The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made

The narration is rather forgettable, but at least it offers occasional interesting info (sometimes dubious) about the movie in question. Obviously, such a short list cannot possibly please everyone, and will be omitting many fan favourites, so to complain about why such and such was not on the list is just childish. After all, there aren't 50, but probably around 20,000 truly bad films. Personally, I could complain that "Malcolm X", "Yentl" or any Gus van Sant or Emil Kusturica film didn't make the list, but what's the point? The fun is in anticipating what the next film in the countdown will be...

There were some films I've seen, some that were ripped apart by MST3K, and some that are so obscure I've never heard of them. Some useful tips here...

One criticism is that I'm not sure I can trust everything that was said here. For example, the narrator claims that Bela Lugosi died before "Plan 9" was completed. Utterly wrong. The movie was never even started during his lifetime; Ed Wood used old reels that had nothing to do with it. I wonder how many other pieces of misinformation there are...

Not as entertaining as "It Came From Hollywood", but quite solid.

Some of the narration's not as funny as it thinks it is, but how can you go wrong with choice cuts of turkeys like these?

The content of the documentary itself is interesting. As a film fan I always am interested in bad films as well as good ones. The problem with this movie is just how it was done.

First of all, there's no rhyme or reason to the order. They're not in order of box office, Rotten Tomatoes rating, or IMDb score. It's just like some guy with Final Cut Pro made an hour long video from some cheap movies he bought and ordered them to his personal opinion. It's little different from the numerous lists on YouTube.

Then, there's no real discussion for the movie. Each segment is basically a minute or two of revealing the movie then pointing out the problems with it. It's almost like whoever made it just went through the Goofs section on IMDb.

Finally, the original content is pretty poor. It's the same lousy animation with the same library sound effects between each segment. Again, nothing that no ordinary person couldn't do with FCP.

It's an interesting subject matter, but I wish whoever made this put some more thought into it.

It was fun watching the clips from these fifty movies, many of which I have not seen, but which appear to be great BadFilm. In fact, apart from actual trailer compilations like Something Weird Video's Extra Weird DVD, I haven't seen this much BadFilm outside of Arise! The SubGenius Video.

However, this compilation is only sixty minutes long, so little more than a minute can be spent on each one. Some clips run longer than others, so some movies barely appear. The running time could have stood to be doubled! However, from the end credits, it seems many of the clips came not from the movies themselves, but from the trailers for the movies (they credit Trailers on Tape).

There's also an irritating animation of silhouettes throwing popcorn at a movie screen which punctuates every entry on the countdown. This also really cuts into the amount of time they can spend showing clips from the movies.

There are no really surprising or bold choices here, and some obvious ones like Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Ishtar. I don't know that I would agree that these are the 50 Worst Movies Ever Made, I'm not sure if any of them are, honestly - but they are certainly mostly pretty bad. I'll stand up for Spider Baby as not deserving to be on this list; I think it is not a bad film, just a weird good one.

There is some brief nudity in it, and due the the heavy representation of horror films, some gore. And we can marvel at how many once-popular (even award-winning!) actors would up in these movies.

This 2004 compilation of 'worst' movies includes many of the usual suspects and doesn't provide much information beyond what is now readily available on Wikipedia, IMDB etc. "Worst" is subjective and I'm sure that many people will object to inclusions and/or omissions (IMO 'Black Belt Jones' (1974) is a reasonably good film for its genre and any cinema-merde list must include 'Manos: The Hands of Fate' (1966)). Clips from these kinds of films are always entertaining, as is the advertising, the 'teasers' and the marketing hyperbole, but this compilation's commentary is smug and superficial. If this is your first look at a collection of this type, it's OK; but if you are already an aficionado of celluloid-crap, this opus offers little new (admittedly, it did inspire me to watch 'Bloodsucking Freaks' on TUBI).