Recently I wrote about not being able to watch TV like a normal human being.
I know, I know, first world problems. But the analogy I used was that things in America used to just work, now things in America just kinda work. I have said this to BOS partner Ted about a thousand times since the inception of Covid: Society today is a death by a thousand cuts.
So I sat down to work on the blog and started researching music from the 50's and 60's. I turned on the XBox and went to the ESPN APP to watch some soccer.
The ESPN APP wasn't working.
Oh well. Went to Hulu to access the same sports options and turned on the Toronto / New England MLS game. The game was being broadcast locally in Canada on TSN. As I typed, Hulu dropped the feed. Picked up the remote and reloaded the game. Kept typing, Hulu's feed froze.
You're saying I should upgrade my internet connection? Just did that earlier this summer.
Reloaded the game on Hulu again, watched about 5 minutes before the feed blurred like a VHF station in the 70's. Gave up, turned on Tubi.
Just at that moment, my wife walked in and said "you remember when WalMart used to just have what you needed for the house-"
<<sigh>>
So after scrolling through junk and more junk on Tubi, I turned on the 2004 documentary The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made. Now for being a movie about bad movies, it was actually a pretty good movie, I would highly recommend it. The only criticism was that the worst 20 movies were all between 1955-1982. What's the worst 20 movies I ever saw? That's kind of a trick question, I tend to hate "good" movies and love "bad" movies. With that being said, here's my list:
20. Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)
That movie was so bad, I had to call the folks at the Classic Hollywood Blog and ask them "who are those 2 idiots pretending to be Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin?
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 16%
19. Prizzi's Honor (1985)
Yeah, it won a ton of awards. I gave it an award for being pretentious.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 62%
18. Get Out (2017)
I love Keegan-Michael Key, that guy is hilarious. Jordan Peele, on the other hand, really rubs me the wrong way.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 86%
17. The Sixth Sense (1999)
About half way through the movie I turned to my wife and said, "how does a single Mom afford to have her son spend so much one on one time with one of the nation's top child psychologists?" She told me to be quiet.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 90%
16. Tusk (2014)
The movie that made me stop loving Kevin Smith. Maybe I just have an issue with Haley Joel Osment.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 36%
15. Caddyshack II (1988)
One of the worst sequels of all time in thought and execution.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 18%
14. The Village (2004)
Just because there's a twist at the end doesn't make it a good movie.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 57%
13. The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)
The beginning of the end for Andrew Dice Clay.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 67%
I actually own the soundtrack, it's in my basement. Which reminds me....
12. Singles (1992)
Terrible Movie. Great Soundtrack.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 73%
11. Awakenings (1990)
Man, when I was a kid, I loved Robin Williams. I thought Mork and Mindy was one of the funniest things on television. By 1990, a newly serious Robin WIlliams made me question why comedians thought they could be serious actors and I stopped watching Robin WIlliams' movies altogether around 1995.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 89%
10. Hellraiser IX (2011)
Now by the 9th installment of the Hellraiser series, the bar was set pretty low. So I was watching Hellraiser 9 and Pinhead popped up and I screamed at my TV "where's Doug Bradley?" When Nightmare on Elm Street IX came out, it was heavily reported that there was no Robert England, I didn't even think of watching that one.
Hellraiser IX Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 6%
Elm Street IX Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 43%
9. Star Wars IX: Rise of Skywalker (2019)
No Han. No Luke. CGI Leia. The epic saga ended with the Palpatine Family? It would have been an average movie if it didn't have the Star Wars name on it.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 86%
8. The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (1963)
If you're a good comedian, you ride that wagon until the wheels fall off. You could see that rickety ol' wagon crash to the ground in the middle of this movie.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 80%
7. 3022 (2019)
Netflix proved it can make bombs as big and prolific as Hollywood.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 52%
6. Mars Attacks! (1996)
Mars Attacks should have been a slam dunk with its all star cast. Tim Burton really fucked things up.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 53%
5. Smokey and the Bandit III (1983)
Not only was it bad, and not only did Burt and Sandy jump ship, it made me feel really, really uncomfortable.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 17%
4. The Ridiculous 6 (2015)
When Adam Sandler is on his game, no one is funnier. When Adam Sandler is off his game, he is abysmal.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 36%
3. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Worst cinematography ever. At least 20 minutes of the film was a black screen. All hype and no substance. When I left the theater, I felt like I had been tricked and someone stole my money.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 56%
2. Top Gun (1986)
I had mostly washed the stink of the original Top Gun out of my memories when the sequel came out last year. You couldn't PAY me to watch the sequel. As a matter of fact here's my review of the original from 2022:
"Let's get this out of the way right from the start. In 1986, I went to the theater to see the original Top Gun. I thought the movie was terrible and hated Tom Cruise. Not only was the movie too long. but my IQ went down as I watched it. My friend Mike G, whom I went to see the movie with, left the movie drooling and stated "I know what I want to do with my life." A few months later he joined the Air Force and moved away, I never talked to him again. Since he only lived a few houses down from my parents, my understanding is that he is now retired from the Air Force.
I thought Top Gun was simply an expensive, and formulaic, recruiting tool in film form and my friend Mike ultimately proved me right. I never understood the allure of Top Gun, even though I would learn not to hate Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible movies."
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 83%
1. Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie (2012)
Now you may retort that there's hundreds of movies on Tubi worse than Tim and Eric's, but here's the caveat, I am not a movie reviewer. For whatever reason, at one time I wanted to see every movie on this list. I was genuinely excited to see this film. When I finally saw it, I thought the joke was they purposely made a bad movie. About three quarters of the way through, I realized it just was a bad movie and I turned it off.
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score? 47%
Let's use the movie It's Pat as our bad movie example. I assume It's Pat is a worse movie than Tim and Eric by all the "Worst Movie" lists it was on, but right from the rip I knew It's Pat was going to be bad, simply from the preview.
Since I'm not a movie reviewer, I never forced myself to watch It's Pat. I did watch Freddy Got Fingered, but I set the bar really low when I went to see the movie at the theater. I remember walking out of that theater saying "it wasn't the greatest, but it wasn't as bad as everyone said."
I then went to the store and bought the soundtrack.
Maybe my worst movie list should have been renamed:
Worst 20 Movies of All Time Based on Fred's Expectations Going In
Nobody's reading that list.
And none of those movies have to do with American Excellence.
(Mike G. would say "except for Top Gun.")