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.
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