Badmovies.org Forum

The "worst Christmas movies" article turned out very well
http://www.almaguinregion.com/almaguin/article/57936 (http://www.almaguinregion.com/almaguin/article/57936)

So, I have another question for another piece I'm planning. I need examples of talented, respected actors and actresses who have appeared in a movie that was far beneath them.

This is actually tougher than it sounds. This does not include early roles by as-yet-unestablished stars (eg. Hercules in New York), nor does it include washed-up actors taking what they can get (Bela Lugosi), nor any good actor who comfortably jumps between big movies and cheesy ones. What I want is something like Christopher Plummer showing up in Star Crash, a really good actor in a really bad - uncharacteristically bad - movie. Something that makes you say "What the hell is he doing in this thing?"

Other than that, they can be of any era, any gender, any style of acting. They just have to be well-known, and their role in the crappy movie must be fairly significant.

How much of a list can we compile?

I know Cameron Mitchell has been in a lotta ultra-low budget stuff...but he appeared in the XXX-rated DIXIE RAY-SUPERSTAR back in the 70's. Thankfully...he kept his clothes on.
 

I haven't seen the "complete Works" of Christopher Lee, at least not yet, but "The Return of Captain Invincable" was simply terrible, filled with amaturish editing techniques & poorly executed jokes.

This took no thought at all.

Raoul Julia as Bison in Street Fighter 2.

It's not like the guy's career was sliding downward so what the hell was he doing in that movie?  And to add insult to injury, it turned out to be his swan song! 

What a shame.

Well, actually Julia knew he was dying of cancer by the time he did Street Fighter. The way I heard it, he was just looking for the paycheque at that point, to set his family up as comfortably as possible. On the bright side, he did manage to squeeze in one role after that, so he didn't finish with Bison. Mind you, he was pretty badly deteriorated by that time, so it was not very pretty.

Uma Thurma... as a hot Poison Ivy... in a bad, bad, Batman and Robin.

Robert DeNiro in how many...

A few I can think of off hand.
Robert Patrick - Double Dragon
James Earl Jones - Blood Tide, Excorcist 2
Robert Vaughn - Zombie 5

Leslie Nielsen in 2001: A Space Travesty
Kevin Costner in Waterworld (Not a big fan or anything, but still)
Jeff Daniels and Michael Richards in Trial and Error
Will Smith in Wild Wild West

Ah well then...

Anthony Hopkins in Freejack
Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons

Those are the two that really stand out for me, and with good reason....   :buggedout:

I generally *like* Will Smith movies, but he was horribly miscast as James West. The movie itself probably would have fared better, at least in my estimation, if a more James West-like character actor was cast as James West. Jackie Chan doesn't star as Wilt Chamberlain, Keira Knightley doesn't star as Guenivere (er... scratch that), you get my point.

Ugh... :hatred: Dungeons & Dragons... when is that one going to be added to Andrew's web of shame. I still shower trying to wash the bad feelings away. Never before had I walked out of a cinema generally p**sed off. That movie was so bad in so many ways. I had such high hopes that the movie could have started a little D&D Brand for movies to be released under. Unfortunately they decided to insert their stupid "DM created" world and campaign with barely anything recognizable to a gamer. Such a waste of the actual talent they assembled and the CGI they had to play with.

No one has mentioned Sean Connery in HIGHLANDER II?  or . . . (shudder) ZARDOZ???

How about Cuba Gooding in... well, pretty much every film he's been in since Pearl Harbor?

Rip Torn in Freddy Got Fingered?

Actually,ZARDOZ was thought of as a serious,big time innovative type of film on it's intial release in the 70's,....it also bombed out pretty badly. 

Another movie I thought of:  Nothing But Trouble.
It was co-written and directed by Dan Aykroyd, and starred him along with Demi Moore, Chevy Chase and John Candy.  Featured a cameo performance by Digital Underground, a rap group known for "The Humpty Dance" and had Tupac Shakur in it.  I liked it, but it generally was seen as a bad movie.  If you haven't seen it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_But_Trouble_%281991_film%29



I like Will's movies, but that was just, well, not good.

Wild Wild West also had Kenneth Branagh in it. Makes a change from Hamlet, I suppose.

nothin but trouble is great

Donald Pleasance in PUMAMAN!!
Yes, I know he did Halloween, but that was at least a movie that tried -- PUMAMAN is excerable on multiple levels --
peter johnson/denny crane

Warrior of the Lost World is another good (awful) one with Pleasence.

What about Tia Carerre in Zombie Nightmare?

John Saxon in basically everything he's been with the possible exceptions of Nightmare on Elm Street and Enter the Dragon.  I'm surprised he never had a bigger and better movie career.

Have to disagree with that. Saxon was in Tenebre, which is reguarded as a classic example of the giallo genre.

I said basically...I guess I didn't qualify my statement enough.  But, you know for a B-Movie actor the guy has managed to maintain his dignity.  Even when staring alongside Richard "Battlestar Galactica" Hatch in Prisoners of the Lost Universe.

Probably the most refined primitive barbarian warlord to ever walk the...surface of another Earth-like world.

Probably not quite in the spirit of the original post, but William Marshall's Shakespearean performance always seemed too good for BLACULA to me... of course, that's part of what gives the movie its charm.

Frank Langella as Skeletor in that corny He-Man movie.

On a side note, I just saw on IMDB that there is going to be another released in 2009. I'll have to check that out. I wonder if it will be live-action or animated.



John Saxon has always been a bit of a journeyman. Decent and respected just not top billing. I'm surprised that he hasn't been in more mainstream supporting roles.

Donald Pleasance has been in a lot of bad movies, though... What about when he was in The Mutations (aka The Freakmaker) with Tom Baker?

Okay, so maybe Pleasance isn't a very good choice for the thread then -- I just keep thinking of how very good he was in things like "THX1138" --
I guess we can't say Boris Karloff or John Carradine, either -- or Christopher Lee for that matter -- because I guess the critical mass of their performances outweigh the good --
peter johnson/denny crane

Pleasance sort of seems like he's slumming it in every single role he ever played.

I love it.  But most people tend to disagree with me.

Yeah but, he was Dr. Loomis.

I shot him six times! He's not human!
If that's not Elizabethan quality then I don't know what is.

How do you replace that?

That's another problem. Guys like Pleasence or Christopher Lee tend to lift up the cheesy films they're in instead of being dragged down by them.

Funny, whenever Nothing But Trouble comes up, I always remember seeing an apologetic John Candy being interviewed on TV, saying something to the effect of "I don't know what happened. Sometimes things look good on paper."

It's a bad movie, but I love it.  It's hilarious.

Since Anthony Hopkins and Freejack were mentioned, Hopkins said in several interviews he only really did the movie to meet Mick Jagger.

When Donald Pleasnce died, one obit mentiioned he was known in theatrical crilces for his work in Harold Pinter plays, but also noted that he loved getting to ham it up in the Halloween films.

I was going to mention Christopher Lee in Starship Invasions, which is so cheap it looks almost like a high end home movie. Or his work in Jess Franco Dracula due to it's cheapness, but it is one of the more loyal adaptation of the Stoker novel (in some respects) Plus Lee was apparently quite fond of it and thinks Franco is an underappreciated talent.

Okay, actual suggestions:

Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman in Edison Force
Charlie and Martin Sheen in No Code of Conduct,
Paul Scofield in the forgettable Scorpio.
Toshiro Mifune in Paper Tiger

Edited since I always get Paper Lion and Paper Tiger mixed up.

I love the part where the judge uses an oil can spout on a can of Hawaiian Punch. Still cracks me up. I would love to have a spout like that for juice cans, as long as I could be sure it wouldn't contaminate the juice. Can you even get new, unused ones anymore?

I'm sure it's been mentioned but if not, Christopher Walken and Al Pacino in Gigli.

No! I refuse to accept that Christopher Walken was in Gigli! It never happened! NEVER!

I feel the same way about Balls of Fury.

Yeah I thought the same thing when I tried to watch this movie...ug.  I'm pretty sure that it was some of that high tech CGI lifted from some other movie and inserted into Gigli.

Gene Hackman in Loose Cannons, a kinda comedy cop-buddy movie with Dan Ackroyd, what a waste.

An even bigger waste was appearing in Superman IV, not only as Lex Luthor but as the voice of Nuclear Man.

The complete works of Andy Kaufman.
It only makes his story that much more tragic.

I was flippin out.  I haven't seen it in a while, but HBO was showing it a whole hell of a lot around '99/'00.  I remember one time a cousin of mine slept over and I watched it like, 3 times.  My mom and cousin were like, "This is a terrible movie and a waste of time."

I loved when Digital Undergound shows up and just like, busts out a song.

But Hackman and Michael Caine both went through a phase when both seemed to be in every movie that came out. I figured they were padding their pension funds as they passed their peaks as leading actors. So I tend to overlook some of the more dubious choices of both these actors.

I was going to say Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in Superman, but he could have been a very good Luthor. I'm not talking so much about I, but definitely the Lester cut of II and that horrid IV. Hackman has a very good stage presence and could have pulled off a serious Luthor. Those Superman movies could have been so much better if they dropped the comedy bits and stuck to the source material.

What about Kangaroo Jack or Joe Dirt?

Granted, Joe Dirt was hilarious (by my standards, anyway), but Kangaroo Jack?

Man's gotta eat...
Kangaroo Jack was just an innocuous comedy, Gigli had trainwreck written all over it.

Yeah, but what about The Country Bears?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276033/

 :buggedout:

Well, can't really defend that one. Maybe he owed someone a favor.  :bluesad:

Sir Peter Ustinov in "The Bachelor" - including a cameo of Mariah Carrey..oh, how could he?

What was Iggy Pop doing in "The Crow"? - I know he's not an actor, and yes, I don't line the movie

It was tough seeing Anthony Quinn in "Last Action Hero" making a fool of himself, although the movie wasn't that bad.

Willem Dafoe in "Speed 2", I know he's in some other no-good movies, but I like him a lot and this one is particular bad.

Haven't seen it, but Hale Berry in "Catwomen"?

From this forum: Mae West in "Sextette" - however, others seem to be guilty to be in this movie, too

True.  Still a bad movie though.

He should just stick to showing up in musicians music videos.  That's cool.