Favorite Rotten Movies- Page 3

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/12/04 at 7:21pm

The Fan has some of the strangest moments captured on film during the 80s. Bacall's first rehearsal with gushing gypsies, when she begs them to be patient (!) because the musical theater is terra nova for her. The show itself, including that "Hearts, Not Diamonds" number (with a chorus chanting "A remarkable woman IS!"), is a sort of cheeseball version of LADY IN THE DARK mixed with outtakes from ALL THAT JAZZ. Bacall wears satin pajamas in something like a jail cell. Whats startling is how it points up Bacall's limitations, and it came out just as she opened in WOMAN OF THE YEAR on b'way. (OT: my favorite Bacall musical moment recorded, "God damn it! I AM! The Wo-MAN! OF! The! YEEEEEEAR!")

The whole show-within-a-movie was filmed in the old Entermedia, down on the lower East Side, and bears no resemblence to a broadway house. Her final confrontation with pouty Bien, when she bravely talks him down, ascends to camp heaven.

I think I know way too much about this movie.

Updated On: 1/12/04 at 07:21 PM

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/12/04 at 8:35pm

DofB5 - I saw Franenstein - The True Story ages ago on TV. I remember thinking, "He doesn't look like Frankenstein at all!" I found it to be much creepier than any other Frankenstein film I've ever seen. Something about the way it was filmed. It wasn't much on makeup or special effects. It just had this really eerie feeling about it played with subtle honesty that just made me want to go wash out my head with a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 1/12/04 at 11:39pm

THE CARDINAL w/Tom Tyron before he wrote dirty books.

It was a bad movie at the time but perhaps improved with age especially since Criterion has distributed it on DVD.

HURRY SUNDOWN with Jane Fonda, directed by Otto Premminger. (I still can't believe he was sleepy with GYPSY.)
A modern story of the true South. ugh!

Bulldog

[orion59]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 8:02am

The Cardinal? Is that the old Montgomery Clift movie? That was a great movie.

Auggie, Don't feel bad knowing too much about The Fan. I'm impressed that anyone would know so much about uch a bad movie. I recently came across a used copy on vhs in a small video store that was going out of business. I was so thrilled to find it. I hadn't seen it in years. They were selling it for 3.99. I have played the Hearts Not Diamonds number over and over since I aquired it beacuse, as Mendelbaum said, it is FUN to hear Bacall sing.

[ghostlight]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 8:18am

I love The Cardinal too! I certainly wouldn't rank it in this category.

Plan 9 definitely gets my #1 bad movie vote. Its hilarious to watch.

Anyone ever see Scanners? It was awful. Heads explode - literally! This list is cracking me up!! Blasts from the past. I'll be hitting the library/video store this weekend to look for some of these winners.

Orion- Bay City Rollers -ROFLMAO!!

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 8:55am

Thanks Orion. I was gonna delete my "Fan" post, it looked like it was written on speed.

As for "The Cardinal," it was a favorite in my childhood. Does anyone else remember the haunting musical score? It was infectious and beautiful. And it was a movie with an intermission! Remember those? I also recall that Romy Schneider was the Temptation, and that Carol Lynley played both his sister, and later his gown up neice, who survived because they couldn't crush her skull to save the sis's life, because that would be a Cardinal Sin. Something like that. I cried and cried when I was 12. The damned thing is never on TV.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 9:51am

The FAN's awful musical number brings to mind TORCH SONG and the equally jaw-dropping "Two-Faced Woman"!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 3:17pm

Not to mention the intentionally bad "Songbird". The 80s musical version of Sweet Bird of Youth featured in Death Becomes Her. I love it when they break out into disco. It made me want to see the whole show.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 9:47pm

I didn't make it clear that THE CARDINAL was a favorite of mine, too. I saw the film about 5 times. It was generally panned when it opened which I intended to convey. The score was indeed haunting Auggie. It was written my Jerome Moross who:

"...wrote music for a variety of different media, but seemed most at home composing ballets. He dabbled in Broadway show music (notably 1954's The Golden Apple) and in classical forms, and, between 1948 and 1969, he wrote a series of motion picture scores...

Moross also wrote the score for THE BIG COUNTRY, that terrific Western.

Bulldog
Updated On: 1/13/04 at 09:47 PM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 10:07pm

James Moross. I will look it up, Bulldog. Thank you. I would've sworn it was an Elmer Bernstein type or the equiv. (in terms of profile.) I can hum the predominate theme in my head as I type this. Amazing, the things that stick. Again, it's odd, no? That the film never surfaces on TV?

[Mrs B]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 10:47pm

Does anyone know the name of the television movie where Linda Purl and Shaun Cassidy played mentally challended people in love? That ended his career as an "actor" pretty quickly.

And "Lace"- "Which of you bitches is my mother?"

I want Phoebe Cates to attend the get together and say that to someone.

My best friend (like an American Rupert Evert) read me chapters from a book called SCREENING ROOM- it was very rude and very funny. We only read the chapter on SOUND OF MUSIC but I want to read more of it.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 11:03pm

Auggie, BTW, It's Jerome. I corrected my mistake. My fingers were doing their own thing as I thought his name.

Bulldog

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 1/13/04 at 11:14pm

Have people forgotten SHOWGIRLS so soon?

"I'm not a STRIPPAH, I'm a DANCE-AH!"

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 1:15am

Here you go, Mrs.B. LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE

http://imdb.com/title/tt0079471/

[orion59]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 8:32am

The Cardinal may have been panned by critics when it first came out but I never thought of it as a bad movie in the same sense as some of the others we've listed here. Of course, the fact that as a child I thought Montgomery Clift was the most handsome man in the world probably taints my opinion of any movie in which he starred.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 9:26am

To those who posted about Movies of the Week, you missed the definitive star: Meredith Baxter Birney. She had breast cancer, mental illness, bullemia, she killed her husband, she (fill in the blank). Here's to you, Meredith. A bland blonde who was every network's idea of Everywoman, clearly. The WASPy chameleon from hell.

My favorite MOW is actually pretty damned good. THE QUEEN OF MEAN, with Suzanne Pleshette wearing fake teeth to chomp down the hotel walls as she plays Leona Helmsley. Anyone else like that one? I used to show that and MOMMIE DEAREST as a double feature. I love Suzanne, particularly in the scene where she chews out her son because his thievery threatens to come between her and Harry H (well played, by a befuddled Lloyd Bridges). The way she snarls, "If you screw this up for me, I'll hang you out to dry!" is chilling.

QUEEN OF MEAN is a grabber, though afterwards, you feel like you've been rolling around naked on a bed of NY Posts.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 9:29am

Orion, I think you are confusing THE CARDINAL with I CONFESS. Tom Tyron was in THE CARDINAL, Clift in I CONFESS.

[orion59]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 9:38am

OMG, you're right Sueleen. I am thinking of I Confess. I'm so bad at remembering movie titles.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 10:27am

Mrs B - Shaun Cassidy and Linda Purl were in "Like Normal People"

I wish someone knew the name of the 70s movie I described with the psycho girl in the attic that removes her wig wearing a white nightgown. I think she turned out to be a man in drag. I really want to see that again.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 11:40am

Matt, maybe you want to take this 70s movie up with a therapist? Yikes, maybe it's ... a dream! Who is that nightgown clad drag queen in the attic?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 11:49am

Maybe it was Namo. I'm sure he'd like to get in a few stabs.

[lassy]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 12:57pm

Orion,

I saw Trilogy of Terror a few years ago and I still can't get the image of a grinning Karen Black with a spear out of my mind.

I never understood why anyone would want to stalk Lauren Bacall in The Fan. I read the novel after I saw the movie. Creepy. Like a message board sometimes.

[orion59]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 1:17pm

lassy, that was the other thing about The Fan that I found unbelievable. A young good looking guy becomes infatuated with her, an old, nicotine stained, gravely voiced diva witch.

[DofB5]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 8:07pm

I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers that movie, Mister Matt. I do wish they would release it to DVD. I'd kinda like to see it again.

d

[Mrs B]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 12:38am

Thanks to Sueleen and Mister Matt for the assist on the name of the movie!