Myra Breckinridge

The Worst Movies Ever Made Part 6

Ok first I must admit, I do love me a good 1960s trash film now and then, I don't know why, but there is something about the whole almost but not porn thing, completely awesome in its own trashy way. Its like, you know its crap, you don't care that its crap because there is nudity, and in the case of cult classic Myra Breckinridge, Rachel Welch tying a young man to an examination table, violating him with a strap on dildo and making him thank her when she's done. Oh yes, I do love me some 1960s trash films.

Now the thing that really stands out about Myra Breckinridge looks like it would be a hit sexplotation movie, its got trash film legend Mae West who came out of retirement for the movie, its got Rachel Welch fresh off her break out role in One Million B.C, and its got a young woman named Farrah Fawcett, 6 years before she'd become an angel in the employ of a man named Charlie, who sounded alot like John Forsythe, and its also the first on film appearance of the man who would be grow up to live in Higgans' guest house and driving his Ferrari, Tom Selleck, and an acting appearance by soon to be movie critic Rex Reed as Myron Breckinridge. All of this, and being based on a book by Gore Vidal, you would think that this would have just printed 1970 money, but well it didn't, infact Time Magazine said of it "Myra Breckinridge is about as funny as a child molester. It is an insult to intelligence, an affront to sensibility and an abomination to the eye.". Yeah thats right, Time Magazine called a movie based on a book by Gore Vidal "as funny as a child molester..", amazing that.

The plot is actually not that bad, pretty ingenious really. the opening scene shows a man named Myron who is inspired to become a woman by staring at Rachel Welch's One Million B.C poster which was very popular at the time (it also adds a nice breaking the forth wall easter egg to the film though it wasn't in the book), the movie then shows him on the table getting thread for the operation to become a woman, and then next thing you know, he wakes up and is no longer perennial douchebag (and feature movie critic) Rex Reed, but instead is now insanely hot young Rachel Welch, and changes his name to Myra, the film then sets about telling the story of Myra and her life, which i'm pretty sure you can tell involves your normal flair of late 1960s early 1970s depravity, because well thats what happens when you become Rachel Welch, you go out and become a mentally unstable sex fiend, or so i read on the internet anyway. Its really this big blurry mess of sexual imagery that though ment to entice, astound and shock you, really just makes you feel weird inside, and the ending where Myron wakes up on the table and realizes he's not had the operation at all just seems so strange and misplaced. I mean twist endings are a staple of hollywood going back to the early days of silent film, but still, what the hell? It was all a dream. Thats kind of like a big kick in the nuts after being subjected to this seemingly long swirl of nudity, sex and whatever the hell else got tossed in there.

See, though they set out to make sexplotation gold, instead this movie became a text book case in what not to do when making a film in that vain, and what not to do, ofcourse is, completely destroy the story and only take the sexual scenes from the book its based on while filling in the rest with your own idea of what it should have been. A movie can not survive on just sex scenes, thats why there is atleast a minute or talking through out every porn movie, and atleast 5 or so minutes of bad comedy in every single sex comedy thats out these days, they all learned from this horrible attempt at movie making. In a sense its the Uwe Boll of trash films.

So I'd say, if you are a lover of trash film of the grindhouse era, or just love really bad movies, I'd say give this insane toss back in time a look, if not, i'd stay very very far away from it.


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Laz

Starcrash

The Worst Movies Ever Made Part 5

I remember the very first time I saw this next movie on our list, it was the late 1990s and I was bored and in this at the time closing video store in Massachusetts when I saw it sitting in a box that said "15 dollars for entire box", so i looked through afew of the movies on top, figured it would be worth buying it for just afew of the video cassettes in the box, looked through 4 other boxes just like it, and bought them too. I didn't really notice this one till I got home and was spending a weekend with my girlfriend in the old barn my parent's converted into a place for me to live when I was 16, so I had "a since of independence and such", anyway, we were sitting there one night watching movies out of my boxes of video cassette booty from that video store, and we came acrossed this, and oh the fun we do have... So with out any more introduction, I give to you, one of the greatest piles of crap ever made..... Starcrash.

Ok so here we go, this is the basic plot to Starcrash; A pair of smugglers manage to pick up a castaway while running from the authorities, who turns out to be the only survivor from a secret mission to destroy a mysterious superweapon designed by the evil Count Zartham. The smugglers are soon recruited by the Emperor to complete the mission, as well as to rescue the Emperor's son, who has gone missing. Sounds pretty average for 1979 space movies right? Everything's trying to be the next Star Wars, and this is no exception, it rips off both Star Wars and Battlestar Galatica pretty bad as you can tell by the Cylon mixed with Boba Fett looking guy on the cover, but here is the kicker... the Emperor is played by former big name star Christopher Plummer, which in itself is an amazingly funny thing given how completely garish the outfit he had to wear for this italian made Rock filled Space Opera of a bomb was. But also the fact he had to share some screen time with the one and only Hoff himself, David Hasslehoff!

Yes, this is pre-knight rider Hoff-ness going on here, the big hair, the leather, the fake bad ass persona that looks like an extra from the village people! The awesomeness of this pile of crap is just so completely amazing. Its totally worth watching just to see how bad The Hoff acts in this, the only thing that would have made it more awesome was if he sang. And ofcourse by awesome I mean so bad you have to point and laugh in disbelief at just how bad it really is. The whole story is basically shabby made robots with lightsabers that are altered just enough to escape being sued by George Lucas and his entire cadre of sith like lawyers. But the basic fights and stuff are the same as you would find in a star wars movie, but, you know, just with the Hoff.

So if you are a fan of crappy, and I mean really crappy low budget movies, then give this a try, if not, well, run away from it, run far away........... Seriously i'm not kidding here run away as fast as you can from this stinker. GO!



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Laz

Bring It On All or Nothing

The Worst Movies Ever Made Part 4

Ok now, I'll be the first to admit, every now and then I enjoy a good laugh at an intentionally stupid coming of age/high school movie, its not that I have a thing for hot underage girls or anything, I just enjoy a really good laugh that reminds me of stuff I did as a kid, I'm sure everyone has had that happen once in awhile. There are so many types of movies in this lil'genre too, the teenage sex comedy, the horror about the mistreated kid killing everyone, the whole "we're all going off to college soon lets have one last blast" kind of thing, the "loser trying to get the hot girl to date him" thing, so many, and ofcourse, one of the worst things ever created, thats right, the pedophile's dream movie, The Cheerleader movie. And that is why I had to include atleast one of the softcore underage porn.... umm... err.... I mean... ok thats really exactly what i mean, anyway, I just had to include atleast one installment from the Bring It On series.


This is the story of a cheerleader from Odessa Texas named Claire Bennet who can regenerate her limbs whenever dam.... oh wait a second, umm... no, its not Heroes, but yet, this is the movie that Hayden Panettiere starred in BEFORE she did Heroes, so I guess saving this cheerleader doesn't in anyway have anything at all to do with saving the world. It does however make me wonder why it seems the recently turned 18 and therefor no longer jailbait Hayden, seems to keep getting cast as underage naughty cheerleaders though. Its almost as if the world is telling us to check her out or something... but I digress, on to the very thin plot of the movie.

Ok so like, this one girl, like, named Britney (oh my gawd thats SUCH a great name!), she like, was this totally popular girl, like back at her old school, and so like, her dad, he totally loses his job and has to find work somewhere else, so like, he moves the family to Crenshaw Heights, which is like, this place outside of LA where I think like, rappers come from or something, because that totally sounds like a place rappers would come from right? (flips hair like a tard) So like, anyway, Britney has to totally fit in at her new school, and has trouble doing so, I totally think its because the leader of the cheer squad Camille is like, totally drinking Britney flavored HaterAide and making things uncool for her around high school. So Britney decides to do her best and earn her way onto the cheer squad, so like, she can totally get all up in Camille's grill and be all "whats hood bitch? Whats really hood?" so the story goes on to tell, like, how the two of them try to best each other at cheering until like, this big cheering contest comes along or something, and like, the winning squad gets to dance in like, a video or whatever for, the like totally awesome and currently big at the moment pop star Rihanna, the final to squads are Britney's new one, and the one from her old school, with like, all her friends on it and stuff, so she has to choose, like, whats more important, tossing the cheer for her old school and all her friends, or like, doing whats right and getting her new team that winner's spot... by the end, like Britney and Camille become like, totally BFFs!

Ok now, for those of you that didn't realize I wrote that in a sarcastic parody of a valley girl, please go cut yourselves or something, cuz damn, its so easy to tell what I did there.

Anyway, this movie is really one of the worst, if you look last the fact its poor pedophile's masturbation fodder and see it as a movie, its even worse, Hayden can't save this movie, nor can the fact Solange Knowles, younger sister to Beyonce Knowles is in it doesn't help much either. Its just an all around horrible and painful to sit through movie, the script is WAY below par of most direct to video movies, I mean seriously Frankenfish was better then this. So please, PLEASE, don't waist your time on it. You'll end up sitting there wondering why your butt hurts after watching it.


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Laz

Caravan Of Courage: An Ewok Adventure

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The Blair Witch Project

The Worst Movies Ever Made Part 2

In the continuation of my series on the larges piles of movie excrement ever made, we come to the second lowest on my list, and really its only this low before though it really is bad, and spawned alot of parodies and such because of that, but, you can't knock the groundbreaking this film did in its time. Looking over the list now, I can say thats its only saving grace. Because really, who the hell would want to deal with a movie about 3 collage kids getting lost in the woods for any other reason really? Oh yeah, you know it now don't you? I just had to put this on my list, ladies and gentlemen I give you the next movie in our countdown..



Yep thats right, love it or hate it, you can't ever deny that you've seen it or heard about it, the one, the only, The Blair Witch Project. One of the greatest hoaxes of the modern era by far, and the innovator of not only POV movie shooting, working with no script, but also using the internet as a means of promotion. No one had ever really went into either of those fields before, and it was interesting to see the way it was done. After all, there was almost 2 years of net hype for the movie before it was released, we're talking full on media blitx here, faked websites, faked interviews, faked news reports, the whole 9 yards. No one had ever done that before, and no one had seen the idea of using the internet to reach the fans, it was a lesson that Hollywood learned quickly, anyone thats seen all of this "Cloverfield" juggernaut plowing its way through all corners of the internet knows just how well Hollywood learned this lesson.

Now this begs the question, with all of these things going right for it, why is a movie that, in effect, shook the foundation of movie making, and become one of the highest grossing movies ever, be seen as a failure? Its simple, its lack of script. See, the plot was losely taken from The Bell Witch legend, a story that most will know of from the much better movie "An American Haunting" from afew years ago, and mixed with some other local folklore from the area around Burkittsville and the surrounding towns, all of these things are believed to be real and proven documentation wise, but as anyone with google access will tell you, the town of Blair never was real, and the locations mentioned in the movie are no where near the town of Burkittsville, infact most are over 50 or so miles away from it. So infact, there never was a Blair Witch, once this got out, it killed the entire movie's premise, and the fact that the cast went out to state it wasn't real after the media overload of people believing its real flocking to Burkittsville, it in effect killed itself.

Now, this isn't to say the movie itself was that good, after all, how good can a movie be when there is no script and its basically just 3 unknown actors making up a story as they go along? It can't really be that good one would assume. And that would be right. Oh sure there were some creepy scenes, but for the most part, it was no better then a high school film club production, and it took people very little time to realize we had all been sucked into the internet hype and had never actually seen any clips from the movie before hand. People aren't really big fans of being played like that, least from what I understand. Add all of that to the rather crappy ending, and well, that pisses people off really fast.

So sure, to do afew imaginative ideas and its cash count The Blair Witch project will be remembered though out history, and thanks to afew often spoofed scenes, comedy will always remember it as well, but really, for the rest of us, this sham is best left forgotten.

This is really Heather breaking the 4th wall and seeing just how pissed the people that paid full price to see this movie are.

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Laz

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