How to appreciate a train-wreck

How do you measure a truly awful movie? Joe Queenan explains:

To qualify as one of the worst films of all time, several strict requirements must be met. For starters, a truly awful movie must have started out with some expectation of not being awful. That is why making a horrific, cheapo motion picture that stars Hilton or Jessica Simpson is not really much of an accomplishment. Did anyone seriously expect a film called The Hottie and The Nottie not to suck? Two, an authentically bad movie has to be famous; it can't simply be an obscure student film about a boy who eats live rodents to impress dead girls. Three, the film cannot be a deliberate attempt to make the worst movie ever, as this is cheating. Four, the film must feature real movie stars, not jocks, bozos, has-beens or fleetingly famous media fabrications like Hilton. Five, the film must generate a negative buzz long before it reaches cinemas; like the Black Plague or the Mongol invasions, it must be an impending disaster of which there has been abundant advance warning; it cannot simply appear out of nowhere. And it must, upon release, answer the question: could it possibly be as bad as everyone says it is? This is what separates Waterworld, a financial disaster but not an uncompromisingly dreadful film, and Ishtar, which has one or two amusing moments, from The Postman, Gigli and Heaven's Gate, all of which are bona fide nightmares.Six, to qualify as one of the worst movies ever made, a motion picture must induce a sense of dread in those who have seen it, a fear that they may one day be forced to watch the film again - and again - and again. To pass muster as one of the all-time celluloid disasters, a film must be so bad that when a person is asked, "Which will it be? Waterboarding, invasive cattle prods or Jersey Girl?", the answer needs no further reflection.

Queenan makes a compelling case for Heavens Gate to be considered the worst movie of all time. But in some respects I'm not sure that The Sicilian isn't actually worse, even if it didn't have quite such a dramatic impact.

UPDATE: I'd also say - put this in the Different-but-Related category - that I find any film starring Steve Martin unwatchable.

[Via Clive Davis, who plumps for Showgirls himself.]

Comments

[seanachie]

I went with the consensus on Heaven's Gate for a long time, having only ever seen it on a really bad pan-and-scan VHS copy about ten years ago. When I saw it two years ago in a new print on the big screen I was finally convinced of its greatness (as the French have been since its release). Strange that its politics are almost diametrically opposed to those of The Deerhunter yet both films are epics worthy of the name. It's also interesting how few people have recognised the echo of Heaven's Gate in There Will Be Blood. Cimino's film might remain one of the biggest commercial flops of all time and is testimony to irresponsible filmmaking in that respect but it definitely doesn't deserve to be ranked alongside The Postman or Waterworld. Mind you, Showgirls has its champions too, most notably the great (and sane of mind) Jacques Rivette.

[Beth Noire]

Youth Without Youth made me want to scoop out my own brain with a spoon - but surely not all Steve Martin movies are completely unwatchable.
Admittedly there are more laughs at public executions than in his remakes of Bilko or the Pink Panther. Yet is there no small corner of the Massie heart for moments of The Man With Two Brains, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Roxanne, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.... maybe even Planes Trains and Automobiles or Bowfinger?

[SimplerDave]

What about those films that are released with much hype and buzz (and no overall sense of impending doom), and then crash to the ground with a resounding tinkle when people actually, y'know, see them. Pearl Harbor, for example...