Worst Movies: Worst of the Worst part 1 Review

WORST MOVIES, WORST OF THE WORST  will list movies that no one should waste their time watching.  These are not  the 'fun' or 'campy' kind of baaad movie or 'worst' movies.  We aren't talking Ed Wood Jr. here or something that's made watchable by the MST3000 crew either.   If somehow a few minutes of these movies seems somewhat appealing in either a good or bad way..to you .assume that you are seeing the only part of the movie that could possibly be considered worthwhile in some way. 

In other words, avoid these movies.  Don't rent them, watch them or buy them. 

I've suffered through them, taken one for the team, so that you will not have to.   All I ask in return in thanks is a helpful vote.

  An Alan Smithee Film-Burn Hollywood Burn(1998) Director: by Alan Smithee (aka Arthur Hiller and Joe Eszterhas) Starring: Eric Idle, Ryan O'Neal, Sylvester Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, Jackie Chan, Coolio, Joe Eszterhas

I realize the cast has a great appeal and it just seems impossible that this movie could really be THAT bad.  You'll be bored and tired of it very quickly.. I guarantee it.   

 The title was originally going to be An Alan Smithee Film  Directed by Arthur Hiller.    I will explain. . .when a director is ashamed of a movie that he has worked on, or when a director believes that his work has been tampered with by too many other people (and therefore wants to remove his name from the project,) the Director's Guild of America (the union for movie directors) has established a couple of names that can be used as aliases. One of the best known of these names is Alan Smithee. Most films that list Alan Smithee as a director stink. There are a few exceptions to that rule, where the film is pretty good but the director is not happy with how little of what he envisioned is shown in the finished movie. You need this background to understand not just the title of the movie but the premise of the movie too.

I guess you know you are in trouble when you have to explain not just the joke you are trying to make but the title of the joke.  So someone wisely decided...to change the title of the movie to BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN as the movie was released.   There is a very good NWA song with that title, it is not used in the movie at all.    

A lot of this movie was directed by Arthur Hiller. He used to make good movies like the original The Inlaws, The Hospital, and Silver Streak and The Americanization of Emily. He also directed the incredibly popular LOVE STORY back in 1970. (no that movie isn't on this list...why?  Because the movies on this list are that much worse than Love Story....now behave!!!). However, Arthur Hiller did not like what was happening to this movie and he left the project before it was completed. At first people wondered if this was a gimmick to get more publicity for the film (and it would be very clever if indeed that was the case).  It wasn't a gimmick. Writer Joe ( Basic Instinct ) Ezterhas finished the project for Hiller and company.

Shut up and tell me what the movie is about already.     It was supposed to be a comedy about a director who's name really is Alan Smithee (played by former Monty Python, Eric Idle)  and as he makes a movie, a good movie that will clear his name, he realizes  he is actually making a very bad movie and wants his name removed from it.  When Smithee is turned down by the studio to use another name other than Alan Smithee, he steals the film negative and threatens to burn it. The premise I suppose is interesting but it is not particularly funny. Do they do anything clever or wildly interesting around the idea to make it funny? Nope. Blake Edwards made a very loud and obnoxious comedy about Hollywood filmmaking called S.O.B. in 1981. Parts of that movie were funny and some really like it. That is not the case here. Numerous cameos by big name film stars (playing themselves) and rap artists only add to the confusion. People like Jackie Chan, Whoopie Goldberg,Sylvester Stallone, Coolio, Ryan O'Neal, Larry King, Robert Evans,and Billy Bob Thornton wind up having very little to do. Eric Idle  tries way too hard trying to make something in this film work. Nothing does and it's sad, painful and annoying to watch people trying to be entertaining and funny when they are not. Loud and headache inducing.

The Apple (1980) Director: Menahem Golan
Starring: Catherine Mary Stewart, Allan Love, George Gilmour, Grace Kennedy, Joss Ackland, Vladek Sheybal

For nearly 30 years, The Apple has been very slowly gaining a tiny cult audience of  perhaps a thousand or so people around the world who celebrate how insufferably rotten the movie is. These dedicate hard CORE (aren't I funny?) Apple fanatics keep trying to make this movie into a cult hit like say The Rocky Horror Picture Show.    About once every 5 or 6 years some theater in a large city like New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco, Chicago or Seattle decides to screen the movie at midnight and the couple of people who notice the screening get the word out and convince about a hundred people (but usually less) to see the awful thing.  Those people exit the theater vowing to never trust the person who told them they should go see this movie.      The movie did finally get a DVD releast in 2003 I believe.  No you shouldn't waste your time with it. 

Plot?  Okay.... Fine....     Set in the future of 1994  (it was made in 1980) this is a musical from the team of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They used to release almost always useless bad films under the CANNON FILMS banner. This one give us very bad actors in campy outfits singing painfully bad songs. Two innocent  naive kids enter a worldwide songwriting contest. They don't realize that the Star Search, American Idol like global broadcast has been 'fixed' by the evil music publisher Boogalow.  Boogalow is going to take over the world with his BIM music. This music is encoded and brainwashes everyone who listens to it. I think Golan and Globus tried to put something in the movie to brainwash people into thinking it was worth sitting through. When the film premiered in Hollywood, they gave away free soundtrack albums. People wound up throwing the albums at the movie screen. They then were giving the soundtrack albums away to people after they saw the movie, but very few people wanted them and many of those who took them wound up flinging them into traffic as they exited the movie theater so they stopped giving away the records completely. There are a few people who have managed to create a small and persistent cult following for this movie. They are deluded. They have been brainwashed. Don't waste your time with this turkey.   And the story about the record albums is absolutely true by the way.

Arthur 2: On The Rocks (1988) Director: Bud Yorkin Starring: Dudley Moore, Liza Minelli, John Gielgud, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Stephen Elliott, Paul Benedict, Cynthia Sikes, Kathy Bates, Jack Gilford, Ted Ross, Daniel Greene

The original Arthur was a pretty funny and enjoyable movie. About eight years after the first one we got this hopelessly tired and inept follow-up which gave us an Arthur (Dudley Moore) who was now broke and instead of being funny, he's just really annoying. His wife (Liza Minnelli) wants to adopt a baby and John Gielgud shows up as a ghost but doesn't stick around long enough to help this awful movie. Kathy Bates shows up as a baby adoption agent in a very early role. 


Baby Geniuses (1999) Director: Bob Clark Starring: Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Peter MacNicol, Kim Cattrall, Dom LeLuise, Ruby Dee

Bob Clark who once upon a time directed something really good called A Christmas Story, and a creepy horror/slasher movie called  Black Christmas was also responsible for the Porky movies.   He didn't completely destroy his career so he directed this  pile of laughless diaper poo.  In case you think the cast might be worth seeing, let me just suggest that you convince yourself the Look Who's Talking sequels and Baby's Day Out are really good movies, before you even think about watching this one.  

There is a reason this one sat on the shelf for over a year before Tri-Star finally released it. Kathleen Turner plays a child psychologist who believes it is possible to decode baby talk and therefore learn incredible secrets by doing so. She hires a scientist (Christopher Lloyd) to figure this out. Really tacky special effects ensue and we follow a baby genius named Sly who escapes from the lab and tries to organize fellow babies in a revolt. It's not funny...it's a big waste of time. Here's the best phrase in the whole movie... ready? "Diaper Gravy." Great huh?    Here's my review:  I'd rather watch diaper gravy dry than Baby Geniuses.  And yes.. there was a sequel!!!!

The Bad News Bears Go To Japan (1978)Director: John Berry Starring: Tony Curtis, Jackie Earle Haley, Tomisaburo Wayayama, George Wyner

I just mentioned this one in the  Worst Sports Movies of All Time essay I posted.  The first Bad News Bears was a good movie, the second one wasn't and this third strike and you are out is abysmal. Tony Curtis is the coach and the team goes to Japan. The kids are cutesy, and annoying, and the sappy love interest subplot might make you vomit.

Best Defense (1984)
Director: Willard Huyuk Starring: Dudley Moore, Eddie Murphy, Kate Capshaw, George Dzundza, Helen Shaver

Eddie Murphy was as hot as any rising star could be in 1983 and 1984. He had been big on Saturday Night Live and just left it to concentrate on movies. 48HRS and Trading Places were huge hits and Beverly Hills Cop was going to hit theatres in late 1984 to continue his hot streak. Paramount wanted Eddie to be in a summer movie. So they took this Dudley Moore movie and figured out that they could add Eddie Murphy to it. Eddie said no. Paramount said please. Eddie said no. Paramount said.. Eddie.. here's one million dollars for 3 or 4 days work tops. Pretty please? Eddie said. A million bucks for 3 or 4 days work? Yes, yes, yes.

Eddie was billed as one of the stars in the film featured in the trailers and prominent on the posters. He's in the movie for a little over 10 minutes tops... his 'part' consists of being in a tank that is facing enemy fire and the tank doesn't work. We get little one to three minute cuts of Eddie making faces and freaking out in the tank. The rest of the supposed comedy features Dudley Moore who has discovered that a newly designed tank doesn't work right. No one will listen to him. No one cares. You might care that you are watching a comedy that totally wastes your time. A lot of people rushed to the movies to see this movie because they thought Eddie Murphy had a bigger part in it. They were not happy. Eddie might make you laugh for about two or three minutes. The rest of the time? Well.. you have been warned.

Want more Worst?

There are many many terrible movies you'll want to avoid.  Please read some more here:

Part 11 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Bad-Films-Part-11-review-131f2

Part 10 b is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-10-B-Extra-Bad-Movies-review-c2a30

Part 10 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-10-review-acb66

Part 9 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-9-review-90be

Part 8 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-8-review-81bc0

Part 7 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Moviesl-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-7-review-5890

Part 6 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-6-review-cb0f

Part 5 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-5-review-abc02

Part 4 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-4-review-b8604

Part 3 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Movies-Worst-of-the-Worst-review-b0805

Part 2 is here:

http://www.viewpoints.com/WORST-MOVIES-Worst-of-the-Worst-Part-2-review-1e052

Part 1 is what you are reading right now.  Enjoy another please.

You probably would appreciate avoiding these lousy Sports Movies as well.

Worst Sports Movies  Part 3:

http://www.viewpoints.com/WORST-SPORTS-MOVIES-Ever-Part-3-of-3-review-5f8b0

Worst Sports Movies Part 2:

http://www.viewpoints.com/WORST-SPORTS-MOVIES-of-All-Time-Part-2-of-3-review-5e76

Worst Sports Movies Part 1:

http://www.viewpoints.com/Worst-Sports-Movies-of-All-Time-Part-1-of-3-review-7819