Forget Ishtar, Heaven’s Gate, Howard the Duck and all the other renowned turkeys of cinema history. The Guardian delves into the depths of the IMDb’s 100 lowest ranked movies to find the truly toxic, the absolute worst of the worst. As Sam Richards writes, the IMDb list “differs from most critic-voted ‘worst movie of all-time’ lists, in that any film that's memorably bad - say, Swept Away - tends to get just enough positive responses to save it from total ignominy. The Bottom 100 exists to catalogue films that have been viewed out of error, obligation or last-turkey-in-the-shop desperation.”
Richards sampled a handful of the lowest-ranked entries “in a Ludovico technique-style experiment.” Number three on the list is Zombie Nation, “a staggeringly idiotic 2004 film by German director Ulli Lommel, regarded as a modern day Ed Wood…Expecting a gore-fest, you're confronted by the world's worst 'zombies': they wear aviators and lipstick, drive cars and devour their prey to the sound of perky Europop.” He also checks out Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite Manos: The Hands of Fate, “shabby piece of teensploitation” Invisible Maniac, and the number one entry on the Bottom 100, none other than The Hottie and the Nottie. “It's not the worst film ever though, just a predictable, insulting vanity project that asks you to accept that an emu-faced posho with only one available facial expression is the most beautiful woman in America.”
You can check out the complete list here. As you can see, it skews toward more recent fare like Witless Protection and the critically reviled oeuvre of spoofmeisters Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Meet the Spartans). Somebody must like those movies since they keep making money, but apparently the fans prefer to remain incognito. Our biggest disappointment is that Richards did not subject himself to #82 on the list, Anus Magillicutty. An IMDb user comment reveals one of the pitfalls of the Bottom 100: “I watched this movie because it was rated to be so bad it might have been good.” If there’s one thing we’ve learned here at the Screengrab, it’s that this is almost never true.