Dugaru

Shockingly, appallingly bad. Execrable. Odiferous. Offensive.

Lame script. Lame acting. Lame "action." It fails even as lame porn. In fact, the striptease scenes made me want to change my sexual orientation.

Rest assured, IMDb spoiler police, it would be impossible to give away the plot of this movie because... there really isn't one.

And I'm still trying to figure out why they needed a former Navy diver for that "heist."

Well, I have to write at least 10 lines of text, so let me add some adjectives about this horrific afterbirth of a film: it's absurd, confusing, anti-erotic, insulting, smelly, crappy, cruddy, gross, disturbing, and stupid.

This film is so bad that it is actually capable of physically injuring unsuspecting viewers. It's badness has been well covered here, I will add only a few random comments:

1. A bunch of space marines walk around trying to kill a leprechaun in space, and NOT EVEN ONCE do ANY of them discuss the fact that they are hunting.... a creature from Irish mythology. I'm not even sure that the word leprechaun is mentioned.

"Hey Delores!" "Yes, Sticks?" "Doesn't that thing look a little bit like a leprechaun?" "Why yes, Sticks, now that you mention it, I think we're hunting a creature from Irish mythology." "Well what's it doing in outer space?" "Good question, Sticks."

Something like that. That's all I ask.

2. I was trying to figure out what this movie reminded me of, and then it hit me -- and I'm not proud to admit this. I realized it's a soft-core porn flick where the porn didn't show up. The look of the actors, the cheesy stilted dialogue, the dipstick humor, the low budget, the ridiculous sets. Yup, it's like a feature on late night Skinemax, minus the actual sex.

3. When Dr. Mittehand goes spider, he spends a lot of time making webs all over the place, but they don't seem to do very much.

4. Who wrote the Shakespearean soliloquies for the leprechaun? Weird.

Your life is not complete until you watch Leprechaun 4. But I suggest you wear one of those welder's masks, to prevent actual physical injury.

Several years ago I bought a Thomas the Tank Engine coloring book for my son. Each page was a scene in a story of some kind, but the "plot" was bizarre and inscrutable -- something to do with gold dust and diesel engines and parallel universes. I recall showing it to my Mom and we both wondered whether the coloring book guys had been chewing peyote that day.

And then I saw this execrable film, and it all became clear. The coloring book was based on the plot of this movie -- and the screenplay for "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" indisputably was written under the influence of mind-altering substances.

And it isn't JUST that the plot makes no sense. There's also the acting, which is horrible even by the standards of children's movies. Peter Fonda (!) wanders through the film in a kind of drooling stupor. He's supposed to be depressed, but to me he seems more like the victim of a brain injury, or perhaps a massive overdose of Thorazine.

In fact, it may well be that the director secretly dosed Fonda, and the rest of the cast, with some kind of high-powered anti-psychotic medication during filming. Any normal person would, after all, need massive pharmacological intervention to keep from crying tears of laughter at the horrible, stilted lines the characters are required to speak.

Did I mention that the plot makes no sense at all?

Meanwhile, here's one idle observation for the good engines of Sodor: If an evil diesel engine with a crane on top (!) is out to ruin your magic parallel universe (!!) and destroy you, just STAY A FEW TRACKS AWAY. The crane only reaches so far, and it's not like he can drive off the track to get you. Or maybe your friend the conductor could, I don't know, maybe THROW A FREAKIN' SWITCH once in a while. Seriously, I can see how the Killdozer, or an evil car like Stephen King's Christine, could make some real trouble, but how tough can it be to avoid an evil TRAIN?

Speaking of the conductor, let me just say this about Alec Baldwin's work in this film: It made me wish that the Canadians really had bombed the Baldwin brothers. (If you don't get that reference, run, don't walk, to the video store and rent "South Park: The Movie.")

In sum, I would place this film among the top three "Worst Movies That, Luckily, Most People Have Never Seen." The other winners:

(1) Showgirls (2) The Norseman

They should put all three of these movies on a DVD and force the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to watch them. The heck with the Geneva Convention.

I appeared in this movie as an extra, along with a number of my college friends.

It was primarily filmed in and near Charlottesville, VA (I'm guessing it was the spring of 1986) and a bunch of the extras were U.Va. students like myself.

I got a check for $50 and also got to chat with (and appear on screen with) Cryer for a bit. He actually was a really nice guy.

I think the mall scenes were filmed at the beautiful Fashion Square Mall north of Charlottesville.

But note I said I got a check for $50 -- I didn't get PAID the $50 because the bastards bounced my check.

After all these years, I'm still bitter. :)

First, let's get one thing out of the way. A previous commenter points out that:

*** also the black viking somehow cut the tongue out of the man who captured him, during said fight! how can you lose that fight? ***

I just want to say that is one of the funniest things, and the best question, I have read in a long time. Kudos to the author.

But on to "The Norseman." How best to comprehend this masterpiece?

I feel that my writing skills are inadequate, not up to the task of communicating all that is "The Norseman." Perhaps a comparison would be a good start. It occurs to me that "Citizen Kane" did not receive an Oscar for best picture, and in a very similar development, "The Norseman" is not widely considered to be one of the Worst Movies of All Time. I had never heard of it before my Tivo, in an apparent act of revenge, suggested I might enjoy watching it.

I did nothing to Tivo to deserve this.

In any event I assure you, "The Norseman" is, indeed, one of the worst films - if not the worst film -- ever made. Absurd anachronisms, bad costumes, bad characters, ridiculous dialog, the list goes on and on.

But above everything else there is the acting of Lee Majors. Lee Majors is not merely a "bad" actor, like Chuck Norris. Instead, Lee Majors is a sort of Platonic ideal of bad acting, the standard by which all other bad acting should be judged. Majors is not MERELY untalented (although the range of his emotional expression runs the gamut from indifference to, um, nauseated indifference). And Majors is not MERELY wooden (although he makes Al Gore look like Eminem). Instead, Majors' acting actually destroys any attempt at real dialog and character development, the way that a pervasive, horrible odor of decaying flesh might destroy an otherwise perfect vacation in a tropical paradise.

Compare Jack Elam, who has a truly ridiculous role in this film, yet manages to pull it off in a sort of campy, bird-on-my shoulder way. The difference, of course, is that Elam can act. For Majors, there is nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

I came away from this film with the definite and firm conviction that Lee Majors was born too late, and that he should have been the lead actor for the immortal Ed Wood. In my view, only Wood was able to make a film this bad.

You simply must see "The Norseman." Once the Viking dies from an ass-wounding, you'll know you have truly entered the Valhalla of Bad Films