Unwatchable, Bad Movies

The other day I was listening to a movie podcast that included discussion of the hosts' examples of films that they walked out of. This made me think hard about movies that I attended that simply could not hold my attention. I am pretty sure that I've only walked out of two movies in all my life, and both were decades ago. And the funny thing was that in both instances, I was with my gang of rowdy friends... you'd think we'd relish the idea of joking around and heckling the actors on the screen. But no, we just couldn't stomach the first ten or fifteen minutes of what we were seeing, so up we got and wandered into another cinema for a different flick.

No way, Chuck... I'm walkin'.

The first movie was The Octagon, released in 1980, and starring that American karate hero, Chuck Norris. I was never a Norris fan (I'm all about Bruce Lee, baby!) but on a Saturday night in small town Canada back in '80, there weren't many other options. My buddies and I opted for the one action flick that was playing in our hometown's little three-screen "multiplex". Big mistake.

Wow, how incredibly stoopid... the echo-y whispers of Norris' character's voice-over - his internal dialogue - was so creepy and silly all at once. The guy was never a contender for even a Decent Actor Award, let alone an Academy Award, but man, this stuff was painfully bad. What was he... or they (the director, screenwriter, whoever) thinking? That super-cheesy voice-over plus the generally bad acting put us over the edge. Even the promise of ass-kicking ninjas wasn't enough to keep us in our seats. My friends and I had no qualms about walking out of that one early. 

Decades later, I pulled The Octagon up on Youtube to give it another try, but nope, still too lame to endure. Click. Even the online movie critic sites gave this dud low, low ratings.

A few years later, in '84, again with my posse (can't remember if it was the same group of guys), I saw the first few minutes of the sci-fi horror movie called C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller) at the local cinema. I seem to recall us firing some popcorn up in the air and joking around a bit, but we quickly decided this wasn't worth our time. We were out of there.

Other than those two duds, I don't think I've found myself in movie theatre situations where I wanted to leave that badly. There might have been a few flicks that were underwhelming, but I stuck it out to finish them. And if you're there with someone else, you need unanimous agreement in order to walk out. I guess I was sort of stuck at those times. One that comes to mind was The Great Outdoors (1988), an unsuccessful attempt at comedy starring the likes of John Candy and Dan Aykroyd. I remember not enjoying that one, but I saw it through to the bitter end. Not terrible, but pretty disappointing. 

I also recall Event Horizon, a bizarre sci-fi horror from '97. My brother-in-law and I wolfed down pizza and a fair bit of beer right before the movie. You'd think the booze would have helped the "fun factor", but no, we were bored out of our skulls. We sat like stone effigies, occasionally casting disbelieving glances at each other. We made it through that mind-numbing experience, but ever since, we mention that far-from-fun outing. The movie was a corned-beef-hash of The Shining, Alien, and Hellraiser: Bloodline. But too derivative and unsatisfying. Meh.

Now, in this age of online streaming video services, it is so much easier and cheaper to bail out early on what looks like a crappy movie. Especially in recent years, I've stopped countless flicks due to extreme awfulness. Sometimes it only took five or ten minutes, other times I might make it halfway through, but in those cases, there were never any regrets about shutting it down. Sooo many bad movies out there, so little time. Well, we make the time for the dreck we watch, don't we? It depends on your mood, I guess. I've finished films that truly were not worth my time, yet occasionally I'm in a state of mind that can accept that. A listless Sunday afternoon can do that to me. 

Oh, and there were a couple of Lars von Trier films, Antichrist and Nymphomaniac, that crossed a lot of lines and simultaneously earned kudos and derision from critics and viewers. Me, I found at least Antichrist engaging, but they were both (especially Antichrist) very tough to watch and finish. Not necessarily bad, just subject matter that bothered me a lot. Wait, I didn't finish Nymphomaniac... I just found it dull. Anyway, I didn't see either of these in theaters, just at home on borrowed DVDs. I wish I could un-see some of those scenes in Antichrist. Forever burned into my brain. Ack!

Do you have any hard to watch/hard to finish movies? Movies you've walked out of early? It's interesting to discuss since one person's art may be another person's garbage. A fellow movie fan friend absolutely loves von Trier's work, while I wish I'd never seen something as extreme as Antichrist. But we movie fans take our chances, not always certain of what we're in for. It's not all popcorn fare.