Get ready, Short Ends and Leader fans. Starting tomorrow, 8 June and running straight through Sunday, 13 June, we will be celebrating a week of “worsts”. Now, before your get your celluloid skivvies in a bunch, let’s review some of the important critical criteria involved in this selection of these pungent examples of cinematic stool. First, we will avoid all the “traditional” pics that usually make such lists. We aren’t looking to roast Plan Nine from Outer Space over the consensus coals one more time (BTW – it is NOT the most horrible movie of all time, period) nor are we trying to champion those oft talked about “so bad, they’re good” efforts. We’ll leave that to Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its Cinematic Titanic/Rifftrax offshoots. We also are looking to discuss dismal efforts that never wanted to achieve very much in the first place. And finally, we aren’t interested in no budget indie twaddle that would never have been decent no matter the money pumped into it. No, over the next six days we will be looking at artistic ambition dashed, filmmaking incompetence exposed, and the undeniable stench of someone who firmly believes that they have a complete grasp of the language of film. The god-awful gobbledygook they produce suggests their grip is a tad weak.
So check back every day this week for the latest scrappings from the medium’s endless trough of tripe. For a rating scale, we will go with something a little different than the norm. Giving a really horrendous entry a simple numerical score is not enough. We need to go with something more substantial. That’s why the six films featured will be judged on a scale of “1” to “5” WTFs – “1” being borderline abysmal, “5” being so outlandishly offensive that local governments out to pass some kind of law. A couple of the choices will be familiar – especially for those who follow such fringe aspects of the industry. Others, however, will hit you right between your bleary, unbelieving eyes. By the end of this self-inflicted trek into torture, we hope to illustrate how vast the chasm of motion picture crap can be. Not every bad film is Battlefield Earth. Sometimes, you have to sit through something like Tommy and the Cool Mule to see just how shoddy a subpar effort can really be.
The Schedule for A Week of Worsts
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