Worst ways to waste time. (Worst)

Member Name: RussellC

Product:	Worst
Date:	21/08/00 (199 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sometimes they're so bad they're almost enjoyable.

Disadvantages: You waste some of your life on them.

This sort of list is liable to change over time but looking at my IMDB votes I've come up with a list of my top 10 all time worst films. These aren't films that are so bad they're good, these are films that are simplay rotten and ones I hope to never have to watch again. I'm not going to put them in any order there's a level at which I think this becomes unnecessary. So in n particular order my 10 worst films:

1. Eraserhead
David Lynch's bizarre and dark film of a man called Henry Spencer living in a building in an industrial city with some sort of chicken baby thing later on. Ok that's probably not the best account of the film, but it's fairly accurate. There's no real plot here, just a series of bizarre events surrounding the main character. This has been hailed as a visionary piece of cinema, but I don't really see it. There's a point at which a full length movie descends too far into dark surreality and enters into the region of unwatchable. I'd recommend that if you really do want to see this film, watch it on fast forward, you'll not miss any dialogue (there's very little) and you'll save yourself some time. Fortunately David Lynch has made better films since and the excellent Twin Peaks TV series.

2. Wild Wild West
The most recent of the films in my top 10 list and a real stinker. Barry Sonnenfield joins up with Will Smith in an attempt to recreate te magic of Men in Black, this tiem bringing the TV series Wild Wild west into the nineties. Unfortunately they fail miserably, creating one of the dullest movies I've had the displeasure of watching. Will Smith and Kevin Kline are Government agents back in the odl West and they embark on a mission to stop Kenneth Branner's (was he desperate for money?) evil professor. There's some great special effects, but it's all pretty pointless when the plot is uninspired and the comedy is so bland. That said the man in the r
ow behind seemed to really enjoy it, personally there was far too much of Will Smith's humour here for any comedy to get through.

3. Highlander 2: The quickening
I liked the idea of the Highlander movies, a race of immortals batte it out amongst each other, beheading being the only way to kill them. At the end of the first movie there was only one immortal left and the battle had come to an end. Highlander 2 updates the story, we learn the immortals are beings sent from another planet as punishment. MacLeod (the immortal who won in the first one)didn't bother to mention this in the first one, but isn't surprised when suddenly more turn up and the games start again. All the events happen in an unpleasant futuristic earth, but this doesn't make things anymore interesting. What follows is an hour and a half of dull violence, poor fights and an amazing effort at destroying everything that made Highlander good.

4. Kentucky Fried Movie
Probably the worst of all the movies Abraham and Zucker wrote. It's a series of sketches spoofing all sorts of things in the most inept way you possibly can. There's the usual spoofs of TV and movies that you expect to see, a few cameos from famous people and not a single funny joke for the full length of the film. It lacks any of the humour shown in Police Squad and Airplane and instead delivers dated predicatable jokes. Being just unrelated sketches there's no plot to hold the film together and so if the comedy doesn't work for you there's nothign else to recommend it. I won't be watching this one again.

5. Nine 1/2 Weeks
A feebly plotted erotic drama in which Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke indulge in a shallow sex driven affair that becomes complicated. Essentially it's a thin plot on which a series of soft porn scenes are hung. It's not a movie that delivers anything worth thinking about and it is about as erotic as one of those late night TV shows t
hat Channel 5 shows. Truely a feeble effort, it'll leave you feeling dirty and used if you watch it.

6. Police academy 4: Citizens on Patrol
It's hard to pick out a worst in this series of diabolical comedies. The first one was almost good, and all the later ones were near equally bad. In the fourth outing, the team have a drive to resruit ordinary members of the public into the police force, obviously with hilarious consequences. All the regulars are here, there's the one who can make a wide range of noises with his mouth often leading to much confusion. There's the big muscular woman with large breast, the guy who likes big guns, the really big strong black guy and some other ridiculously stereotypical comedy characters. So the citizens are all trained up and miraculously save the day in the final set piece. Steve Gutenburg still appears in this one, he hadn't quite realised it was time to jump ship yet. I'm not sure if this can appeal to anyone, if you liked Kentucky Fried Movie you might lie it. What's really puzzlng is that a TV series has been made of this show. Why?

7. Sleepless in Seattle.
Probably the dullest romantic comedy I've had the displeasure to view. Tom Hanks is a lonely widower, who can't get over the loss of his wife. One night his son phones a radio agony aunt and his fater ends up broadcasting his story to the whole of the US. Suddenly he's inundated with letters from women interested in meeting him. One of these letters is Meg Ryans, a journalist who becomes obsessed with him. Ultimately they manage to meet up in New York knowing they love each other. It's all very unbelievable and tedious. There's little romance here and even less comedy, all in all an uninspiring film. I believe both Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have repeated this dull formula since.

8. Nine Deaths of the Ninja.
An unbelievably bad comedy/action film I once caught on TV late at night. It's h
ard to know what was going on. There's hostage taking, ninjas, lesbian nazis, wheelchair bound nazi's and a large black man who rubs his cheast and laughs evilly quite a lot. So some antiterrorist agents fight these villains to free a busload of American School children. The action is appalingly bad, of the very lowest quality I've ever seen and the comedy is dire. I have to be honest and say that there is a fascination in watching such an apallingly made movie. The DVD of this is coming out soon and given it's cheap I have to admit to being tempted to get it. Perhaps it shouldn't be in my 10 worst films?

9. From Hell it Came.
I saw this once on BBC2 very late at night and was amazed by what I saw. A note to all horror movie producers, walking trees are not terrfiying, especially when they move at the rate of an ordinary tree. Maku a prince in a island tribe is falsely accused of some crime and sacrificed, he returns as a tree, called Tabanga and terrifies the villagers in only the way living tree can. For something that moves so slow he actually does do quite a bit of harm killing a number of the villagers. Fortunately some US Citizens are on hand to save the day and ultimately the animated tree is defeated. Admitedly this has an amusement factor if only for the absurdity of the monster, but overall it's a dire film to watch.

10. Dirty Dancing.
A young and awkward girl goes on a family holiday and learns about love and dancing. That's about all there is to it. The girl nicknamed Baby goes to this camp, learns to dance with Patrick Swayze's character and falls in love with him. The movie is essentially a chance for Patrick to show off his dancing ability, which frankly I don't care about. There's nothing much more to this film than a series of irritating dance scenes. What makes it worse is that the actors involved were relatively big names, so they should have been able to do better. Rumour is that a
remake is planned, let's hope not.

As I wrote that list I came to realise that there are really more than 10 in my barrel of terrible movies. These 10 were the ones that stick n my mind as truely some of the most diabolical films I've ever seen.

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