Preface
As you know, I'm someone who tries to find redeeming qualities about most movies. One reason for this justification is that I hate the feeling that I've wasted my time watching something. I want to be entertained and/or feel like I've learned something. For example, I wasn't particularly entertained by "A Clockwork Orange" or "Reservoir Dogs" or even "Pulp Fiction", but they were semi-engaging, and I appreciated the artistry involved in each.

What makes a terrible movie? Terrible acting, lack of style, lack of an engaging story (boring), and failure to inspire what it attempts to inspire. Oh, and it can't be so bad that it's good. As I commented in the previous entry, I don't go out of my way to watch terrible movies. I also attempt to forget them after I've watched them.

A number of people that I know will walk out of movies. That's an extremely rare occurence in my case. In fact, the only thing that usually impedes me from watching a movie to completion is involvement elsewhere or sleep. I say that in preface to the fact that I won't list a movie as truly terrible unless I've watched the whole thing. I don't believe in rating films based on just a piece of it. In fact, there are a number of movies that would be pretty bad if you only watched one part.

This list is a sampling of movies which I consider terrible. In each case, I only saw the movie once, and you'd have to pay me quite a bit of money to watch any of these again.

The Small Screen
The easiest place to begin: tv movies. TV movies have a reputation for being terrible. Thus, they're usually pretty high on my avoid list. That said, I've caught a number of them over the years. "Atomic Twister" starring Zack Morris certainly wasn't good, but the big budget and amusingly bad premise (tornado + nuclear plant = disaster) helped it avoid being terrible. However, the USA Original "Silent Predators" stands out in my mind as being quite awful. The movie tells the story of a small southwestern town that is overrun by "mutant" snakes. In such a monster movie, you'd expect action, suspense, special effects, and deaths. "Anaconda" (a poorly regarded film) had these elements. "Silent Predators" failed on all of these counts. The whole movie was a set-up for a "Raiders of the Lost Ark"-esque snake den, but nothing dramatic happened. According to IMDB, this movie came out in 1999, but it seems much longer ago as I've done a good job of wiping the memory.

Kid's Stuff
As a kid, I enjoyed comedy and had very little tolerance for drama or cutesy/artistic animal movies. Thus, I quite enjoyed "Animals Are Beautiful People" (a funny documentary) and "Homeward Bound", but I pretty much loathed other movies like "The Bear", "Benji", and "Milo & Otis". I think I avoided ever watching "Benji" all the way through, so I hesitate to include it. I'm pretty sure I watched "Milo & Otis" upon my brother's insistence. Y'all know I love kittens, but I don't know how this film ever got approved. Film Exec 1: "Okay, guys...I've got a great idea for a new movie! We'll take a kitten and puppy and follow their cute hijinks!" Film Exec 2: "That'd be awesome! And we'll get Dudley Moore to narrate!" As for "The Bear", I remember where I watched it (at the beach) and that my mom cried while we watched it, but I don't recall any plot elements. I just remember being terribly bored watching a movie about a couple of bears without any dialogue.

There is one reversal of opinion on a movie that I've made since childhood. I remember seeing "A River Run's Through It" and thinking it was really boring. Within the past few years, I've rewatched it and realized that I just didn't appreciate drama.

Laugh-On, Laugh-Off
In the realm of comedy, I have a pretty high tolerance. There are plenty of comedies that are so bad that they're good. That doesn't hold for Leslie Nielsen movies. "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" were decent, but almost all of his other movies stunk. Sure, you chuckle every now and then, but he plays essentially the same inept character in every one. It gets old.

Ernest is another character that went a little too far. "Ernest Goes To Camp" and "Ernest Saves Christmas" were excellent. They showed heart. "Ernest Goes To Jail" was decent. "Ernest Scared Stupid" was tolerable. "Ernest Goes To School" was pretty forgettable. "Ernest Rides Again" (where the climax has Ernest riding a cannon down the road), "Ernest Goes To Africa" (direct to video), and "Slam Dunk Ernest" (direct to video) were remarkably terrible - likely a combination of low budgets and poor writing.

In reflection, "Gosford Park" is one of the driest comedies that I've ever seen. It's long, filled with lots of stuffy Brits, and generally boring. It's supposedly a character-based murder/comedy movie, but I can't understand why it got such good reviews. I like a lot of British movies, but this one certainly doesn't make that list.

I mentioned it in a previous entry, but "Johnson Family Vacation" is pretty terrible. It's essentially an African-American imitation of "Vacation", but it fails to innovate in a way that the original did. Cedric the Entertainer is tolerable, but he couldn't carry the film. The inclusion of annoying Steve Harvey makes it particularly bad.

"Very Bad Things" is another "comedy" on my list of terrible movies. It's not that the acting was bad. It had a good cast. The film was just so freaking disturbing. It's really one of the "darkest" comedies that I've ever seen. The ending is particularly disturbing.

Pointlessly Disturbing
Speaking of disturbing, that's opens up a whole other category of terrible. There are movies that shock for good reason - to provoke laughter, thought, art, or general entertainment - and then there are those that fail miserably if those were their intended goals. For example, "A Clockwork Orange", Tarantino's films, and "The Butterfly Effect" were disturbing movies that I appreciated. Also, I'm not really a horror fan (and haven't seen much of the canon), and thus I'm not going to slight that genre just because I don't personally appreciate it.

Other than "Very Bad Things", three disturbing movies stand out in my mind: "Ichi the Killer", "The Devil's Advocate", and "8mm".

I saw "Ichi the Killer" with Scotty and Dave. The movie follows a mentally unstable character and his brush with a brutal gang in Japan. Ever wanted to see a guy get split straight down the middle? Ever wanted to see people hung from hooks and burning oil poured on them? This is your movie. Overall, absolutely pointlessly graphic.

I saw "The Devil's Advocate" with my dad in theaters. The premise seemed tolerable, but the scenes with Keanu's wife going insane put the film decidedly in the pointlessly disturbing camp. I don't care to see a baby playing with a bloody placenta or women's faces morphing into demonic faces, thank you very much.

As for "8mm", I generally appreciate Nicolas Cage's work. Heck, I don't mind the widely-panned "Snake Eyes" or poorly-regarded "Con Air". "Face/Off" isn't bad either. That said, "8mm" - premised around snuff films - was both uninteresting and pointlessly disturbing. Thus, it was terrible.

"Get down!"
'Action' is the last genre in this negative list. It doesn't take a whole lot to make a tolerable action film. That said, the volume of action films will inherently result in a lot of clunkers. Two actors in particular are responsible for a large chunk of them: Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal. Respectively, "Timecop" and "Under Siege" were decent movies, but the rest of their corpora are ridiculously cliched and forgettable.

As for other terrible action movies..."Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" had awful special effects and the story was apparently so bad that I can't recall any of it. "The Thin Red Line" was another widely-praised terrible movie. Typically, I like long movies, but this one dragged on and on and on in boring fashion. Every time I thought they were wrapping up, they'd open a new chapter.

Well, I hope I've proved that I don't like every movie. Look for a more positive, more content-filled entry soon. =)

Oh, and pictures are coming.