kill Bill. (Whichever vol. you prefer.) Just a little too much slicing and dicing for my liking... *One* volume of that was enough for me!!

7. Idiocracy. I saw a bit of this the other day. Luke Wilson, whatever possessed you?!

8. John Tucker Must Die. I suppose it was stupid of me to expect that much from a teen comedy in the first place, but this one really plumbed the depths of pointlessness...

The only thing to do is to try and use the DVDs for SOS signalling purposes... :-)

[I hope you don't mind my adding you by the way. I saw you on 'Refinement' and wandered here out of curiosity...]

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Mind? I positively delighted!
The thing about bad films is that I've seen many, many woprse films than those above - but they tend to stray into the redeemable 'so bad it's good' category. My list above tend to be films with pretentions of being much better than they actually are and so destroy any credibility they may have.