Each week online comedian, voice actor and chest hair model Sam Kalidi creates a new meme for Queerty readers. This week he looks back at what is perhaps the greatest of all bad movies, Showgirls, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary on September 22. Sam looks forward to all your hate mail. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and at your local glory hole.
animaux
Not a bad movie at all. It was campy on purpose. Made by one of the famous closeted directors, Paul Verhoeven.
Tobi
I’d probably have gone with Sextette starring an embalmed Mae West or the rarely seen Tropic of Desire (Broken Butterflies) starring Eartha Kitt.
Xzamilio
It was definitely a fun movie that sucked out loud, but I can watch over and over again. Elizabeth Berkley… Jessie Spano and Nomi Malone for the rest of her life….
Martha Stewart: And that’s good thing.
SportGuy
YES! It was so awesomely bad that it is perfection! Could watch Elizabeth Berkeley over and over again!
Glücklich
Never seen it. Or Valley of the Dolls.
Cam
The worst/Campy movie? Hmmmmmmmmmm, I have some other contenders 🙂
From Justin to Kelly?
Xanadu?
Can’t Stop the Music?
Glitter?
Mommie Dearest
Striptease
Gigli
(Insert Tara Reid Movie Here, but probably Alone in the Dark)?
Jack and Jill?
Glücklich
@Cam:
The Apple
Cam
@Glücklich:
Oh God, I’ve only heard about that one, never had the bad luck to see it. 🙂
Derek Chisholm
Chris Cordero
Chris
Anything written, directed and/or produced by Ed Wood.
McShane
Johnny Guitar.
Volcano.
Titanic.
Dante’s Peak.
Barbarella.
Battlefield Earth.
Road House.
Zardoz.
13 Going on 30.
The Clan of the Cave Bear.
Troll 2.
Grease 2.
Trog.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Barf…
McShane
Crap I forgot Voyage of The Rock Aliens, What the actual f*ck?!?
https://youtu.be/dgzOl2QHk38
Doug
By far, the worst movie ever made: Robot Monster
You have to see it to believe it.
Peter McKinney
Apparently you people have never seen Can’t Stop The Music.
Tobi
@McShane: Johnny Guitar was fantastic, Joan Crawford pretending to play the piano still makes me howl with laughter. 😀
https://youtu.be/92lwym9QL2g?t=36s
I have soft spots for both Barbarella and Zardoz but Battlefield Earth was just crap, and bad crap at that. 🙁
Avery Alvarez
What about “The Room” with Tommy Wiseau?
I think that might be in a category of its own.
Glücklich
@McShane:
I love Barbarella. That is truly one of my all-time faves. A HS girlfriend gave me a VHS tape of it and I still have it. Paco Rabanne made some of Barbarella’s costumes.
And Killer Clowns is so bad it’s good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw6WMdrzbJw
McShane
@Tobi:
It really is pretty fantastic. Joan and Mercedes HATED each other. Urban legend has it, that during a fight scene, Joan hauled off and actually punched Mercedes as hard as she could right in the face. Drama! Mercedes was also a raging alcoholic during filming and Joan was quoted as saying, “I have four children, I don’t need a fifth.” But then supposedly Joan got screaming drunk and threw all of Mercedes’s personal wardrobe onto a rain soaked Highway. Drama!
McShane
@Glücklich:
My husband loves Barbarella so much that I bought the Japanese movie poster and had it framed and gave it to him for some birthday/something. It’s huge, we love it.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/4c/42/7c/4c427ca4049e2b25cdedd30ad8e164f4.jpg
Cam
@Tobi:
Is it wrong that I liked both Showgirls and Battlefield Earth? (Then again, I didn’t pay for them)
Glücklich
@McShane:
That is BEAUTIFUL and very thoughtful. Hope your husband tells you daily you’re a catch.
If it goes missing, it wanted a change of scene and came to SF to live with me.
Bauhaus
@McShane:
Trog. Just can’t get enough. Joan was loaded the entire time, so they say.
Jeremy Kinser
@Bauhaus:
I’m enjoying this comments thread. Trog is one of my very favorite bad movies. It doesn’t get the respect it deserves as one of the most deranged films ever made. I’ll add that Valley of the Dolls and Can’t Stop the Music are the ones that have given me and my friends the most pleasure over the years.
Bauhaus
@Jeremy Kinser:
Agree about Trog. Valley of the Dolls is insanely delicious and one of my favorites.
McShane
@Jeremy Kinser: @Bauhaus:
Let’s not forget that John Hamill was in Trog. So hot, so… freakin’ hot.
http://cdn.ipernity.com/113/95/10/7039510.d7ba0e53.560.jpg
Bob LaBlah
For me it is a tie between Rupaul’s Star Booty and this god awful movie, The Queen of Outer Space starring ol’ Zsa Zsa Gabor. I found this scene the funniest out of the whole, god awful movie. Anybody who can more or less Waltz thru a fight has got to be BAD. Take note of how this is a group FIGHT but yet everyone BUT ol’ Zsa gets hit, pushed, pulled……she even has time to lift her dress as she steps over two who are on the floor fighting;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVr-hhsbOs0&index=15&list=PL7E37016E394CC8B8
Malibu Eric
I love this movie so much I am going to eat the new Gay Doritos while watching it tonight.
jar
Showgirls is definitely a great bad movie. Some others: Satisfaction- this Justine Bateman debut is a non-stop laugh riot. Fled- with Stephen Baldwin and Laurence Fishburne chained together on the run is also a hoot. Fair Game with Cindy Crawford acting–as a lawyer!, the Madonna/Willem DaFoe is painfully funny, and the Linda Blair behind bars movies are all also good. Those are only some relatively recent camp classics IMO.
Bisexual-Transwoman
There was a really bad movie that had porn actors in it on netflix called one eyed monster.
lykeitiz
For sure, Showgirls wins!
And I also love the already-mentioned Xanadu and Battlefield Earth.
But let’s not forget:
Shanghai Surprise
It’s Alive
Drop Dead Fred
Betsy’s Wedding
The Banger Sisters
And really……I’m the first one to bring up Gigli??
Derek Chisholm
Who Are you Peter McKinney?
Tobi
@Cam: If you’re a practising $cientologist, no probs!
@Peter McKinney: Can’t Stop The Music? Worth it for YMCA alone!
@McShane: “As a human being, Joan Crawford is a very fine actress”. 🙂 I’m chartreuse with envy over the Barbarella poster, truly gorgeous!!
For. Pure. Unadulterated. Camp. It’s gotta be Sextette.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as6Iv5R1G0M
McShane
@Tobi:
Oh, no… that is really something special. You know what, I’m not going to lie, I’m just going to say it. *deep breath* I would totally have sex with Dom DeLuise.
Those sausage fingers, the gold chain and hairy chest, that ridiculous laugh.
Bob LaBlah
Anyone remember Myra Breckenridge, with Raquel Welch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_vi_OsreNY
Glücklich
@Tobi:
That’s priceless. I gotta find a way to use that “…Fox all night” line.
@McShane:
I can see it, I can see it. He was probably quite charming one-on-one.
txcham
For me Showgirls trumps them all. How many people ask a total stranger who is obviously a crazy bitch to room with them? The great part is the movie has just started. Really you have to hand it to the writers for finding anywhere to from there. Sextette was awful but you really can’t dis Mae West. At least I can’t given her age at the time. All in all you guys came up with the worst of the worst!
boring
@Glücklich: This guy knows.
The Apple is the most insane futuristic (1980’s depiction of 1994!) glittertastic, holographic wallpaperiest, every drug you’ve ever heard of and at least twelve you never knew existed piece of glorious disco-trash to ever walk the face of the earth. I watch The Apple frame by frame like the Zapruder film – every screengrab you can take looks like it came out of a fever dream. It’s so good I own TWO COPIES of the soundtrack on vinyl.
You are fundamentally a bad person if you haven’t seen The Apple, so see it.
Glücklich
Would “Haunted Honeymoon” count?
Cam
Oh my god, some of the others mentioned here are awesome!
Satisfaction with Justine Bateman ( A movie Julia Roberts would love to pretend never happened), And Clan of the Cave Bear! LOL Priceless.
Daggerman
..I have to protest, NO it wasn’t the worst movie of all time..’Showgirls’….anyone with in that kind of business is I’m sure, would act the same way as all the actors in the film did! Plus we as the viewer got a little story as well included! Apart from being funny what exactly is the problem? Why do certain people think it’s trash anyway…was it really????? I don’t think so….