The "U" in Enjoyment

It is a popular hyperbole in my generation and those following to label something as being "the worst ever."  In reality, we love this exaggeration.  Websites, movies, video games, television shows, books, and songs aren't safe from this over-amped embellishment.  Entire Websites, movies, video games, television shows, books and songs are, in fact, dedicated to finding and condemning these offenders of the senses.  But are they really the worst ever?  After all, we do talk about them.

Even I will admit to being guilty of being asked about any teen schlock-buster, rolling my eyes and saying, “Psh.  Hunger Games?  More like Boring Games.  Am I right?”  But the reality is Hunger Games wasn’t all that bad.  Certainly it had troubles in film-work and issues with characters and actors, but at least I remember it.

Let’s take example from a movie that absolutely everyone would agree is a terrible movie, Plan 9 from Outer Space.  In this movie, an alien race visits the Earth and finds that the human race is becoming too destructive.  They decide to enact the titular Plan 9 (although what happened to plans 1-8, I don’t know), in which they raise the dead from their graves to get the human race’s attention, resulting in chaos and eventually the aliens literally blowing themselves up in the skies over LA.  Sounds convoluted?  Absolutely.

Plan 9 is largely considered one of the worst films of all time.  The film plays almost as a check list of things poor movie-making.  Strings clearly visible on models?  Check.  Plot points introduced at the climax of the narrative?  Check.  A nonsensical mish-mash of both horror and science fiction tropes?  Check.   Boring and repetitive dialogue?  Check. 

Other examples of terrible films include Manos the Hands of Fate.  A movie which I’ve seen dozens of times now and still can’t recount the plot.  Yet I love that the film decides to play one repetitive piece of music whenever Torgo – the villain’s mysterious sidekick – decides to walk three steps.  Eegah was a vehicle for squirrel faced teen idol who – as far as I can tell – insisted that his character have a sweet dune buggy and a pretty girl friend and he can sing – but not actually so dub over his voice – and he’s strong and he’s smart and he can beat up a cave man (no really).  Even Troll 2.  A movie entirely devoid of trolls deserves mention.

Yet, we remember these movies.  They are legends in the field.  In fact, I would recommend doing yourself a favor; get some friends together with a couple of pizzas a few drinks and watch these movies late at night.  They are hilarious and you will not be disappointed.  Laugh as they Plan 9 tries to pass a short balding chubby guy off for the tall gaunt Bela Lugosi with a voluptuous head of hair and as actors bump into the very clearly cardboard tombstones.  Yell at the screen as the kid in Troll 2 finally – FINALLY – figures out half way through the movie that the town of “Nilbog” is Goblin backwards.

For every truly excellent film out there, there are many more countless bad movies.  I personally have seen many movies, both good and bad.  I can honestly say that I have an equal love for cheesy movies as I do for movies like Blade Runner, Casablanca, and The Third Man.  So what are really the worst films of all time?  In my own experience, they are the truly boring, banal, boiler plate movies.  I even have trouble finding examples to think of simply because no one (including myself) remembers them.  And that is the greatest offense a movie can make.