As we head into Oscar weekend, with promises of Oscar-gold for the critically acclaimed Milk, we thought we’d head to the other end of the spectrum and introduce you to the worst gay movie of all time, 2002’s Ben & Arthur. This isn’t some random opinion of ours like we usually foist on you; B&A consistently ranks as the Worst Movie of All Time on IMDB (it’s hovering at number 19 right now, right above 1975’s Track of the Moon Beast) and is the only gay film to make the bottom 100 list. Fortunately, it’s terrible in all the best possible ways, and even more fortunately, the disaster is now available on YouTube.
So, let’s start you off easy. Here’s the trailer:
See Sam Mraovich’s name much? If you watch the opening credits, you’ll learn that he’s not just the director and star of the film, but also its cinematographer, editor, music editor, casting director, producer, executive producer and screenwriter. Each of these get their own separate title card. Did we mention this is an actual movie that you can rent at Blockbuster?
So, a brief synopsis: We meet shlubby Arthur (Mraovich) while he’s sleeping in bed (with his shoes on, naturally) and his sort-of-hunky boyfriend Ben (Jamie Brett Gabel, in his only screen role ever) calls him up and asks him if he’s “heard the news, yet?” Arthur complains they have no budget to afford a shot of the TV and turns on the radio instead, where he finds out that, “Hurray! Gay marriage has been legalized in Hawaii!”
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And then after a ten minute long, “We’re packing for Hawaii” sequence, they get a newspaper that tells them that gay marriage isn’t happening in Hawaii after all. This leads to some speechifying on Arthur’s part and Ben’s revelation that he’s still married to a woman, though they’ve been together for three years.
Ben then goes to his wife, who berates him for being gay, or at least tries to when she remembers her lines.
And that’s sort of as far as the movie gets before becoming unintelligible. Ben works as a dishwasher at a coffee shop, which he gave up his nursing career to do. Arthur goes on interviews in Bermuda shorts and then meets his brother (Mraovich in a blond wig and a Bible in hand) and asks him for cash, which he says he’ll give (himself?) if he agrees to bring Ben over to the apartment and “respects this apartment, respect my cat and respect the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Ben & Arthur then fly into Vermont by Alaska Airlines and somehow Vermont now has palm trees. In any event, they get married. Hurray!
Then there’s some more stuff about gay marriage and Ben & Arthur talk to their lawyer and then Arthur’s blond brother starts looking for Ben and then finds their lawyer and then shoots the lawyer, then Tammy, the ex-wife shows up at Ben’s apartment with a gun and tries to kill Ben for being gay and this part is actually sort of fun, so just watch:
There’s a break-in in the garage of the apartment they live in and Ben goes down to the garage, with car keys in hand, stares at an unseen parking space and returns to the apartment and tells Arthur, “Our bike is gone!”
And then he beats up Arthur. Then Crazy Religious brother sends the couple an anti-gay potion and it doesn’t work, which is a big problem because he belongs to a sect of Catholicism that expels anyone whose related to a gay person. He doesn’t take it so well and decides he has to kill his brother:
Fortunately, the local priest happens to have the number of a good assassin. Anyway, Ben winds up killed, there’s like twenty minutes of police investigation bullshit and then finally, Arthur starts to get his revenge. First by knocking out the priest with nail polish remover and setting the church, with its cardboard crucifix, on fire. And then Ben’s back alive! Maybe we missed the part where he survived being shot in the head, you know?
But no matter, soon Ben is dead again, at the hands of Crazy Religious Brother, who then tries to make his brother straight with a forced baptism at gunpoint, leading to the film’s ultimate, final, tragic (though for the viewer, merciful) end:
The End. In its own way, there’s a sort of sweet nobility to Ben & Arthur. It’s a labor of love born out of the frustrations that gay people have that they can’t get married, but—oh, who are we kidding? Worst. Movie. Ever.
7SnowyNights
…
This is a movie? Liek, for serious?
In the tenth grade, I filmed a scene from the Merchant of Venice with my friends for English class with a five-year old camcorder, and that shit was frickin’ Ben Hur compared to this…
Jock
I’ve seen a lot of bad gay movies with atrocious acting, flimsy scripts, and inept directing.
Another Gay Sequel was HORRIBLE! Talk about a tedious, unfunny mess.
Why do gay directors make such awful gay movies?
Donley
An Angel Named Billy should be on that list!!! One of the WORST gay movies ever!!!!
ggreen
Is it worse than “Outing Riley”? IMHO that is the worst “gay movie” made by homophobes ever made. Some gays claim they loved the film and its honest look at gay life. The director and producers commentary track on the DVD tells a different story. They talk about how they dry heaved during the male kissing scenes and how funny it was to torment the only gay actor on the film (Mad TV’s Michael McDonald).
GoKitty
That was funny.
At least his brother was nice enough to use both the hot and cold faucets for a nice luke warm baptizing.
Sebbe
This is seriously available for rent?
Tweety
I love the vacuum cleaner that has been left out in every scene! I thought teh gays were supposed to be neat and organized?
Ezekiel
This is the perfect example of a movie trying to bank on the “gayness” of the story in order to fill seats. Leaving aside that I’ve seen better cinematic technique on people’s cell phone video captures, and leaving aside the acting that wouldn’t even make the grade for your local elementary school’s presentation of the Three Little Pigs, I think it’s poor press for the cause of gay liberation to have schlock like this represent our views.
strumpetwindsock
Wow….
and I thought “Suddenly, Last Summer” was out there.
Mike
Fantastic posting! A friend of mine, living on the other side of the country, and I have joked about Ben & Arthur for years, ever since we both openned Netflix accounts and I told him that I had just viewed the worst movie ever made–so bad, I just couldn’t seem to stop watching it. We use it as the definitively bad film on our scale, often saying, “Well, it isn’t ‘Ben and Arthur,’ but it really very bad.”
A year or two after watching this film, I watched another really awful film, and was excited to call my friend to tell him that I may have found a companion piece to Ben and Arthur. It then ocurred to me that one of the actors resembled one of the Ben and Arthur Characters, and that was when I decided to pull up IMDB to check out the casts. It turns out that it was done by those who brought us “Ben and Arthur,” Michael Haboush and Sam Mraovich!
They’ve made a third film, and I plan to find an evening when there is absolutely nothing to do, (including regrouting the base of our toilets or recovering from root canals), so that I can watch the 3rd entry in what has proven to be a truly dysfunctional movie making partnership.
Gregoire
Gay movies are MOSTLY bad. Because there is always some niche market for them, any piece of shit film finds a release somehow, similar to horror pictures. In fact, gay horror movies are doubly bad (although sometimes intentionally so).
Whup-Ass Master
Fantastic…I think this needs to be a musical.
Gregoire’s right, gay movies are mostly bad. They remind me of the worst of the blacksploitation “superfly” flicks. Remember “Lay Down With Dogs?” It almost turned me straight.
And by the way…whatever happened to Bruce La Bruce? His movies were terrible but in a high-art, aggressively trashy kinda way.
Dan
Closing seem song sound like somebody just hit the demo key on a Casio keyboard.
Fitting.
mb00
wow!…I’ve seen better acting in low budget porno’s.
did they film it with their cellphones?
hardmannyc
This is terrible but not as bad as a movie in the ’90s about a guy whose lover died of AIDS and he goes to Hawaii and finds spirituality with a gay New Age cult.
parisinla
I haven’t seen this but I’ll rent it to see if it matches the dissapointment that was ETHAN MAO.
Chloe
oh god, I totally forgot about this movie. . .still don’t think it’s as bad as “the wiz” though.
Phoenix (Upchucking popcorn and junior mints as we speak)
Worst Gay Movie? How about Worst Movie, period?
Christ. It was worse than Ishtar.
Bruno
All AMERICAN gay indie movies are bad. Well, most. But there’s a lot of great stuff that comes out of Europe with very few outright stinkers in the mix.
gurlene
I say it is a 3 way tie between this, The Happening and Hancock for worst gay movie or movie with actors who know damn well they are gay and go out of their way not to admit it by having an unconvincing scene with a female actress.
rnigma
I put it up on YouTube, realizing that it needs to be seen, and adding copious annotations.
Enjoy Sam’s official site for the film – an Angelfire site that looks so 1996:
http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/benandarthur
Sam tried his hand at animation, with “Sight Seeing” – which he actually submitted to AMPAS in hopes of an Oscar nomination!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2SXv6OFc3I
rnigma
@Mike:
That must have been “A Slice of Terror.” It featured not only Haboush and Mraovich, but also Arthur Huber, the “intern PI” from B&A.
Oh – here’s Haboush’s long demo reel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAiIjLX4sBA
Cee
GHETTO. That’s like me taking my Nikon Coolpix, setting it to movie mode and filming a movie with me and my friends.
Onji
What about Sex Politics and Cocktails?
ConservativeRepublican
Anyone who has browsed the gay section of the Netflix “Watch Instantly” option knows that there are plenty of crappy contenders out there for the title. It seems like the horror and gay categories are the absolute worst when it comes to the online viewing portion of Netflix. Granted, I think we can all agree that the horror and gay genres are the weakest in film on average, but it’s kind of odd that Netflix has almost no gems for either of those genres available for streaming.
atdleft
Wow, this is gawd awful. No really, IT’S F*CKING AWFUL!!!! This is a crime deserving punishment. I hereby sentence Sam Mraovich to filming a “musical” starring Paris Hilton, Kim from “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”, and Sanjaya from “American Idol”. Oh yes, and he must be physically there to witness EVERY “singing” scene (hopefully convincing him that this sh*t can’t be released, as it’d violate The Geneva Convention on torture)! If this doesn’t convince him to stop making gawd awful “movies”, I don’t know what will.
JPxxx
Oh my baby chickens, please. The Battlefield Earth of gay film was already staked out before you drew a breath. Check out Rex Harrison, Richard Burton, and Cathleen Nesbitt in Staircase from 1969.
Then you will know true suffering.
damnthatojeda
@Jock: I agree Another Gay Sequel was horrendous. It made my 10 Worst List of 2008 on my blog. There’s too much pressure to make trashy gay films that follow straight film formulas like American Pie. Ironic, since it was John Waters that really blew the lid off this sub-genre with Pink Flamingoes.
Gay filmmakers: stop copying bad straight movie ideas!
Arlen Rothberg
I may be off posting but I think it’s important.I realize the Arts and Entertainment are important features and require commenting.I was hoping Queerty would also do either a weekly or monthly Current Music commentary.
Sebbe
@Arlene – Queerty just had a contest to pick their music reviewer. I believe something should be coming shortly.
Arlen Rothberg
@Sebbe: Thanks for the info.
derrysf
‘Eden’s Curve’, boys; has to be the worst gay film of all time, and that is really saying something given its competition.
stewnwt
2 words – ‘Sideline Secrets’. Easily as bad as Ben and Arthur. I wouldn’t wish that movie on my worst enemy.
The back of the movie even lies – ‘___ is a popular soccer jock’ when in fact ‘___’ (the main character) is a shy awkward loner twink. The movie involves the main character’s mother’s new jerk of fiancee being in charge of a gay male prostitution/slavery ring that the main character’s new secret boyfriend just happens to be a victim of.
Production values, dialogue, pacing, everything is just hideous beyond words. Like Ben and Arthur, the only saving grace is that one of the actors is half way cute.