Badmovies.org Forum

An offshoot of Jim H's thread about special effects that have held up.   This one is about special effects that are simply dated and look awful when you watch them now.  Such as they eye removal scene in the first Terminator...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNpb8KQ-OQ0

One of the older verisons of Lion, the Witch, and the Wardobe had a great example of effects that don't hold up.  When Aslan rises again and lets the girls ride on him to the castle, he flies.  Now that's all fine and hold, but damn.  The use of green screen and a stiff prop for the lion was terrible.  We watched in 7th grade and everyone burst into laughter upon seeing it.

I think that the effect has been pretty bad ever since it came out, they should have hid it in the shadows.

Also the hallway scene at Cyberdyne in T2 has an Arnold puppet that looks off.

So was it just on my viewing of that clip, or does Google always put ads for Laser Eye Surgery on vids that have something to do with eyes? 'Cause that's just funny. And with a Terminator, it kinda gives a new meaning to "Laser Eye" surgery.  :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle:

I dunno know.  Those effects look pretty good when you compare it to say... this (start around 2:43 to 3:43):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHh_meAQ30o

That one is actually better, even though the head is somewhat fake looking. They kept it more in the shadows.

Many of the Nightmare of Elm Street films has some really bad/poor special effects...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmdityGT-R8&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvBN3C2wepY 

GREAAAAAAAYY!!  Do the hammerlock! a Do the hammerlock! GREAAAAAAAYY!!  Do the hammerlock you turkeynecks!  Yeh Do the hammerlock! a Do the hammerlock! Every body's doin' it!  GREAAAAAAAYY!!
Do the eye gouge!  yeh Do the eye gouge!  GREAAAAAAAYY!! Do the eye gouge you turkeynecks!  Yeh Do the eye gouge! a Do the eye gouge! Every body's doin' it!   GREAAAAAAAYY!!

Any film that involves process photography ~ terrible studio shots that make it look like the car is travelling. They have refined the art with blue and green screen these days.

Good choice.  Even as a kid first seeing that around 1992ish (saw it a few months before the second came out) I remember thinking that looked pretty bad. It's not HORRIBLE, and could have passed with lower lighting and tighter shots.  I think both Cameron and Winston overestimated their own abilities on that...  It especially sticks out as the rest of the effects work is so good in the film.

Also, much as I love the film, I'll always think the shots of King Kong biting and stomping people (the shots where it is a giant foot or head attacking actors) just seem a bit silly. 

Similarly, look at the arms on Ronny Cox at about 48 seconds here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1SUVjbj6E0

I Eat Your Skin

(http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq64/voltron_014/i_eat_your_skin2.jpg)

Any dinosaur/giant monster movie that involves hand puppets for closeups.

...and any giant monster played by a marionette.

See THE GIANT CLAW and REPTILICUS.

You can't have a thread like this without a reference to...MANIMAL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HhOoZRWYOU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBVEc_Xp-9A&feature=related

This seems like another great opportunity to post the Megaforce flying motorcycle scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1NpZxn860M

The Terminator eye surgery is pretty bad, but even worse for me is the high-tech disguise from Total Recall. The mask comes off to reveal what briefly looks like a wax sculpture of Jean Claude Van Damme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V17duGlHEYY
There's also the matter of building the effect without considering that it needs to look like there's room for a head in there. What's with that huge ear/piston thing that pops out? Where's Arnold's head supposed to be in relation to that?

The end fight scene in Robocop 2 looks really weak. !

In Lou Ferrigno's HERCULES the chariot ride across the stars looks like just what it is: a Hercules action figure glued to a toy chariot.

Total Recall good God yes! I love that movie but those special effects are awful.  The one above is a prime example but don't forget the scene where "Arnold" sucks that bug out of his head through his nose.  Then theres the eyeball popping out scene outside on Mars.  Yikes!

Mortal Kombat CGI is honestly one of the worst ever.  I recall watching it thinking it was cool back in the day.  Watching it now is painfull. 

Any late 80's-about mid-90's movie that used CGI (and that wasn't a CGI animation movie like "Toy Story.") Sure, it was mind-blowing then to see actors interacting with things that had previously only been rendered using jerky stop-motion animation (I still love that particular technique, but it really does look better when the whole movie is stop-motion), but now...I dare you to watch that one scene from "Poltergeist" where all the toys are flying around in the boy's bedroom and NOT laugh a little.

Reptile in Mortal Kombat (1995) isn't the best ! haha

I watched the original Terminator recently and remarked on how bad the stop-motion climax scene looked.

l still think the stop motion looks great !  :thumbup:

It's been a while, but I don't believe any effects work in Poltergeist is CG.  It did come out in 1982 after all.  I also can't recall any effects work that isn't excellent - what's wrong with the toy flying scene?  They don't quite match the way they should in the background I guess..  I couldn't find the whole scene though and I don't own the film. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fntf6IpPOVI

I'll agree with the sentiment though.  I thought many of the early CG films looked bad even when they were new.  Another one that sticks out is the cow flying in the air in Twister.  It's old as far as the world of CGI is concerned at least. 

No it doesn't!  :thumbdown:
It's probably the best and greatest stop-motion fight of the modern era, it blended live-action and models together almost flawlessly!

It's not CGI, it was done on an optical printer. I think it looks quiet good, you can tell alot of work went into it because you can barely see the matte lines.

Godzilla Raids Again from 1955, the sequel to the very first film. There's a scene where you can easily see that two hand puppets on a stick were being used for the fight between Godzilla and Anguirus.  A thing tha would be reapeated in 1962 for King Kong VS. Godzilla in one scene.

ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2cLmbCyzhE

ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0emuNT8F0-g

THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bB-ShV-qsU
"a Do the hammerlock, uh do the hammerlock..."  

Any movie where lightning is drawn on.  I crack up when I see it.  :teddyr:

I love that scene.  So you got rapidly decompressed, all your veins and capillaries burst, your eyes pop out of your head.  But then when pressure is restored, all your veins and capillaries and eyeballs magically heal in 2 seconds and your eyes suck back into your head.  Tee hee.

The Special Effects in Star Trek 5 are pretty weak.
Paramount decided not to go with ILM for some reason...
Heck what am I saying. The whole movie was pretty weak!

Unknown Island comes to mind although I do have a bizarre fondness for those dinos in some sense just like I have even more fondness for The Brain From Planet Arous and The Giant Claw. Bad as they are, at least they did seem to have personality.

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/unknownisle/ (http://www.badmovies.org/movies/unknownisle/)

The death scenes for The Knightrider and Goose in Mad Max 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7Bcov5SGU0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbTc8v0Y58w&feature=related(2:47)
The cartoonish eyes popping out is terrible

1) Bruce the shark in Jaws 2, 3 and 4 looks pretty fake.

2) In Nightmare on Elm Street 2, there's a scene with an encounter with dogs that have human faces. One could obviously detect that they're just dobermen with rubber masks.  :lookingup:  :bouncegiggle:

3) Jason Voorhees kills someone in Friday the 13th part III by squeezing his head to the point where his eye pops out. It's pretty clear that the head is phony and the eye popping out looks silly.

4) The Creeping Terror, do I have to explain this one?

Actually, they couldn't because they were booked solid with other projects at the time.

Monster From Green Hell has some pretty darn slow-moving stop motion giant bugs...

The head scene in Dead and Buried.
Even at the time the film-makers thought it was rubbish...

The doctor being filled with embalming fluid. Yeah, it sucks.

The muppets in RETURN OF THE JEDI look and act just like what they are: muppets.

Agreed. And I always thought the pig guards looked like they should be roaming an amusement park or clowning for sports fans. The costumes looked like costumes.

I think somebody has mentioned lightning that's drawn on in post-production. I just watched Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla again the other day, and even for a Godzilla movie, it's got an insane collection of drawn-in forcefields, rainbow energy beams and cartoony zigzag lightning bolts. Yet, none of this looked the least bit phony to me as a kid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3TSmbMD5ng&feature=related

THIS:
(http://www.badmovies.org/movies/killershrews/killershrews4.jpg)
no comment.

Well put and well deserving.  You know what though, I kind of prefer the Muppets compared to the deplorable CGI number they inserted in Jabba's Palace in the special-ed edition. 

It's not really an effect, but the face Norman Bates makes at the end of Psycho, during the "reveal" scene, during the knife wrassle always bothers me.  The movie is essentially perfect otherwise, but I just don't buy that face he's making and it bugs me.

This isn't exactly the face I mean, but it's right after this (couldn't find a pic of exactly the one I'm talking about):

(http://www.hahahaimontheinternet.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/anthonyperkins-psycho.jpg)

Yeah, The Brain From Planet Arous had personality, his name was John Agar  :bouncegiggle:

Seriously though, the movie did have a bizarre quality to it. Enough that I watched it almost every time it came on WNEW 5's Creature Features.

The muppets from ROTJ and the Killer Shrews have me wondering whether it counts if the effects were never convincing to begin with.

Agreed. And I always thought the pig guards looked like they should be roaming an amusement park or clowning for sports fans. The costumes looked like costumes.



You bring up a good point, Andy. It brings up a point about the 1966 Ultraman TV series.

The son of Toho man Eiji Tsuburaya (Akira I believe) owned Tsuburaya productions, who wasted no time trying to outdo Toho's FX. They went and bought an optical FX printer, and were the only other studio in the world to own one besides Disney.

That said, here's a small clip of Ultraman 1966 as he fights a creature called Ragon. Note the improved quality of the beams from both Ultraman and Ragon, due to said optical printer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vxaDxUg7Dg

I'm surprised that Megalon from Godzilla Vs. Megalon wasn't mentioned. I am talking about the spit firing of the bombs, that is just the same thing repeated.

Pretty much all the F/X in Highlander: Endgame

That's a good one too, mate. Yes the fireballs are repeated, but the after effect, where Godzilla and Jet Jaguar are surrounded by the wall of fire, was beautifully done.  That was perhaps the best FX in the entire film.  It had it's moments to be sure.

Had Toho done the same and gotten the optical FX printer that Tsuburaya Productions had, the overall FX might have been better. As it stands, Godzilla vs. Megalon was a fun movie.

1) The werewolf in Silver Bullet was beyond pathetic. What the hell were the filmmakers smoking that made them think the monster looked okay?

2) The dinosaur puppets in The People that Time Forgot really looked lousy.

3) Although I adore the movie, the bat creature in Howling II is bad enough to make an infant laugh.

I think Carlo Rambaldi's werewolf creation is pretty neat and has character. Though obviously a man in a suit, but you'll get only a close up of its head most of the time anyway. And the head was freaky cool in my opinion  :smile:

That's not even Ronny Cox. That whole shot is done with a stop motion puppet. Phil Tippet's the man.