- Author : Harry Medved
- Binding : Paperback
- Dewey Decimal Number : 791.4375
- EAN : 9780446381192
- ISBN : 0446381195
- Is Eligible For Trade In? : Yes
- Label : Warner Books
- List Price : $9.95 (USD)
- Manufacturer : Warner Books
- Number Of Items : 1
- Publication Date : 1984-06-01
- Publisher : Warner Books
- Studio : Warner Books
Customer Reviews:
Customers rated Fifty Worst Films of All Time 4.0 stars out of 5.0 based on 7 reviews:Good movies last for a season; really bad movies are forever
by Todd Stockslager (Raleigh, NC) - 2009-12-19
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!Before you order this, please...
by - 2005-03-20
...read this online review. This book might have been good if it had been written when MST3K was on the air. Unfortunately, this was published 10 years before the series pilot. Keep reading! This book is just SO Subjective. It's partly due to their ground rules. The ground rules eliminate Mexican productions (the 1959 film "Santa Claus") as well as porno flicks (Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [1964]), movies made for television ("A Charlie Brown Christmas"--anybody who thought that had charm obviously had not taken the time to sit down and watch it), films about the Army ("The Green Berets"), and training films ("Faces of Death"). OVERRATED ART FILMS. I have never condemned the inclusion of heralded classics in a book like this if the author makes a convincing argument. He does not. OLDIES BUT BADDIES. I agree wholeheartedly that bad movies have actually been around almost as long as motion pictures themselves. That's what makes the selections here all the more tragic. They include the 1937 biopic "Parnell" (considered the worst biography ever made at the time of the book's publification); however, the ground rules do not state it, but they also apparently exclude Depression-era cautionary films such as "Reefer Madness" and "The Struggle." These are crucial because the actors are laughable in their failure to convince. It is also crucial because these films commit others to the sight of death or ruined lifes with no care. GRADE "Z" ATROCITIES. The only ones of those are "Robot Monster," "Eeegah," and the Roger Corman-New World-produced "Swamp Women." If those can be the only ones eligible for inclusion, I am lost for words. The book could also benefit from Ed Wood's and Coleman Francis's creations as well as "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" and "'Manos' the Hands of Fate." This book has inspired me to write a less subjective sequel; however, I will still exclude silent films, Chinese and Polish productions (Have the Chinese ever made a bad movie? No really, have they? There's "Surf Ninjas," but that's ABOUT the East), and travelogues (how can these be bad?). As for this, 4 words: Avoid...at...all...costs.Delight from beginning to end
by Elizabeth G. Melillo - 2002-11-23
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.Still An Invaluable Filmgoer's Companion
by Matherson (New York) - 2002-01-23
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.Informative
by Jonah Falcon (New York, NY USA) - 2000-10-11
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!)
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