The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way)

Ten percent of viewers watch stock car races for the winning and not the wrecks; the rest of us are endlessly fascinated by books like this. Really bad movies transcend genre, era, director, actor, or writer to achieve an awe-inspiring attraction of their own, beyond what bad television shows(quickly canceled), music (erased from iTunes), or books (easily abandoned in mid stream) can achieve. Kept in our seats by the price of the ticket and the limited time commitment, bad movies are more memorable than all but the very best ones. Medved and Dreyfuss pick out their 50 worst as of the 1978 publication of this edition (revised editions are promised), with critics' responses, plot summaries, performance lowlights, snippets of dreadful dialogue, behind-the-scenes trivia, and data about the financial background and history of the movies. Of all the art forms I listed earlier (TV, music, books), movies are the end result of the largest number of inputs from the widest array of arts and crafts, so one of the things that makes bad movies so good is the awe-inspiring convergence of so much bad art and craft in one product. As Medved and Dreyfuss suggest, there are many categories of bad movies, all of them represented here, including big budget flops and low-budget bombs, overrated art films and tarnished-star vehicles (Bogart in a hillbilly rasslin' movie?). With the advent of the internet and websites like IMDB and badmovies, it is easier than ever to find and find out about bombs like these listed here. And with NetFlix, you can even view some of them in your own home with no investment of good money on bad art. I was particularly intrigued by "Robot Monster", a 1953 low-budget bust starring a gorilla-suited "robot" in a plastic diving helmet, a bubble machine (credited!), and the last six hu-mans on earth. Originally filmed in 3-D, it is sadly available only in the 2-D version now on my NetFlix queue. Good bad-movie hunting!

Rarely has a book given me the continuous laughter that this one provided! The wry wit and "courage" to take "classics" and show their glaring deficiencies was a constant delight. My only regret is that there was no later edition.

This classic satirical effort chronicles the "fifty worst" films ever made as the end of the 1970s. When this was written, bad films were defined by their short cinematic run and scathing theater reviews. Twenty years later, the advent of video has given us an altogether more awful prospect: the simply unwatchable "straight to video" flick which isn't even watched by critics before being foisted on the unsuspecting home-viewer. SOME of the Fifty Worst Ever are "so bad they're good," veritable classics worthy of repeat viewing, e.g. "The Omen" (1976), "Robot Monster" (1948), "Valley of the Dolls" (1967) and "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" (1973). Others are plain, unwatchably, bad, such as "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (1971); yet others, such as "Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975) are admittedly in bad taste but not actually bad films. Some of these line-ball calls are due to the fact that there was originally a core of about 20 really "good" bad films in the first draft - then the publisher insisted on 50.

Unlike most "best of" or "worst of" books, this one takes the time to really delve into what happened to the film, why it was made, and so forth. For instance, "Eegah!" was a cult-hit in California -- and the cast would barnstorm with it to packed houses (Richard Kiel even wearing his caveman toga!)

Never ever has a book made me laugh so hard and so much. Also, I am in love with old movies. That makes this book one of my favorites.