Or whatever else you'd like to diss to your heart's content.

My all time reading low was Dean R. Koontz' thriller False Memories.

The first and only book I ever read of him, after which I triple cursed him for utterly wasting my time.

There is nothing positive whatsoever to be said about this book except perhaps for its unintentional entertainment value.

The plot involves a young woman who is terrified of her own image in the mirror, a charismatic psychiatrist, random haikus and a bag of dog poop.

In the end, as far as I remember, everybody turns out to be related by blood to everybody else and is revealed to be either barking mad or dumb as five meters of dirt track.

The bag of dog poop features at the end of nearly 700 pages as a key plot point, but it *is* the highlight of the book, so if you're really gagging to read about it, you'll have to stomach the rest of it first. Oops, was that a spoiler?

At the moment, I'm still pretty fucked off with The Brothers Karamazov

I thought you liked that book?!

I didn't! It was dross! There was about 50 pages in the 900-page novel which were good.

The one that immediately comes to mind is Shadowmancer. I'm sure there are worse books, but this one came with such hype and sold in such huge quantites. It was badly-written and dull and obvious and had an excruciating deus ex machina - there wasn't any tension because there wasn't any real danger. What a bunch of horseshit.

When I mentioned this opinion to a (literate, intelligent, thoughtful) friend, I was surprised when she said "but it's a kid's book!", as if kid's books were expected to be horseshit. (Plus, this book did that new thing of coming out in both a kids' edition and an adult one, but that's another story.)

worst film:

ooh, toss up between Revolver, and Dungeons and Dragons.

Revolver was trying so hard to be good, and looked awfully pretty... but was just shit. It might not be quite the worst because there is an ace long tracking shot near the beginning, although it was very much an exercise in "look what a long tracking shot I can do" and therefore wanky and annoying. We all came out of the cinema after seeing it, and no one said anything until we got to the pub over the road, and my mate said "that was... absolute bollocks, wasn't it?" We agreed.

D&D felt like so much had been cut out it made no sense (where did that sword spring from?) and looked tacky all over. The acting was awful and the only good bit was the fact that there were swords being waved around and I like swords being waved around. I apologised for about a week to the friends I'd convinced to come and see it with me!


I dunno about worst book... there was one years ago set in hell which was awful. I had to resist the urge to shred it and then jump on it and instead gave it to Oxfam. And the Da Vinci Code which made my brain go numb, possibly as a denfence mechanism... there's a few history books I can think of too which were so badly written you honestly wonder is the author had ever bothered to have their work edited.

GHOST RIDER!

About a thousand years ago a friend and I turned off Dracula - the Gary Oldman one - about twenty minutes in. It was late and we were young and we were drunk and we were ready to watch just about anything, however bad, but not this, not this.

A pity, because he's usually very good. I don't think it was even him that was the problem, but the whole package.

Oh, and this is my favourite review of a bad book ever. The critic completely tears apart Robert Newcomb's The Fifth Sorceress.
(caution, the lemon yellow page is an eyesore)

[access hat on] that page is all the wrong colours! high-contrast, people! If I was visually impared or just not that interested, I'd have moved on after approximately 2 seconds. There are *studies* on it! And the font should be sans-serif![/access hat on]

saying that, the review is ace! acid ace!

There are certainly worse films out there, but the worst film I've seen that tries to be a good film but fails to an embarrassing extent would have to be Neil Jordan's In Dreams. Everything in that film is so badly misjudged it makes you wonder how Jordan, Annette Bening or Robert Downey Jr. ever did anything that wasn't horrendously bad.

quote:

Originally posted by Babylon the Bride:

My all time reading low was Dean R. Koontz' thriller False Memories.

ROFL! The moment I read the thread title I knew my answer would be One Door Away From Heaven by Koontz!

I only bought it coz I was stuck at a bus station for 4 hours and it was the only book I found that was cheap enough and offered some bonus -being in English and by a writer I'd heard of, and I thought I do like some horror every now and then so why not.

The only reason I finished it was because I couldn't really believe this horrendous piece of shit was for real. But it is.

The plot involves a crippled girl living in a trailer park with her drug-damaged roadkill-crazy mom and her eugenics-obsessed new husband (who is interested in the junkie only so he can kill her malformed offspring); the trailer park neighbour of said kid, a divorcee hottie trying to start life again who is so smitten with the cripple's lovely personality that she resolves to save her; a male private detective whose story I've utterly forgotten; an unnamed boy and a dog escaping from "Them" all across America, à la X-files, and two ex-porn-star twins with fenomenal breasts who turn out to know everything form martial arts to fire weapons to alien abductions and end up help ing the kid.
So [spoilers ahead, although I don't think anyone should read this book ever]: the boy turns out to be an alien who is chased by evil enemy aliens throughout the galaxy and needs to get the Earth on his side by sharing his Gift with humans, which consists of being able to merge psychicaly with dogs, the only creatures in the Universe who are always happy because only they can feel the presence of god. I joke not.

The worst part is that Koontz tries to make this "novel" into a serious matter by denouncing eugenics (something he exposes as if it was some new evil only he knows about). But it's so badly written, so full of lame and inane clihcés and the plot so utterly ridiculous that you start to wish someone had applied eugenics to him or, at least, to his work.

You mean...his other stuff is actually worse than what I read?
But but but...the guy has tons of fans!

worst film ever.

I was on a long haul flight, i had a little screen in front of me, with a selection of films available for me to enjoy, or just to turn off and enjoy my book.

10 minutes after we took off on a 12 hour flight, the screen switched on.

Then, as the credits start rolling, i see that it's a Martin Lawrence film.

so i tried to change the channel. no go. it won't. So i try to turn it off. No Go. And it's with a mounting sense of horror that i realise it just me and Martin, stuck with each other for the next 12 hours.

So. the film. Black Knight. In which our gurning, gormless yet somehow blessed with a hot girlfriend, is an attendant at an Arthurian theme park.

He falls into the moat and wakes up in the incredibly cheap looking Arthurian past. And teaches King Arthur to dance like a black man.

FOUR TIMES I SAW THAT FILM. BACK TO BACK. FOUR TIMES!!!!

I couldn't even avoid it by moving seats - the plane was full. A screen maybe 30 cms in front of me that wouldn't stop spouting this abject crap.

If i ever meet Mr Lawrence, i'm going to hurt him.

seriously.

That's what I thought, when I picked the book! I was preparing myself for some slightly cheaper version of Stepehn King and boy did my brain weep...

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy (is resolutely unimpressed):
He falls into the moat and wakes up in the incredibly cheap looking Arthurian past. And teaches King Arthur to dance like a black man.

FOUR TIMES I SAW THAT FILM. BACK TO BACK. FOUR TIMES!!!!

*can't stop laughing*
OMG that's terrible.
*still laughing*

I tend to forget about really bad books/movies till somebody reminds me: "have you seen/read that?"

So I always found it hard to come up with the worst one on the fly. Everytime after I nominate one/post one I slowly start to remember worse.

I am kind of thankful that my brain doesn't keep this particular information evident.

quote:

Originally posted by Babylon the Bride:
Oh, and this is my favourite review of a bad book ever. The critic completely tears apart Robert Newcomb's The Fifth Sorceress.

hey, the amazon review page of it is funny as hell as well!

Mostly I have fairly good radar for Bad films and books. Especially books. So I only end up reading really bad books out of desperation, in the full knowledge that they are terrible.

Films though. Oh boy. The radar has failed me badly a few times.

There was that weird weird Kurt Cobain tribute-arty-thing a couple of years back - the one where the sound is inaudible and its possibly by Gus Van Sandt, but I can't remember because it was so so boring. The only reason we didn't leave was because it was tipping rain outside and the QFT is a comfy comfy cinema. All three of us ended up napping at some point.

And then there was Bewitched which we went to expecting it to be just enjoyably terrible, but at twenty minutes in the Sinking Boy was threatening to kill himself and come back and haunt us if we didn't leave this film that was raping his childhood right now this minute, and Emma and I realised that we were rapidly heading into the same horrible state of mind.

Worst movie: Barn of the Blood Llama, though it was amusing in a oh god this is so shit sort of a way.

Worst movie that was suppsoed to be good: Three Colours - Blue, total and completely boring and yet not soporific enough to send me to sleep. But the biggest piece of film wank i've ever had the displeasure to see.

As for books: Catch 22 closely followed by Dharma Bums (Jack Keroac) both of which i literally wished to through out the window and neither of which i finished. They are both male centric with females only being sex objects with this stupid macho thing in catch 22 and aweful beatnik "vibe" in dharma bums!!!

Gah i get angry just thinking i wasted my time trying to read either of them.