SciFi and Fantasy eBook Club discussion

A strong contender has to be "Left Behind". It's a sort of apocalyptic religious disaster flick with exceedingly low production values and wooden dialogue.

Also shockingly awful was Sniper Elite. It claims to star Kevin Sorbo, but he only appears for a few seconds. His role is to be to stay in a command spaceship and watch the action on computer screens. Every now and again he asks "What just happened?" so that someone sitting at a screen can explain the plot. Beyond that it's some low budget mumbojumbo about army snipers and aliens. Awful. Simply awful.

Hmmm. I actually liked Jason X. It was a fresh departure from the rest of the Jason series.

I would have a number of movies tied for worst, mostly SyFy movies, like:

Dinocroc vs. Supergator
Doomsday Prophecy
Super Shark
Jersey Shore Shark Attack
Spiders
Bigfoot

The worst sci-fi movie of all time was The Green Slime from Outer Space. The title character looked like lime jello that escaped. Among the notable special effects was the rocket ship. When it was shown, smoke came out the rear end and then curled up!

I think I saw it originally at a drive in and then again on the TV show MS2K.

Attack the Block is definitely the worst sci fi ever.

A woman gets attacked by punk kids, then the punk kids get attacked by aliens. Punk kids and woman become friends and save their neighborhood.

Jevon wrote: "Attack the Block is definitely the worst sci fi ever."

I think you're in the minority on that one. It's got a 6.6 rating on IMDB. And certified as "Fresh" by Rotten Tomatoes with a 90% score.

I won’t name the film since it’s (for some reason) beloved by many. But it had one of the most atrocious HEA ends thrust down the watchers throat.

Here is the plot summary: Boy fights robots as his day job. Robots fight back. Robots are programmed to die after a period of time. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy learns girl is a robot. Woe is boy. Boy fights more robots and wins. Boy discovers girl is a SPECIAL(!!!) robot who isn’t going die. Boy and girl head off into the sunset. End of film. Bad, very bad. Dog diarrhea squirted into your eyes bad. UNFORGIVABLE.

Sebastian wrote: "Greg wrote: "I won’t name the film since it’s (for some reason) beloved by many. But it had one of the most atrocious HEA ends thrust down the watchers throat.

Here is the plot summary: Boy fig..."

Almost sounds like Bladerunner...

SyFy is full of bad movies, but to a degree they've embraced it and now flaunt it. We like to tune in from time to time and give them the MST3K treatment. I believe (and hope) that they know this is what people do.

I really liked Attack The Block. Then again, it was based in south London, where I was living at the time.

My vote for the worst is Barb Wire. How anyone could think of making a dystopian version of Casablanca is beyond me.

Fifth Element

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes has to win the prize. It's become a cult classic. My favorite scene is the one where you see (a) the microphone hanging above the actors and (b) the mattress off-stage they fall into.

Fifth Element and Blade Runner? Really? Excuse me while I stop spluttering ...

Charles wrote: "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes has to win the prize. It's become a cult classic. My favorite scene is the one where you see (a) the microphone hanging above the actors and (b) the mattress off-stage..."

Ha... I always considered Attack of the Killer Tomatoes more of a comedy than sci fi.

The concept of tomatoes killing people just has to be a joke.

Randy wrote: "Jevon wrote: "Attack the Block is definitely the worst sci fi ever."

I think you're in the minority on that one. It's got a 6.6 rating on IMDB. And certified as "Fresh" by Rotten Tomatoes with a 9..."

This just shows what the world considers good in this century. It's a definite shift from the late 90's.

And the only reason I attempted to watch it was because it came highly recommended on a tech site I frequent. They obviously know technology much better than movies.

I cant say why ,but I love the killer tomato movies ,hell I have them on vhs just dont have a vcr

ZARDOZZZZZZ!!!!!!!

Although I suppose Sean Connery was pretty sexy in those skimpy red briefs.

Don't know about it being the worst, but I was thoroughly disappointed with Avengers Age of Ultron which I saw on DVD last night.

For a big budget film with good actors and well-rated previous films, it came across as lazy and unimaginative. Large parts of it were a copy and paste from the other films in the Avengers universe, especially Assemble.

It's easy to mock the Syfy channel made for TV movies, but they don't have a fraction of the budget of this monumental pile of poo.

Will wrote: "Don't know about it being the worst, but I was thoroughly disappointed with Avengers Age of Ultron which I saw on DVD last night.

For a big budget film with good actors and well-rated previous fi..."

Just not into any of the supposed block buster films from the superhero franchises. Should be fantasy not sci-fi, but each to his own

I prefer more plot and all of these seems to just focus on the action sequences. No money for decent scriptwriters after everything is blown up 50,000 times whilst hero/heroine or passing little child escape unharmed. No one heard of explosive forces in these films. Make James Bond look realistic.

The Core.

The "science" in that movie is laugh-out-loud bad.

Kenneth wrote: "The Core.

The "science" in that movie is laugh-out-loud bad."

I found the Core interesting. Just didn't expect all those horrible deaths.

Zardozzzzz???????
It's a classic!
;)

The Core's main premise is that the Earth's dynamo stops spinning, causing widespread chaos. This is based on the reality that the Earth's dynamo IS slowing down as the planet cools, but the process is accelerated into a matter of days vs millions of years. The associated changes to the magnetic field shown in the movie are way off base, and actual cataclysmic changes if their premise were true are left out. Further, the plot's solution is far beyond impractical, and ineffective. In short, it's all junk science.

Kung Fury was so horrible it was almost awesome. (Is that sci-fi? They hack time at one point...)

The list for this can just go on and on.

I'll go ahead and nominate any of the transformer movies. Story lines that were all over the place, a confusing mess of battle scenes, and then the transformers busily engaged in their thousands of years long war lecturing the human on how violent human history is.

Horrible script, bad acting, bad directing, and confusing special effects. Luckily they had a big budget.

My all-time favorite has to be The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. I'm not making this up. It is a real movie. Two great features within it are a scene where the overhead mike is clearly visible, and another where you see the actor who's just been tossed, land on a mattress.

Charles, were you aware there are four Killer Tomatoes movies? They're cult classics among lovers of bad movies!

Anything by Troma Studios, who proudly brought us The Toxic Avenger series of movies, among others.

I've always seen Killer Tomatoes as more of a comedy than a serious movie, like one of those Scary Movie comedies.

V.B. wrote: "Charles, were you aware there are four Killer Tomatoes movies? They're cult classics among lovers of bad movies!"

I knew it was a cult movie when I first watched it. I was unaware there were four, though. Oh, be still, my heart!

Contact.

Seriously hated that movie. Came home and guzzled two fingers of single malt just to wash the taste out of my mouth.

I saw a movie that had to do with flying sharks eating people up. I didn't hate it but I certainly didn't like it. I disliked it so much that I didn't even sit to watch all of it. Something about flying sharks just doesn't appeal to me. It seemed above sci fiction above fantasy not even a thriller so I didn't like it.

Think I saw something like that on on SyFy channel. Could be Sharknado. And it actually goes up to part 3.

There're always making crazy stuff like that - megashark, crocosaurus, that sort of thing.

It was probably that one I cannot recall the title but it sounds like it.

It's gotta be 'Ice Pirates' folks! I know it's old, but it was BADD...... The only thing redeeming was that it was actually supposed to be a comedy.

Butterfly Effect

Sorry folks for coming late to this discussion.

I've got the definitive worst sci fi anything for all of you. It's gotta be the Star Wars Christmas Special. Nothing gets worse than that.

My vote for the all time worst Sci-Fi movie is the remake of Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves. Not only did it stand alone as a horrible waste of cinema, but it also disrespected the original movie. In black and white, with 60 year old special effects, and 1950s mores, the original still is worth viewing, which cannot be said for the miserable remake.

I thought the remake of Total Recall was just awful, and so not worth the price of the ticket.
I've never watched The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It sounds like it might be fun :-D

There are SOOOO many to choose from. Several mentioned weren't even meant to be classed as SciFi, but horror. I don't worry about the campy ones since the only people who might have taken them seriously are the directors. Among those meant to be taken more or less seriously as SciFi, the one done by Bruce Willis (so bad in my opinion that I can't even remember the name even though it gets shown almost yearly by someone).

Dale wrote: "There are SOOOO many to choose from. Several mentioned weren't even meant to be classed as SciFi, but horror. I don't worry about the campy ones since the only people who might have taken them seri..."

I believe you are referring to "The Fifth Element".

You people have obviously never seen Johnny Sunshine Maximum Violence. :)

Any movies they showcase in Mystery Science Theater 3000 ;)

John wrote: "Any movies they showcase in Mystery Science Theater 3000.........."

............are bad enough to actually enjoy how bad they are.

Truly horrible films are ones that the makers took seriously, and got it so wrong that even MST2K wouldn't play them (and in all likelihood some misguided folks will actually think the film is good, so making fun of it will piss off some).

Battlefield Earth is one of those. I wouldn't be able to watch it. I've seen clips, and even ignoring the fact that it comes from L Ron Hubbard origins and stars John Travolta (both of which rule it out in my book), that totally stoopid tilted camera thing it does is just so wrong that I couldn't suffer through more than 10 minutes of it. WTF was up w/that?

Worst sci-fi movie was on TV about a week or so ago. The Republican Convention. I felt like I was experiencing one of those George Orwellian/H.P. Lovecraft terror tales.

Hello, all! (I just joined up.)

The worst SF movie I ever partially saw -- because it was also the first movie I ever walked out on -- was Nightfall, very very very loosely based on Isaac Asimov's story. (I'm not sure, but I believe this predated the novel-sized expansion on which Asimov and Robert Silverberg collaborated.) My husband and I wonder if that movie killed off actor David Birney's career.

Pretty much any sci-fi film Syfy trots out.

Mainstream wise, I can't stand the Batman films, at least not the more recent ones a la Christian Bale. Everyone raved about
The Dark Knight. I found it to be long-winded stodge *ducks for cover*

This could be a never-ending list for me, but I will try to keep it brief:

Mars Attacks!
Rubber
Battlefield Earth
The Fifth Element
Howard the Duck
Any "Highlander" sequel

That's as far as I can go for now - there's a log jam in my brain now full of junk movie titles vying for the next spot on the list.

Aw, but Mars Attacks is fun to watch!

Earl wrote: "This could be a never-ending list for me, but I will try to keep it brief:

Mars Attacks!
Rubber
Battlefield Earth
The Fifth Element
Howard the Duck
Any "Highlander" sequel

That's as far as I can ..."

The 7th Day.

Advertised as a sci-fi movie, but was just a cheap low budget talking heads movie with no science fiction to it all all.

R. wrote: "My vote for the all time worst Sci-Fi movie is the remake of Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves. Not only did it stand alone as a horrible waste of cinema, but it also disrespected the ori..."

I love Keannu Reeves, but the movie sucked big time. Special Effects do not make a movie.

The old one had heart and hope and an overarching moral lesson that humanity needs to grow up and find its humility.

Hey guys, I cant believe no one has mentioned yet the original winner of the Golden Turkey award, Plan 9 from Outer Space!
Seriously LOL bad.