Flowers in the Attic

The Worst Movies Ever Made Part 1

I admit it, I see alot of really crappy movies, some are intentional; Monster movies, Blaxplotation movies, Sexplotation movies, Drugplotation movies, "Bad Ass" movies, Kung Fu Movies, "fad" popular culture stuff (movies about video games, pop culture movements, movies made from songs, movies starring famous people that are "in" at the time, ect), stuff like that. stuff thats so bad you just HAVE to watch it and laugh even if its not intentionally ment to be a comedy. Dunno if its because I grew up in the tail end of the era of the Grindhouse, or what, but I love crap like that. But there are also alot of crappy movies I watch that are not a way of feeding my love of bad movies. Some are out of curiosity some are for work, some are just because deep down inside, I hate myself inside and instead of cutting or acting like a moron or being emo about it, I take it out by subjecting myself and my lovely Mia Bella to horribly bad movies that once watched, can't be unwatched...

Anyway, I believe this quirk of mine, plus my minor in Film Study which allows me to do the job i love so very much inside and out, make be feel that I have enough knowledge to put together the list that I have, of what I see as the worst movies EVER made, my list was slimmed down by me and my beautiful Mia Bella and had well over 100 movies, to just about 25 (with afew I'll add just cuz I'm awesome) that we deemed to be of no redeeming value what so ever, not even camp value, we're talking the worst of the worst here... really bad rip off slasher movies, British Victorian era movies, Australian movies about fat ugly women that listen to ABBA getting married to bland fulgy men, Japanese movies of various types, Bollywood copyright infringing movies, mexican superhero movies, all sorts of stuff... and afew WTF moments too.... just cuz i luvz y'all...... ok not all y'all but you know what I mean.

Anyway, I figure we'll work our way up to the top of the list so here we are at the very bottom, is this horrible made for TV Movie...



Oh yeah, thats right, the cult classic for fans of movies that completely prison rape their book form to the point they're almost nothing alike, and for fans of stories about children locked in the attic by their crazy grandmother and eventually develops an incestuous relationship between the older two of the four children. I mean really, what isn't there to love about a story like that? Its got all the things that would make a good movie, least on paper right? Everyone loves stories about old houses that look british but are on american soil, right? Everyone loves stories about crazy rich old women that aren't jewish trying insane ideas to get their daughters married off, right? Everyone loves stories about whiny kids locked attics and forgotten about and how they struggle to find a better way and get free from their massive and plushy furnished attic, right? And come on, seriously who doesn't love a story about incest between two kids that look like their extras in Children of the Corn? I know I do! So with all of these things going for Flowers in the Attic, why exactly didn't this movie work? By all accounts it should have been the must see TV movie of 1987, nay, not just 1987, but the entire late 80s all together! Dare i say it should have been on par with other TV epics like Roots, or The Color Purple, or even dare I say it, The Thornbirds even. Oh yeah, I went there. I totally went there. I went all up in the Thornbirds grill so hardcore they totally knew the flavor of my Kool Aide there, but I digress....

So why exactly did Flowers in the Attic fail? Was it because of the complete husking of Virginia C. Andrews cult classic book series to the point you could hardly tell where the elements of the books were instead of what they added in to make it more TV PG friendly? Was it the complete lack of that oh so dreamy and beautiful incest that caused so many high school and college aged girls in 1978 want to have hot sexual relations with their brothers (even outside of kentucky)? Or was it the fact they took all the books in the series, meshed in little bits of it, and gave it a completely different ending all together? Or was it that they killed the mother at the end, instead of how she died in the book series (the one really heroic thing she did in the entire series btw)? The answer is, all of the above, and not because of my personal idea, this time its more because of the social impact the books themselves had on pop culture.

You see, you need to look back to 1978, when the book form of Flowers in the Attic was released, though deemed "to adult content" for most "respectable" bookstores and various other book related places of the time which were moderately prudish, it still managed to become a best seller that year, and the follow ups were able to generate just as much buzz as well, as to be expected. Now, when you take books of that magnitude, its almost obligatory that you end up with a movie based on it, now the logical choice would have been to make a series of big budget movies to pimp as much money out of a story about crazy old women and incest as you could right? Well that was the original plan, however, like happens alot of times, legal issues kept holding up the movies, decency groups were totally hating on the brother and sister love angle, others were offended by their whole children of the corn look, whatever other reasons there were, the movie got held up and held up and rehashed and rehashed untill it was down to just one movie that wasn't even really big budget worthy, and by the time Flowers in the Attic was deemed ready for film, it was just another watered down TV movie of the week, I remember when it aired, it wasn't promoted at all, it was just aired and forgotten about. It says alot about a movie when even Lifetime, which is, as anyone in the US knows, where tv movies of the week go to die, will hardly air it. Yeah, you read that right, Lifetime, the "network for women" will not air it often, but yet, they'll air everything the oh so milfilisious Jacklyn Smith ever made, but they won't air this stinker.

So if you really feel the need to put yourself through some visual self torture, or you just love stories about crazy old rich women, or you have a fetish for that whole Marsha/Gregg Brady "are they doing it?" thing, or you just love some of those horribly bad Kristy Swanson movies that she did early in her career, or just plain hate yourself and want to feel pain in a non-emo way, go have a look at Flowers in the Attic, if not, stay far away from this one, far far away..

and remember kids, sure your brother or sister might be hot, and sure you might wanna try them out, maybe even have a hot steamy sexual relationship with them, but just remember this, if you have kids.... they could end up looking like this...



And now you know, and as always, knowing is half the battle....


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Laz