The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made

This abomination of a list makes WatchMojo look like Siskel and Ebert. The announcer is clearly being overly ecstatic and it's horrifyingly bad. Trash.

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).

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.

Where is Manos, The Hands of Fate? This is in the top five on most awful films lists (or bottom five, however you count it). What about Amazing Grace and Chuck? Baby Geniuses 2? The films of Steven Seagal or Wham Bam Van Damme? It seems like this list concentrated on low budget horror and sci fi films. I also didn't see any of the recent Disney travesties. How about the really bad superhero films (like Supergirl or Green Lantern). Yes, 50 bad movies were listed, but the list could have been much worse.

50 Worst Movies Ever Made, The (2004)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Whenever a magazine, critic or documentary tries to come up with a "Best Of" list you know controversy is going to follow. I think this documentary takes quite a bit of heat so let's just get some of the issues out up front. If you're looking for talking heads to explain why these movies are so bad then this isn't the film for you. We really don't even get clips showing us why the films are so bad as this is clearly a public domain documentary as it uses clips from the trailers and adds a few comments over them. The film runs just under an hour and when you consider there are fifty-movies that makes it very clear that not too much time is spent with any of them. I understand why many see the dumbness of any list but I've always enjoyed them simply because I enjoy reading other opinions on films. This one here has the obvious selections like GLEN OR GLENDA?, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, ROBOT MONSTER, KILLERS FROM SPACE, BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA, BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, TEENAGE ZOMBIES, THE WILD WOMEN OF WONGO, EEGAH, THE CRAWLING HAND, TROG and FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER. Now, the debate will always be how many films are worse than what's selected and that's certainly true here. I've seen countless Al Adamson films and God knows he's made many, many bad ones but only Dracula VS. FRANKENSTEIN gets mentioned here. I think many people would agree that this film is one of his better ones or at least more entertaining ones. Ed Wood's PLAN 9 cracks the top five but is KILLERS FROM SPACE really a better movie? I don't think so. Is SPIDER BABY really one of the worst movies ever made? Not to me. We even get some Italian films like GREAT WHITE and THE GREAT ALLIGATOR but anyone who is familiar with the genre will know there are much worse out there. So, there's a lot to disagree about but if you asked 1000 people to name the fifty worst movies ever made then every list would be different. There's certainly a lot more that could have been done with this thing but if you're a fan of bad movies then you'll get plenty of nice rentals here.