10 movies well-known for all the wrong reasons
Of course, cinema is often dominated by the greatest films of all time, and it’s often the case that cinephiles want to make their way through the most entertaining, beautiful, thought-provoking and life-changing pieces of film that have ever been released. But spare a thought, please, for the movies known for their awful quality.
Now, only a director or producer out of their mind would actually try and create an intentionally bad movie. Sometimes, it just so happens that productions head in the wrong direction, or something is wrong with a script or an actor’s performance, and before you know it, a film is released to a terrible critical reception.
Interestingly, though, sometimes it’s the very worst films that draw the most attention and events like the Golden Raspberries actually celebrate the very worst offerings of the cinematic medium. Not that anyone with half an inkling of self-respect would ever want to actually win one…
We’ve compiled a list of some of the worst movies ever made that have gained traction precisely because of their poor quality. From gangster biopics to dreadful animations, from surreal black comedies to disastrous disaster films, hold on because we’re about to run through some truly awful showings.
10 infamous movies known for being awful:
The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003)
Few films have achieved quite the cultural legacy of Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 independent romantic drama The Room, in which Wiseau writes, directs, produces and stars alongside Juliette Danielle and Greg Sestero. Telling of a love trailer between three San Franciscans, Wiseau reportedly based the film on his own life, meaning he must have had one hell of a melodramatic experience at one point.
Widely considered one of the worst movies of all time, The Room was slated for its ridiculous plot and some of the most horrendous acting ever committed to film. However, as is often the case with the worst films, Wiseau’s work quickly gained a cult status, even if only for its many audience members to take the absolute piss out of it.
Gotti (Kevin Connolly, 2018)
Everyone loves a mafia movie, from the intensity of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas to the mastery of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. However, when a mob film gets it wrong, things become absolutely disastrous, as John Travolta found out when he starred as the New York City mob boss John Gotti in Kevin Connolly’s 2018 biographical crime film Gotti.
Even Travolta, having his real-life wife play John Gotti’s wife, Victoria, could not save Gotti from sleeping with the fishes, and after suffering an admitted development hell, the film was released to dreadful reviews with many pointing out the terrible quality of the writing, visuals and most of the performances, with only Travolta himself managing to make it out of the critique period alive.
Freddy Got Fingered (Tom Green, 2001)
All Tom Green had ever wanted was to make TV shows and movies, and eventually, he got his wish with MTV’s The Tom Green Show. When it came to his feature film directorial debut, though, 2001’s surreal black comedy Freddy Got Fingered, it looked as though he might never have bothered because it was yet another movie considered one of the worst ever made.
Focusing on an immature slacker played by Green, Freddy Got Fingered tells of Gord’s dream of becoming a professional cartoonist, all the while suffering the abuse of his father. Freddy Got Fingered is indeed one of the most vulgar and abstruse films ever made, and unsurprisingly, it was panned upon release but was later reappraised under the lens of a cult classic.
2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009)
The films of Roland Emmerich, including Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, are known for handling moments of catastrophe and disaster, but that’s pretty much what became of his 2009 epic science fiction film 2012, starring John Cusack, Thandiwe Newton, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson.
Based on the 2012 phenomenon (the belief that the world would be overcome by a cataclysmic event that year), 2012 tells of a geologist and a novelist who try to survive a series of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. While the film enjoyed a healthy box office, it was a truly awful film with some terrible lines of dialogue and a runtime that went way past the point of tedium.
The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute, 2006)
The original The Wicker Man is a classic piece of British folk horror, but in 2006, an American remake that no one ever asked for, starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Neil LaBute, arrived to horror fans’ dismay. Cage plays a police officer who sets out for a strange Pacific Northwest island to look for the daughter of his ex-fiancée.
However, when Edward Malus arrives, he finds that the island is being run by a cult of neo-pagans, who start to toy with his psyche. 2006’s version of The Wicker Man is so bad that it almost becomes funny, with Cage delivering some of his most unhinged work, leading to a notoriety amongst the pantheon of terrible horror movies, of which there are all too many.
Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (Rocky Morton & Annabel Jankel, 1993)
There was recently a brilliant movie based on the Nintendo video game Super Mario Bros, with Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy offering up their voices to the cast of characters. However, back in 1993, there was another Super Mario Bros. movie handled by husband and wife Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel that undoubtedly became one of the worst movies ever made.
Super Mario Bros was actually the first-ever feature-length live-action movie based on a video game, with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo playing Mario and Luigi, respectively. The result was one with some truly dreadful visuals and some of the cheesiest moments in cinema history, even for the admittedly tongue-in-cheek era of the 1990s.
Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019)
Jesus, this one is bad, notoriously so. James Corden is admittedly not many people’s favourite celebrity figure, and in 2019, he did little to endear himself to any of his sceptics after performing in Tom Hooper’s musical fantasy film Cats, based on the Broadway musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Even the likes of Judi Dench, Idris Elba and Ian McKellen couldn’t save Cats from the scrap heap with just the vision of such actors dressed up in cat costumes, not to mention Corden himself belting out a few musical numbers, being enough to give anyone the creeps for years on end. Cats was lambasted upon release, and rightly so, for it truly is one of the worst films ever.
Jaws: The Revenge (Joseph Sargent, 1987)
When Steven Spielberg released his aquatic thriller Jaws in 1975, audiences suddenly became terrified of what lurks beneath the shorelines’ waters. Flash forward 12 years, and the final movie in the Jaws franchise, The Revenge, was put out, with the film series bowing out on a genuinely awful showing, lacking any kind of brilliance.
The story, acting and special effects were all far lower than had been expected from a Jaws movie, and even Michael Caine, who featured, actually admitted to the low quality of Jaws: The Revenge, pointing out the fact that he’d only taken the job on for financial reasons. “I have never seen it, but by all accounts, it is terrible,” he said. “However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific!”
Speed 2: Cruise Control (Jan de Bont, 1997)
Keanu Reeves furthered his Point Break action hero credentials in 1994’s thriller Speed, and when the 1997 sequel arrived with Reeves absent, Speed 2: Cruise Control took a serious hit in quality. Sandra Bullock turned up to reprise her role from the first film with Jason Patric and Willem Dafoe joining, but they couldn’t save the sequel from becoming a true car crash of a production.
An awful critical reception was followed by a terrible box office taking, mostly down to the fact that the producers of the film greenlit the final scene, which became the most expensive stunt ever filmed. Ultimately, though, what led to Speed 2’s downfall was the fact that it was set on a bloody cruise ship and was, therefore, just boring as hell.
The Emoji Movie (Tony Leondis, 2017)
Poor old Sir Patrick Stewart. That’s two-time Oliver Award-winning Patrick Stewart, by the way, who, in 2017, had to suffer the ignominy of performing as the ‘Poop’ emoji in what was a genuinely shameful showing. The Emoji Movie was directed by Tony Leondis and also starred James Corden, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Coolidge and Christina Aguilera.
While a box office taking would have made Sony very happy indeed, the quality of the film is just about as shit as Sir Stewart’s character, with humour at an all-time low for animated cinema, a boring story and widespread product placement that ought to have had the whole thing flushed down the drain. A rip-off of way better-animated films, The Emoji Movie gained notoriety for its awful quality.