Okay. How about top 10 WORST Sci-Fi movies of all time?

[Touchdown]

No sequels. That would be cheating.:evilgrin:

Yor: Hunter from the Future.
Howard The Duck
Catwomen from Outer Space
Godzilla (1998-American)
Santa Clause conquers The Martians
The Time Machine (2002)
The Thirteenth Floor
Hollow Man
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
Oh' how could I forget.... Armageddon

[YankeyMCC]

1. Armageddon

definitely gets on that list

Time Machine 2002

Star Wars eps I,II,III (these are prequels :) )

Planet of the Apes 2001

[Forkboy]

3. I liked the newest Time Machine, but I'm a Guy Pierce fan.

And that helped. I haven't read the book in over 20 years, but I thought it was close to what I had remembered.

[Forkboy]

2. Fucking Freejack. What the hell was that mess?

I liked Howard The Duck,it captured the comic very well, which is why people didn't like it.

Also, and this will be no surprise, but I'm glad to see Godzilla on there. The travesty and injustice of it all.....! A good remake of The Beast From 20,00 Fathoms, but a SHIT Godzilla movie (and how does one fuck up that formula anwyays? Godzilla movies have to be the easiest flicks in the worlds to do right...but no).

Santa Claus vs The Martians is so bad it's good.

But I have to admit that I like even the bad sci-fi stuff more than than good dramas or weepy shit. :)

[Orrex]

4. That's not why people didn't like Howard the Duck

They didn't like it because not a single joke in the damned thing, from start to finish, was even remotely funny. They weren't even offensive or edgy; they were just lame. And the themesong was awful. Also, the animatronic protagonist looked lame, even by mid-80's SFX standards. These and many other reasons contributed to the film's famously spectacular failure.

However, the demons at the end were pretty cool, I'll give the film that much...

[Orrex]

5. I'll here try to highlight a few of the less-often-named

All released in theaters, which strikes me as a necessary component of their awfulness. An additional criterion is that I won't watch these films if they air on television, and if they happen to be on when I enter a bar or a party, I'll leave!

Freejack Makes me want to go back in time and kill myself en route to the theater.

My Science Project Stupid, stupid, stupid 80's teen flick, made even worse because it has that one guy in it. You know who I mean.

Eliminators Possibly forgivable for being semi-deliberately lousy, but, even so, it was lousy. Like a well-executed painting of cow manure; it may be a faithful representation, but it's still shit.

Face Off Lame premise, lame execution. Points for posing questions of appearance vs. identity, but the raw implausibility of the whole thing, plus the presence of Travolta and Cage, puts this film in my top ten.

Time Cop Dumbest climactic time-paradox concept ever.

Timeline Blurs the awful line between awful fantasy and awful sci-fi.

Paycheck Maybe the worst film adaptation to date of PKD's work, but I haven't seen Next yet.

Q Not the lovably omnipotent Picard-harasser, but an incarnation of the ancient god Quetzalcoatl!

Wing Commander Lame knockoff of Star Wars released just weeks before the ultimate lame Star Wars knockoff known as The Phantom Menace. Saffron Burrows notwithstanding, this film has nothing to recommended it, and it's lousy even by video-game-movie standards.

Ultraviolet Possibly the overall worst film I've ever seen or heard of.

[YankeyMCC]

6. How about the worst SF TV shows?

I seem to have a good filter when it comes to bad SF movies and haven't seen most of the ones listed here. I've never even seen more than a couple of minutes of "Howard the Duck" :)

But I've seen several bad SF TV.

Of course the problem is I enjoyed some of the bad stuff I saw as a kid for one reason or another.

Battlestar Galactica - I really enjoyed this as a kid but boy do I cringe at it when I see it as an adult now.
Battlestar 1980 - I didn't like it even in 1980 :)
Dark Skies
Earth: Final Conflict - I wanted to like this and perhaps there were some moments but overall a dud
Knight Rider
Land of the Lost - I enjoyed this as a kid but I still have to list it here

SciFi Channel movies (pretty much all of them)
EarthSea
Alien Express
Attack of the Sabretooth


Two other favorite TV shows from my childhood are "6 Million dollar man" and "SPace:1999"

I suspect 6 Million Dollar man deserves a mention here but it's been so long since I've seen it I don't remember enough to pass objective judgment. Similar for Space:1999 but in that case I suspect, once you get past the moon leaving orbit and reaching other habitable planets premise hole, that the stories and characters were actually pretty good.

[NewJeffCT]

7. Catwomen from Outer Space?

That sounds promising - are they hot cat women?

[Touchdown]

8. Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was like 30 back then.

Whatever float`s your boat Dahlink!

[NewJeffCT]

15. Didn't realize it was so old

A newer B-movie would at least have gratuitous nudity in it.

[swimmernsecretsea]

27. Since they are cult classics, I'll have to add these corrections:

Queen of Outer Space (1958)
Director: Edward Bernds
Writers: Charles Beaumont (writer)
Zsa Zsa Gabor: Talleah
Laurie Mitchell: Queen Yllana

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
Director: Arthur Hilton
Writers: Al Zimbalist (based on a story) and
Jack Rabin (based on a story)
Sonny Tufts: Laird Grainger
Victor Jory: Kip Reissner
Marie Windsor: Helen Salinger
William Phipps: Douglas 'Doug' Smith
Douglas Fowley: Walter 'Walt' Walters
Carol Brewster: Alpha
Susan Morrow: Lambda
Suzanne Alexander: Beta
Bette Arlen: Cat-Woman (as Betty Arlen)
Roxann Delman: Cat-Woman

The Cat from Outer Space (1978)
Director: Norman Tokar
Writer:Ted Key (written by)
Ken Berry: Dr. Franklin 'Frank' Wilson
Sandy Duncan: Dr. Elizabeth 'Liz' Bartlett
Harry Morgan: General Stilton
Roddy McDowall: Mr. Stallwood

I hope this clarifies things. I wouldn't want anyone to go to the wrong movie at a film festival.

[jjanpundt]

9. Signs

Absolutely, the worst ever.

[MrCoffee]

16. Standing ovation to that...what a turd!

My other vote would go to Stargate. Only Roland Emmerich could take a dynamite premise like Stargate had and utterly destroy it halfway through the movie.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

36. I didn't like it because I thought it made no sense

It was reasonably well-acted, well shot, and there were some creepy scenes with suspense. But when the screenwriter creates a world that doesn't hold together, that makes it a terrible movie for me. A good science fiction film, even a cheap one should be grounded in a world that makes sense within itself and that is a numero uno absolute requirement for me. Aliens who travel across the galaxy to take over planet Earth and who hide out in cornfields with no weapons other than their bare hands, and who don't anticipate protective measures against water just turned me completely off. I think that's a major weakness in most of M. Knight Shamylan's films, from The Sixth Sense to Lady In The Water. In his films, it seems to me that internal logic is sacrified and contrived in order to create his story and to put his characters in the drama and conflict he's interested in. But in science fiction, the internal logic of the world created is where it all starts for me.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

10. Who could forget

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone
starring actor/gardener Peter Straus and nails-on-chalkboard Molly Ringwald? Two hours you'll never get back, fer sure.

or perhaps Supernova, starring Angela Bassett and James Spader?

and then there is

Johnny Mnemonic starring (shudder) Keanu Reeves

and another Angela Bassett joint, Strange Days.

Keeping that ball of poo rolling, Ahhhnold starts in the quagmire that is End of Days.

A young William Shatner fought off creepy-crawlies in Kingdom of the Spiders.

The Sword and the Sorcerer, anyone?

Speaking of stupid spider-web shapes, there is the foullest diarrhea to ever flow from the pen of Stephen King: Dreamcatcher.

A perfectly great film franchise was dug up and reanimated like a clown's rotting corpse with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

And this list ends with the worst of them all, a film so poorly done, they had to convince the female lead (ok, so it wasn't hard to convince her) to flail her boobies around in slo-mo during the opening credits, just so that the drooling idjits who actually paid to see the movie wouldn't stand up and demand to see the theater manager for a refund: a film so horribly bad that a week into shooting, the script was thrown away and replaced with an almost line-for-line copy of Casablanca . . . I refer to the stinking, putrid outflow that is Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire.

Ugghh, I'm going to go have a bath now.

[Babel_17]

20. Andrea Marcovicci (Chalmers)

was a good and well realized character played by a good actress in Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. It was an overall cheesy film but I could see signs that some of the people connected to the project actually gave a damn.

Lol, fan of the genre here. :)

The Sword and the Sorcerer: Saw it in the theater, found it often preposterous but mostly fun. Richard Moll was good. Three-bladed sword ftw! lol

Strange Days had an unbelievable concept and that sunk it. They should have set it further in the future but I guess that would have meant a bigger budget.

I like your list, it covers a wide cross-section.

[comrade snarky]

42. Molly Ringwald!

Ah! Every once in a while my sister and I will yell "I'm not a scab I'm an earther" at each other in the whiniest possible tone in homage to this great performance.

Seriously... 30 years later. it's that bad.

[semillama]

11. Check these out from Seanbaby's Wave column:

Star Crash (Italian Star Wars): http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?articleid=22815&pagename=article

Seytan (Turkish Exorcist): http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=24089

The Tramps in the Planet War (Brazilian Star Wars): http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=22948

Turist Omer Uzay Yolunda (Turkish Star Trek): http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=22646

Turkish E. T.: http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=22590

Dunyayi Kurtaryan Adam (Turkish Star Wars): http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=22122

[swimmernsecretsea]

30. I saw those Turkish Star Trek episodes!

A friend of mine who ran a DJ music event played it as visuals during the show. Most amusing. And I love how the show did away with all the established characters and focused on Spock and some invented new characters.

[NewHampshireDem]

12. So, so many

Tank Girl

How about the dozens of Mad Max/Terminator rip-offs from the 80's (if you had HBO or Cinemax back then, you've probably seen them all.)

I'm also going to go out on a limb and name two movies that people seem to love but that I found rather pretentious:

Equilibrium
Cube

I mean, it's one thing to suck, but entirely another to suck while you think you're being profound.

[Cassandra]

63. Cube is major league disgusting...

and speaking of disgusting, does The Cell count? Now THAT was gross. And weird.

[TygrBright]

13. Ahem. Excuse me.... "Waterworld"?? n/t

[NewHampshireDem]

14. I guess you'd have to add 'The Postman' as well n/t

[TechBear_Seattle]

18. Which is a shame, as the book was excellent. n/t

[semillama]

23. The book was excellent, yes.

Damn them for making a horrible movie from one of David Brin's books!

[TechBear_Seattle]

17. "Red Planet" gets my vote

Enough plot holes to navigate a planet through. And don't get me started on the science.

[Clintonista2]

19. Dune

There's a special place in hell for the people who destroyed the reputation of such an awsome book.

[Babel_17]

21. I had no problem with the sci-fi channel version

They did an earnest job with the modest budget that was actually a courageous investment for a cable channel.

The scenes when Paul danced with Irulan was a creative departure and I really liked how they did the scene with the Stone Cutter.

Though I was disappointed with how they portrayed Count Fenrig, the guy was supposed to a lethal warrior and diplomat and not just a courtier. Chris Walken could have nailed that part.

[NewHampshireDem]

24. IIRC, David Lynch's vision for the film

Was that it was to have been 10 hours long or something like that. I remember reading an interview with him before the movie came out, maybe while it was still in production, where he talked about all the scenes he wanted to include but couldn't.

Then again, it's Lynch's vision that probably makes it so bad ... there are so many hints of greatness in this film, from the visual presentation to the casting, that you can't help notice the big stinking mess.

And I don't think I'll ever forgive him for the voice-gun things.

[Babel_17]

25. Exactly

those guns were hideous but much of the visual design was great. The Guild Navigators were especially cool, Cyber punk yet retro. And the mutated navigator was good too when he folded space.

Some of the dialog was too ponderous and cheesy. It was like putting War and Peace on screen but with the added difficulty of the sci fi and psychedelic elements.

"there are so many hints of greatness in this film, from the visual presentation to the casting, that you can't help notice the big stinking mess."

I can't improve on that! Great summary.

[swimmernsecretsea]

28. "His name is a killing word!"

Alia: And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!


Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa? :crazy:

[swimmernsecretsea]

31. Did you hear that Frank Herbert was asked to

write a novelization of the movie? He had the good grace to politely decline, where I would have kicked some ass and taken names.

[PatGund]

50. That's okay....

They got Alan Dean Foster to write it instead (grins, ducks, runs...)

[seasat]

22. The worst I made the mistake of watching was Event Horizon

It was basically a gory torture flick with a stupid premise about warping through some other dimension that was actually hell.

Added on edit: I appreciate a good horror movie but since I'm not a Repug, I don't enjoy watching torture...fictional or otherwise.

[swimmernsecretsea]

26. You forgot:

...whose story was ripped off of a far superior book, "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem.

[seasat]

29. You know I never thought about that but you're right.

I was ripped off from Solaris. It was done is such a horrible way that I never made the connection.

[Greyskye]

32. Who could forget The Black Hole? Oh yeah, everyone...

That movie sucked harder then, well, a black hole.

[Forkboy]

34. Yeah, that one was weaker than a baby on a hunger strike.

Majorly bad...not even "good" bad...just bad. :)

[Forkboy]

33. How could I have forgotten...the American Godzilla.

No atomic breath? He goes to NY for privacy? Killed by missiles? Lays fucking eggs?

Oy vey!

A good remake of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, which is clearly the movie they copied. But as a Godzilla movie? Ass sucking material. And just how does one fuck up one of the easiest formulas in movies? One dash aliens, one dash big monsters, one heaping spoonful O destruction... Jeeeesus!

Sorry, I'm still bitter. :D

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

35. Saturn 3, with Kirk Douglas and Farah Fawcett

I remember seeing this in the theater back in the early 1980s. It was one of the most tedious and uninspiring film experiences I can ever recall. I know that this film has a certain cult following. But for me it was utter boredom. I think this has got to be Kirk Douglas' most embarrassing screen performance and I'm otherwise a big Kirk Douglas fan.

[swimmernsecretsea]

38. Farah shows her boobs.

That was the buzz on the film back when, and the only reason people went to see it. Pity they couldn't have just made a feature-length documentary on her breasts and been done with it.

You know what shocks me? Harvey Keitel, who has been so great in everything since, is just used up in this film. He has some of the worst lines and acting, which is saying something. One could never have guessed he'd be the talent he is today if they'd judged him by "Saturd 3"

[SheilaT]

37. Are you kidding?

The Thirteenth Floor, which came out at the same time as The Matrix is a much better film. It actually makes sense, and doesn't have plot flaws you can drive an aircraft carrier through.

[cynatnite]

39. oops n/t

[cynatnite]

40. Judge Dredd and Doom...

Thought they were the worst of the worst.

Dishonorable mentions go to the remakes:
Planet of the Apes
War of the Worlds

[ThoughtCriminal]

41. So what's worse than "Howard the Duck?"

Don't ask unless you've seen them all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg9U_vDQEF8

[RaleighNCDUer]

53. That was GREAT. nt

[comrade snarky]

43. From the obscure file

Just Imagine!
An American "copy" of Metropolis from 1930. http://imdb.com/title/tt0021016/

An immigrant stereotype wakes up in 1980 to find he's in a world where everyone has a number instead of a name and marriages are arranged by the state. Then he goes to mars for a barely explicable reason.

Oh, and it's a musical.

It was so bad it ended science fiction production for years. The Ishtar of it's day.

[LDB]

44. let's not forget

the immortal Plan 9 From Outer Space

[Zavulon]

45. Star Trek V, Star Trek I, Armageddon, the Bruce Willis movie with

Chris Tucker and the redheaded Ukrainian (can't remember, too lazy to look it up), the second Alien movie, Alien v. Predator, Mars Attacks, Time Cop, Howard the Duck and - boy, do I know I'm going to get flamed for this - the first Star Wars movie (which I now assume is referred to as the fourth - I mean the one released in the seventies that started it all).

[salvorhardin]

47. Well, you got Star Trek V right but I liked The Fith Element

And Star Trek I is horribly underrated in my book. And you're right, you're going to get flamed for hating on Star Wars. ;-)

[Zavulon]

48. I can take it.

I understand that the special effects of the day were state-of-the-art and wowed a lot of people in the seventies, but that doesn't make it a good movie. It's too predictable, only marginally exciting (and only at times) and way, WAY too corny.

I might have thought more of The Fifth Element (thank you for reminding me what it's called) if not for Chris Tucker and his non-stop, non-funny yelling.

I would have agreed with you on Star Trek I if they could have cut the length by about 40%, but I thought too much time was required from the viewer to get to that ending.

Fun to discuss this stuff, though. :)

[Zavulon]

46. Subject: Star Trek V, Star Trek I, Armageddon, the Bruce Willis movie with

Chris Tucker and the redheaded Ukrainian (can't remember, too lazy to look it up), the second Alien movie, Alien v. Predator, Mars Attacks, Time Cop, Howard the Duck and - boy, do I know I'm going to get flamed for this - the first Star Wars movie (which I now assume is referred to as the fourth - I mean the one released in the seventies that started it all).

[Zavulon]

49. Please delete, dupe

The last time I tried to post this, a DU message about cookies came up for no discernible reason.

[Babel_17]

51. Milla

"the redheaded Ukrainian" = the adorable Milla Jovovich. :)

http://www.millaj.com/

http://www.millanews.com/milla/millaindex.html

[jojo54]

52. Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

I think that was the name - just goes to show how much I paid attention.

[and-justice-for-all]

54. Ghost Of Mars....

totally sucked.

[TransitJohn]

55. Battlefield Earth

Not that they had much to work with from the source material....but baaaaaaaad train wreck.

[Terran]

56. Just saw "28 Weeks Later"

and was horrified. A bad bad excuse for a sequel. All the gore and none of the suspense, and little sympathy for any of the characters (except for the wife who survives the attack at the beginning of the movie). Utterly unbelievable twists of fate.

[SheilaT]

57. The Thirteenth Floor

was immeasurably better than The Matrix, which came out at the same time.

It actually had a plot that held together, some real ideas, and overall worked quite well.

I still think that 2001, A Space Odyssey is one of the worst s-f movies every made, complete with cheesy special effects, even accounting for when it was made, a lousy and incoherent plot line, and truly ludicrous dialog. For reasons I've never been able to explain, almost no one agrees with me.

[Orrex]

58. Cheesy special effects? Are you mad?

I can certainly accept that you don't care for the film, but your particular criticisms really surprise me.

Additionally, I would be more apt to call the dialogue "dated" than "ludicrous."

[SheilaT]

59. The sad thing is

that I'm old enough to have seen the film when it first came out.

I laughed out loud at various parts, including the guys in monkey suits in the beginning.

The most prophetic part of it was the Pan Am load factors. Notice that there were no other (maybe just a couple of other?) passengers on the shuttle to the moonbase or where ever it was they guy was flying to.

The original story is extremely good and warrants a read. As I've often complained, the problem with most science fiction movies is that they're made by people who certainly do know how to make movies, but who, for the most part, know squat about science fiction. Science fiction is, in my opinion, a literature of ideas. And almost never do the ideas make it into the movie. There was a valiant effort in 2001, but I think it didn't work.

I do realize I'm fighting a useless fight here, since the movie is so iconic that it's above any criticism for most people. I once experienced a real "if looks could kill" moment when I brought up my take on that movie to a major s-f writer. Oh, well.

I'll just crawl back under my rock.

[Orrex]

60. Don't crawl away! Your ideas are fine...

Even if you're crazy. :evilgrin:

I'm surprised at your take on the monkey suits. Everything I've ever read about the film describes them as cutting edge prosthetic makeup, exceeding what we say in Planet of the Apes, for instance.

If by "the original story" you mean Clarke's Sentinel, then I agree that it's a fine read. I'm less thrilled with the 2001 novel.

[SheilaT]

61. I know that everyone seemed

to think the monkey suits were cutting edge prosthetic makeup at the time, but it still came off as nothing more than men in monkey suits. Th essential problem, in my opinion, is that the movie very quickly became so iconic than any valid critique, let alone criticism, became impossible.

But I'm used to having opinions different from most.

And yes, the original story is Clarke's Sentinel.

[Cassandra]

62. That was the Queen of Outer Space

I watched that a lot when it would play endlessly on one of the minor channels (9 or 11), but I haven't seen it in years. Eric Fleming was the male lead; later in Rawhide.

Millennium was God-awful (Cheryl Ladd and Kris Kristofferson)

I liked the newer Time Machine; I liked some of the special effects and the answer hologram who recognizes him later on - nice touch.
I'm a sucker for time travel stories, so The Thirteenth Floor and Timeline had some nice moments for me.

Event Horizon creeped me out thoroughly; I don't like horror movies, even sci-fi ones.

[PatGund]

64. One word - Zardoz

Just how much of the budget went to narcotics anyway???

[AsahinaKimi]

65. You never mentioned: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE...

IT WAS SO BAD IT became a cult classic...
But it was and still is the WORST SCI FI movie of all time.

[Sandrine for you]

66. Barbarella.

[Orrex]

67. These lists too often succumb to a tempting shortcut

B-Movies should be exempted from these lists simply because it's not fair to include them. Even at the time of their release, everyone knew that they were well below the quality of contemporary films. To put Plan 9 on a list of "worst films" is like mocking a crippled horse for coming in last in The Kentucky Derby.

The more interesting list would include only those films that took themselves seriously and that had access to the adequate financial resources. Battlefield Earth is a great example: with nearly infinite resources at its disposal, it's still one of the worst films ever made, s/f or otherwise.


Also, there are so many monumental stinkers out there that the inclusion of B-Movies on the list is simply a missed opportunity. Better to ridicule those that should have done better than to mock those that did all that they could with the little that they had to work with.