Eric's Bad Movies
Weekly columns written 2008-2014 -- the first 245 for Film.com, the last six for GeekNation. The point was to be funny rather than fair, and they're full of spoilers, so I don't consider them "reviews." What do I consider them? Delightful.
Hudson Hawk
Before he became a big-time action star, Bruce Willis was just the smirking wise-cracker on TV's "Moonlighting," which was a great show, on the rare occasions that Willis and Cybill Shepherd could be ...
Waterworld
"Waterworld" is notorious for being a big-budget flop and an embarrassment to the otherwise pristine and unimpeachable career of master thespian Kevin Costner. But there's something that gets overlook...
Shanghai Surprise
You kids might not know this, but there used to be a very popular singer named Madonna. Her gimmick was to dress, talk, and act like a common street whore, and in so doing, to empower women. (It didn'...
Orca
Any film that achieves huge success inspires copycats in Hollywood, but few people realize what a burden this is on the imitators. For example, when the Harry Potter movies came around, everyone else ...
Congo
(Note: This column uses the words "ape," "monkey," and "gorilla" interchangeably, even though it is technically incorrect to do so. The author apologizes in advance for not caring if this bothers you....
Street Fighter
The film "Street Fighter" contains surprisingly little fighting, and none of it takes place in the street. The end.
What, you want more than that? Oy gevalt. Look, today we know that if a film is b...
Zardoz
It's common to say, when observing a terrible film, that the people who made it must have been on drugs. Surely this nonsense could only have seemed rational to people whose minds had been altered! Th...
Judge Dredd
Sylvester Stallone has made so many bad movies that the United Nations once considered filing a resolution against him. (It was only after a day of tearful testimony from Talia Shire that they voted t...
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold
Like most popular things, the Indiana Jones movies have inspired many copycats and rip-offs. The most recent was something called "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," in which an 80-year-old Harrison Ford ...
Supergirl
Anyone who watches "Supergirl" should feel insulted by it, but women have the most cause for offense. The title character has all the same powers as her cousin Superman, with the addition of being abl...
Timecop
Jean-Claude Van Damme IS ... Timecop! He's the guy they send when you're wasting time!
TIMECOP: Hey, you! Quit loitering there! You're wasting time!
CITIZEN: What are you, the "time police"?!
TIM...
The Beastmaster
It is no surprise that "The Beastmaster" is goofy and lame, as this is the case with about 95 percent of movies involving swords, wizards, and/or loincloths. A film producer who sees an expenditure fo...
Xanadu
The 1980 musical/romance/fantasy/trainwreck "Xanadu" is now famous primarily for being one of the few films to start with "X," which is very handy if you're playing Scattergories. But when the film wa...
Ernest Saves Christmas
As a comic actor, Jim Varney's only major flaw was that he wasn't funny. He had energy to spare, he could make silly faces, and he was really good at convincing viewers that he was a clueless redneck ...
Silent Night Deadly Night
With regard to "Silent Night Deadly Night," two things are indisputable. One, it's a great title for a horror film. I would also suggest "It Killed Upon a Midnight Clear" and "Deck the Halls with Boug...
Jack Frost (1998)
I've written before about how some movies had a chance at success and just turned out bad, while others were obviously going to be bad from the moment they were conceived. "Jack Frost" falls into the ...
Inspector Gadget
My personal theology allows for the existence of Movie Hell, a fiery place where bad films go when they die, to be torn apart and ridiculed for all eternity by movie critics, who of course also go the...
Kull the Conqueror
"Kull the Conqueror" answers the question, "How bad does a movie have to be for Arnold Schwarzenegger to turn it down?" For you see, it was originally intended as a third Conan movie (after "Conan the...
The Avengers (1998)
At no point in "The Avengers" does any avenging occur. This is remarkable on its own, and yet it is surpassed by another curious fact: The movie does not contain a single interesting moment. You could...
Gymkata
I don't know about you, but I've always felt that the one thing missing from gymnastic events at the Olympics was violence. What's the point in having all that upper-body strength if you're not going ...
The Mangler
The basic concept of many horror movies is that there is a monster of some kind, and the heroes have to destroy it or be killed by it. Sometimes the monster is something that's obviously frightening, ...
High School Musical
The Walt Disney Company is unparalleled in its production of inexpensive, medium-quality films that appeal to its two major target audiences: the young, and the easily amused. Many of these films are ...
Howling II: …Your Sister Is a Werewolf
"Howling II: ...Your Sister Is a Werewolf" is such an awful film that I almost feel bad making fun of it. Surely this was not a real movie that was really released in real theaters where real people w...
I Know What You Did Last Summer
The problem with movies about psychopaths who kill people as an act of revenge against some prior offense is that these psychos almost always wind up going off-message. They'll be focused on their tar...
Leprechaun
Oh, dear. You know I don't like to criticize movies, but I'm afraid there are a few things about Leprechaun that I simply cannot let pass. First and foremost: The title character, an honest-to-goodnes...
The Wiz
When "The Wiz" debuted to great acclaim on Broadway in 1975, it represented a significant achievement in African American arts and culture. The show was a retelling of "The Wizard of Oz" with a cast, ...
Mac and Me
Hollywood has had an impact on consumer trends ever since the early days of film. Our history books speak of Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character being so popular that it inspired millions of pe...
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
"Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" is 94 minutes long, including 12 minutes of closing credits. That's a lot of names for a movie that doesn't contain a single intelligent thought or coherent story element...
Anaconda
The phrase "so bad it's good" is a misnomer. What we usually mean by it is that we found a movie's particular brand of badness entertaining. But just because we've gotten enjoyment out of it doesn't m...
Cocktail
The fact that "Cocktail" was able to make $78 million at the box office in 1988 is a testament to the star power then wielded by Tom Cruise. In the heady days after his success in "Top Gun," audiences...
Jaws: The Revenge
There are two creatures seeking revenge in "Jaws: The Revenge," the fourth episode in the fish-centric soap opera. One is Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary), whose life has been disrupted by one shark after ...
Double Impact
"Double Impact" takes its title from the fact that Jean-Claude Van Damme plays two characters in it. The strange thing is, contrary to all the prevailing theories of mathematics, the impact of having ...
Grease 2
The only way I can imagine enjoying "Grease 2" -- short of medicating oneself into a passive stupor, I mean -- is to look at it not as a sequel to "Grease" but as a screeching, hideous parody of it.
...
Masters of the Universe
If you want proof that boys shouldn't play with dolls, you need only look at the movies based on those dolls. "Transformers" was a debacle, and I'm pretty sure I know the upcoming live-action "G.I. Jo...
Over the Top
"Over the Top" is about the glamorous, highly competitive world of professional arm-wrestling. Its failure to connect with moviegoers in 1987 can probably be traced to the virulent anti-arm-wrestling ...
Batman & Robin (Eric’s Bad Movies)
Comic book fans are notoriously hard to please, and I don't mean sexually. (That's actually easy.) The movie adaptations of their beloved superheroes' exploits, which have been arriving in theaters at...
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
Since the beginning of cinema, filmmakers have had a keen interest in at least two things: stories about dinosaurs, and exploiting Africans. "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend" is a 1985 exercise in bot...
Patch Adams
In a good movie, the hero faces difficulties that the audience can recognize and identify with, and he overcomes them through his own strength and tenacity. That's in a good movie. In a bad movie -- s...
Kazaam
Upon hearing that a professional basketball player is going to take the lead role in a major film, a normal person's response would be something along the lines of "No thank you" or "That sounds terri...
Bio-Dome
Pauly Shore's parents were Mitzi and Sammy Shore, showbiz pros who founded The Comedy Store, L.A.'s famous stand-up club, in 1972. Those connections explain how Pauly was able to get his first job in ...
Glitter
Mariah Carey is a lot of things. Famous, for example. That's a thing she is. Another thing she is, is an Aries. There's no disputing that. She was born March 27, so she's an Aries. You can take that o...
The Adventures of Pluto Nash
The continued success of Eddie Murphy is a mystery that has puzzled scientists for centuries. Sure, he's talented. He was funny during his "Saturday Night Live" stint -- and not funny in the way that ...
Speed 2: Cruise Control
With some bad movies, you can forgive their badness on the grounds that it might have been hard for the filmmakers to tell, when they first started out, that they were producing something terrible. Ma...
Staying Alive
When you look at the joke that John Travolta is today -- his vast, meaty face occupying half the screen in "Wild Hogs," or his just-barely-fatter dress-wearing self frolicking with Christopher Walken ...
The Delta Force
In real life, the Delta Force is an elite squad of Army personnel who handle terrorist threats and other complex matters of national security. In the movie "The Delta Force," it's where Chuck Norris a...
Tarzan, the Ape Man
Watching "Tarzan, the Ape Man" makes me want to take a shower, and not just because Bo Derek spends most of the film bathing. It's a creepy movie, with oily subtexts and greasy themes, and a filmy, ol...
The Beautician and the Beast
Throughout most of the 1990s, there was a sitcom on TV called The Nanny. It starred Fran Drescher as a horrifically annoying woman who brayed like a donkey while taking care of a wealthy British man's...
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
In 1984, Hollywood discovered that the kids on the streets were doing something called "breakdancing," and the studio executives knew just what to do: rush out a series of hastily produced movies to c...
Spice World
It was during the height of Spice Girls Mania that the film "Spice World" was released, and oh dear I've lost you already, haven't I? Yes, though it's hard to believe, there apparently was a time when...
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
You can speak of rubber-nippled Batsuits and emo-goth Peter Parkers. You can talk about Jessica Alba as an invisible woman or Brett Ratner as a director. But no superhero has ever suffered a greater i...
Super Mario Bros.
Every time Hollywood makes a new film based on a video game, i.e., every two weeks, I pause for a moment and reflect on the history of this misbegotten genre. All the entries so far have been lousy, i...
