The Dinde d'Or Award
... that's the Golden Turkey Award for the worst film ever made, our answer to the Cannes Festival's Palme d'Or. And here are the nominations, as suggested by our panel
Published : 14 May 2005

17 May 2005


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The Dinde d'Or Award
... that's the Golden Turkey Award for the worst film ever made, our answer to the Cannes Festival's Palme d'Or. And here are the nominations, as suggested by our panel
Published : 14 May 2005


The Dinde d'Or Award

Richard E Grant, Actor and director

The Wiz, 1978 is absolutely, definitely the worst film ever made. Imagine The Wizard of Oz updated to the Afro-American inner cities of the late 20th century. In this version, Dorothy is a 24-year-old Brooklyn schoolteacher. Michael Jackson and Diana Ross are in it. Enough said.

David Thomson, Film critic and writer

This is a question that begs for offensiveness in the answer. Thus, it's not much fun to name a long-forgotten Swedish musical, one of Ed Wood's films or a hopelessly inept British comedy from the 1930s. My first thought is to throw mud at actual Academy-award winners - like The Greatest Show on Earth (by Cecil B DeMille) or Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan). But I don't like or dislike them enough. So my choice has to be a recommendation, too. I'm sticking with DeMille. His Samson and Delilah (1949) is ridiculous, vulgar and comic - and I have to believe that Victor Mature and George Sanders, at least, knew this. Whether or not you have ever believed in God is beside the point. The word is that God himself ducked out of his screening and had a crisis of confidence. This is raw melodrama, and a lurid reminder that maybe the movies are most themselves when trash. The worst? Who knows? Should you see it? Without question - and see it in its best Technicolor, where the colours seem to be intensified by various bodily fluids.

Simon Tiffin, Editor, 'Esquire'

Leaving Las Vegas is absolutely appalling. It's the worst type of Hollywood film. It's exploitative, it's demeaning. I mean, we've already established that this woman's life is a nightmare - is there any reason to show an anal rape scene after that? Alcoholism is glamorised out of sight. Would an alcoholic really push a shopping trolley full of booze, and try to drink himself to death in Vegas. It's awful - we see no bedwetting or any of the ugly sides of alcoholism. The Nick Cage character is a totally unrealistic portrayal of alcoholism and the scene where she pours his bourbon all over herself as foreplay is ridiculous - any self- respecting alcoholic would punch her and grab the bottle! This is the kind of film where Hollywood thinks it's dealing with issues but it's just so wide of the mark.

Simon Le Bon, Lead singer, Duran Duran

Be Cool was the most appalling film I've ever seen. I never thought I could say that about a film with Uma Thurman in it, but it is. Everything about it, plot, script, characters, was execrable.

Richard Bacon, DJ and presenter

The Whole Ten Yards. It's the worst and most unwelcome sequel ever. Combining the worst performances in a story which is neither thrilling, funny or watchable. Watching this film was like death - only it seemed to last longer.

Graydon Carter, Editor, 'Vanity Fair'

Runaway Train. Andrei Konchalovsky's cast of nostril-flaring show horses (Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca DeMornay, and John P Ryan) is such that Roberts's performance comes off as the nuanced and restrained one. The film, about a pair of escaped convicts careering through the Alaskan wilderness on a runaway train with no brakes or engineer, defies logic at every turn. To begin with, there is nobody to stoke the coal. And although the train is barrelling along at top speed in sub-zero weather, no breath comes from any of the characters' mouths, and indeed in most of the scenes Voight and Roberts appear to be sweating. Everybody suffers on this trip. Everybody except Akira Kurasawa. He wrote an early draft of the screenplay, but was not named in the credits.

Anthony Quinn, Film critic

I still haven't quite recovered from the evening when my friend and colleague Matthew Norman put on, for my personal benefit, a VHS of Michael Winner's Parting Shots. It proved an experience of such unembarrassable ineptitude and eye-popping silliness that I've revisited it several times since. Forget the plot, a "comic" reworking of Death Wish, and the clanking technical incompetence (impossible to forget either, actually); consider instead the extravagantly terrible performances of Felicity Kendal, Bob Hoskins, Ben Kingsley, John Cleese, Oliver Reed, Joanna Lumley, Diana Rigg and, bless him, Chris Rea as the heartiest-looking screen character ever to be diagnosed with terminal cancer. "Six weeks to live?!" he asks his doctor, incredulously. Worst ever? Maybe not - but Parting Shots is close to the bull's-eye.

Neil R Sinyard, Professor of film studies

M Night Shyamalan's The Village, pompous, portentous, pretentious, boring to the point of physical pain, a mind-boggling waste of a great cast and with a "surprise" twist whose only surprise is that it makes the film seem even more nonsensical than before (if it's set in the present-day after all, why are they all talking as if they're refugees from The Scarlet Letter?) I never walk out of films, but this one I could have cheerfully left after 10 minutes. As we were leaving, a little lad in front of me turned to his mother and said with great solemnity: "That was crap, Mum." A film critic in the making.

Betsy Chasse, Writer and director

The Passion of the Christ. No one, but no one, should be subjected to that kind of abuse in a cinema. It's all about how we should feel guilty and how, after 2000 years, the guilt is still with us. Humanity's had enough of guilt.

James Brown, Journalist

Biopics are on a hiding to nothing because of the sacred-cow feelings viewers have towards their subjects. It's worse if the films are based on particularly good biographies. Wired, the John Belushi story based on Bob Woodward's book of the same name, is appalling. Utter shite, challenged only by The Doors for the position of Worst Film Ever."

Jonathan Coe, Writer

It's probably Love Actually. I just think Richard Curtis can do so much better. I thought it portrayed a London and an England that were complete unrecognisable.

Andrew Marr, Broadcaster

Oliver Stone's epic film Alexander is by a mile the worst film I've seen for years. It was so bad it was almost worth three hours to marvel at it. It was a great wheezing turkey of a cinematographic catastrophe, a flop so immense the very Earth shook.

Matt Mueller, Editor, 'Total Film'

Something like Batman and Robin. It's a shame that so much money was spent on a film where script and plot were totally neglected. Films like that are almost a hoax on the audience. It features some of Arnold Schwarzenegger's worst dialogue - and that's saying something.

Geoff Dyer, Writer

It can't just be crap, it has to have pretensions to greatness, and there is no more pretentious film than Wong Kar-Wai's 2046. It's made up of offcuts from In The Mood For Love, with some android bollocks thrown in.

Emily Young, Writer and director

I'd say Yentl. But it was also one of the funniest. When I saw it aged around 12 with my brothers and sisters, we thought it was the cringiest, most hilarious thing we'd ever see, and it remains that way. Good comedy, bad drama.

Sandi Toksvig, Radio presenter

Oh, God. The Lord of the Rings. I can't even tell you which one it was. Possibly the second one. All the way to the cinema, my son explained what happened in the previous one, and all through the film he told me what was happening, and not once did I have a clue. They climbed some trees, and ended up in the lido, and they never found the ring and I didn't care.




© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.


Whats yours?

mortal kombat

i made the movie theatre give my money back
cardboard acting with cardboard sets
with cardboard direction

it was cardboard i tells ya

i would have to say that it was Batman and Robin.
I have never seen past the point where ice-skates came out from the bottom of their bat-boots"!!
that was enough for me.

to think they trusted Joel Shumacher with a gem and he gave them back a turd.

i like those.

tomb raider, caligula, snow dogs, baise moi

The only movie i ever fell asleep at the cinema watching was Lake Placid.

I still to this day have never bothered renting it to find out why.

Is it any good?

worst movieever...can I get a Hell Yeah!

the forbidden dance. that crud makes the wiz look like friggin gone with the wind.

superspaceboy said:

hell yeah!! i watched it on cable a while back...horrible horrible horrible.

I watched "Striptease" w/ Demi Moore because it was on TV here.

The Wiz is my damn movie! granted it is the sountrack that I really love, but dayum! Why u gotta be so harsh?

'the wiz'?!? now, i'm not gonna say it was any great piece of filmmaking, but i didn't think it sucked. ah well. what can ya do.

my vote would probably go to henry jaglom's 'venice venice', which i think is one of the most self-indulgent, sexist, exploitive pieces of crap i've ever seen. the only movie i've ever walked out of. bleargh.

muirdo said:

Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb. I'll probably be sticked and stoned. I loved this movie. For me it wasn't about the damn alligator/crockodile, whatever. It was about the writing. Hilarious. It was worth hearing Betty White cuss.


M

superspaceboy said:

Hell Yeah.....but I loved her outfits.


M

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

say huh? betty white cussed in that shit?

anyone suggesting The Postman is going to find a crudely shaped vegetable inserted into one of their non-facial orifices very quickly indeed.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Hi Handclaps!!!!!

Yes, the funniest part for me was when Betty White's character, Mrs. Bickerman, says to the sherrif:

"If I had a dick, this is where I'd tell you to suck it!"


M

purpleizpassion said:

For some unknown reason, I got this DVD from my partner for x-mas. The wiz was ok...not what I was expecting. Kinda Bored me.

I add it to my pile of questionable DVDs given to me by my partner.

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

Yes indeedy...It's all about Ms White cussing. I'm an "alligator the tv movie" fan...so this was right up there for me.

a friend brought this peice of crap round
i couldnt watch it i left after a few mins
for this film he should be shot
along with the person who soiled my tv with it

.
[Edited 5/17/05 12:53pm]

testicleman said:

I doubt anyone saw it. It's got Kevin Costner

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

I must have been giving it big Z Z Z Z Z's at that bit.

Raine said:

Reminds me of this piece of shit. Except for Bernie skipping across the ocean...this movie was quite lame.

Braveheart.

superspaceboy said:

Dont diss the Braveheart




thats my patriotic side coming out in me.

KingPin! Vomit on wheels!

sosgemini said:

...at least it had good songs







That's a GREAT movie! This critic is on crack!



It wasn't THAT bad. It was a pale shadow of the original, but hardly as bad as Simon thinks.



Great quote!



Never seen this one, but it sounds atrocious!



Again, haven't seen it, but it sounds craptacular.



Yup, that was crap!



Can't say, haven't seen it.



Does anyone else find it funny that the guy bashing biopics is named James Brown?



Bad, but worst ever???



Again, bad, but does it truly qualify as worst ever???



This nails it! The single worst film I've ever sat through! Bad, through and through!











Umm, you sat through the second part of a film series that you hadn't seen the first part to, and then you declare it bad because you couldn't follow it? What a fucking moron!


---
[Edited 5/17/05 13:05pm]

minneapolisgenius said:

i really liked striptease

Certain Fury with Irene Cara and Tatum (sniff sniff ) O'neal

Lewis & Clark & George with Rose McGowan playing a funny mute girl. I'm sorry but unless that girl is talking she's not funny.

and last but not least anything with this guy..

purpleizpassion said: