[Book Review] The Greatest Bad Movies of All-Time by Phil Hall

                Some number of years ago I watched a particularly awful movie.  It remains to this day my least favorite of any movie I have ever seen.   I won’t name it by name, though it was not mentioned in this book oddly enough, but it sparked in me a quest to find and watch what the world thought to be the worst movies ever made.

                With that, a lot of this book does not come as a surprise to me.  “Manos: The Hands of Fate”, “Plan 9” and others are among my favorite bad movies, though I tend to appreciate them a little bit more than a bad movie such as, say, “Gigli”.

                Whether or not a movie is bad should really be gauged in the eye of the viewer.   With that, it’s hard to find one single worst movie of all-time.   In my opinion, Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock ruin everything that they’re in, yet some people love “Pretty Woman”. 

                Ultimately, I believe that I have been viewing so many bad movies because I want to know if “Birdemic” or this other new terrible movie can out-bad what I see as the worst movie of all-time.  I actually have a shortlist of two and have yet to find any movie worse than them.   Again, I will just say that neither made this list.

                The one movie in this bunch that bothers me is “The Black Cauldron”.   While it might not have been a commercial success for Disney, it is among one of my favorite Disney animated classics.  Perhaps, as the author points out in a negative light, the lack of musicals and talking animals made me like this that much more than other Disney movies at the time.

                For the rest of the list, Hall gives us more or less movies that you’d know based on the titles were just plain bad, movies you’ve watched and thought were bad or movies that have been on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  

                As much as I keep getting stuck by the title having an oxymoron in it (Being the best of the worst still makes you the worst, right?), I can overlook it since it also adds the dreaded “of All-Time”.   Obviously Mr. Hall has higher hopes for the future of Hollywood than I do, which might not be such a bad thing.