Corniest Films List
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Last Updated: 2/22/25
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It's simple and straightforward: the worst of the worst in corny cinema history. In order to qualify, the film has
met the following criteria:
1. Cringeworthy is the name of the game.
Multiple parts (i.e. duology, trilogy, etc.) or films in a similar vein can be put together as one if there's a
continuation in the narrative. Miniseries and telefilms are fair game, but documentaries are excluded. Anything
made after the year 2000 will not be mentioned because of the unbelievable avalanche of totally bad films
that persists.
These films have shown corniness in most, if not all, aspects: acting, characters, screenplay, plot, direction,
editing, cinematography, and so on. They must also be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically insignificant."
Then, I think about cultural phenomenon, uniqueness, corny movie moments, corny scenes and/or lines, and a lack of
cinematic power and timelessness.
This list is based on what I have seen so far and is limited to the top 50 with 5 dishonorable mentions in that
order. While ranking the films, I am simultaneously thinking about corniness before lack of quality and lack of
quality before corniness.
How hopelessly corny and outdated Pretty in Pink is. Andrew McCarthy...ugh. Jon Cryer...double ugh. Molly
Ringwald...triple ugh. Far too talented to be associated with the Brat Pack, James Spader is an anomaly. When I saw
the movie back then, I had him pegged as the only one with true acting chops. Eventually, I was proved correct.
The origin of why many Batman movies sucked over the years can be readily traced to this inferior original
with Adam West and Burt Ward which is among the worst ever made. It's so unbelievably boring that I had to keep
stopping the movie every two minutes to take a nap. The fight scenes look more fake than anything in
American Ninja V and are stupid, lame, and corny. The mother of all turkeys, Batman gives a bad
name to the word "camp."
Every time Tim Curry shows up, I just want to punch him in the face. He's so grating that I've never liked him in
anything else. The first ten minutes was going okay, and then the movie fell apart at the seams, making it hard
for me to survive for more than five minutes at a time.
"Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold." The Outsiders is among the corniest I've ever seen. Hammy acting,
nonsensical plot, and pure cheesiness dominate the film from start to finish. I always feel a sharp cringe
whenever Ralph Macchio or C. Thomas Howell appears, but seeing them both in the same scene is too much to take.
That's why they disappeared from Hollywood after the 80's was over.
Stop! Or I Will Shoot Your Mom is the most infamous movie of Sylvester Stallone's career. Whoever thought
of this deserves to be shot. The title should be Shut Up! Or I Will Shoot Your Mom. I liked Estelle Getty
in The Golden Girls, but no disrespect to her...she's awful. Apart from Mr. Magoo by Leslie Nielsen,
Estelle plays the most annoying, obnoxious character of all time.
Having lived through the 80's, I, to this day, don't understand the appeal of Molly Ringworm. I mean, nobody I
knew liked or found her attractive by any means. Molly Ringworm's career consists of only three signature films,
and truth be told, all of them suck. Anthony Michael Hall sucks. The Donger sucks. The Matt Dillon look-alike
sucks. John Cusack sucks. Joan Cusack sucks. And Molly Ringworm sucks, but you knew that already.
I guess I don't have to tell you the first two words of the title is grammatically incorrect because it invokes a
double negative. Not much of a comedy, Can't Hardly Wait is embarrassing and cheesy just like the sight
of Seth Green. The film falls under the category of "so bad and stupid that it's pitifully funny." All of the
characters are superficial and shallow, and I can't say I give a fuck about these losers or their problems.
If you want to die of extreme cheesiness, then Dead Poets Society is an excellent choice. Nominated for
four Oscars during an extremely strong year in cinema history, it has some of the most hammy acting imaginable,
especially from Robert Sean Leonard and Robin Williams.
Why did Curly Sue have to be made? What an awful film. I hate everything about it, and not for one second
did I laugh throughout. James Belushi and Kelly McGillis are okay, but it's Alisan Porter whom I hate the most. She
never appeared in another major film for the rest of her career. Thank goodness. The excessive amount of sugar
she pours in would've been fatal.
"Catch the excitement. Catch the adventure. Catch the Hawk. Bruce Willis. Hudson Hawk." What'chu talkin'
'bout, Willis? Bruce Willis, with all of his four gold looped earrings, actually thought he could write a story?
Ha, that's a laugh! It's impossible to follow the ridiculous plot or what everybody is doing or talking about.
Basically, anything goes in spite of rationality. Oh, yeah. Bruce? Just one thing: wipe that stupid smirk off
your face.
Set at Notre Dame University, Rudy is a feel-good picture with an all-time great ending. Despite the
heavy embellishment, the story works well, and there are many dramatic scenes. Sean Astin and Charles S. Dutton
will be remembered for this movie in perpetuity. But the problem? It's so damn corny!
Impossible to overcome is the high amount of cheesy acting. It doesn't help matters any, either, if the dialogue
is witless and full of nonsense. The screenplay was penned by William Hjortsberg. After the whole thing was over,
he never wrote again for the rest of his life. If you can believe this, the script went through fifteen revisions,
and it still sucks.
The Fifth Element is a headache-inducing sci-fi movie with performances that range from corny to
excruciatingly bad. At the beginning, I thought I could stomach it all the way to the end, but when Chris Tucker
entered into the picture, my eyes just couldn't take the torture anymore. As bad as he is, the special effects
are horrible by the 90's standards. I mean it was released during the same year as Titanic. Now, what
the fuck is that on Gary Oldman's head? It looks like a condom.
The first moment I saw Courtney Gains' face in Children of the Corny, I knew I was in deep trouble.
I still remember the other film when he was pretending to be a gangbanger. But really, the worst actor of the
show is John Franklin as Isaac. More often than not, his mouth will be frothing while spitting out the damning
words in a quaint manner. I can't help but find him hysterically funny. Some moments, especially Courtney Gains'
"outlander" screams, are also pure comedy gold. The rest of the sequels are cheesier.
If Josh said, "Your mother had sex with a robot. That's why you became a robot," Sam will believe it. If he
said, "Your body is made of carbon fiber with a metal brain," Sam will believe it. "You have no penis and...,"
Sam will believe it all the same. They're the most depressing-looking kids, and I wonder if those actors had a
happy childhood or that's how they appear daily. My prediction is Sam will commit suicide within 5 years while
Josh shoots up heroin.
George, who looks wild-eyed while chopping wood with an axe, is spotted by his wife in her Catholic schoolgirl
clothes(!). She drops her only one brown paper bag of groceries that's meant to last for a week for a family of six. Diabolical is when the
spirit from the house controls the car. Oh, geez, the sex scenes...they're absolutely silly. Hence, the tagline of
The Amityville Bore should read: "FOR GOD'S SAKE, STOP LAUGHING!" The following sequels are cheesy as well.
The corniest line of 1970 is: *drum roll* "Love means never having to say you're sorry"! Come on up,
Love Story! You've just won a year's supply of corn from Nebraska. The movie is so terrible that it has
become more and more of a Ripley's Believe It or Not! tidbit for saving Paramount Pictures from the brink
of collapse. It's full of sappy bullshit that engenders more eye-rolling scenes than not.
The title of Frogs for Snakes says it all. Who the hell thought Amos Poe could direct? Every time somebody
did a monologue from a film, I would end up cringing so hard. When John Leguizamo, after listening to Barbara
Hershey, said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, I just wanted to shoot him in the head right there.
What a cheesy movie Footloose is. It'll never shed the corny 80's look. I challenge anyone to see Chris
Penn's dancing without cringing. It's so god-awful. Even worse is the fashion which makes the film look hopelessly
dated. The young Kevin Bacon, in his first major leading role, gives a decent performance, showing enough evidence
to become a star.
Stand by Me is pure grade A cheese. It's the script that's so bad, forcing everybody to give corny
performances. The concepts are fine and should be kept in as they are. Had the movie been made during the 50's,
the conversations among kids would sound better and, more importantly, cleaner. Let's not kid ourselves: Gordie
and Chris were closet homosexual lovers. There have been plenty of moments to support this theory.
Calling the Guinness Book of Records, we have a winner here: St. Elmo's Fire for the film with the most
unlikable characters. Let me reiterate that: it's about seven worthless recent college graduates with useless
problems. Every time something goes wrong, my answer has been uniformly the same: "Like I care." Remember they
were called "The Brat Pack"? Make that "The Untalented Pack."
Stupid, misguided, infantile, and brainwashed are the words that immediately come to my mind while watching
Taps aka RIP: Timothy Hutton's Acting Career in 1981. One side of the coin is an interesting
perspective of what a cult must look like. The other is it's a bad film with cheesy acting. Tom Cruise looks
like a jackass while Sean Penn, as always, must cry. That's why I can't take the latter seriously as an actor.
The oddest part occurs at the end when a guy stood up on the bleachers with his penis out through his fly during
the victory celebration. But if you watch the scene again in an uncropped version, it turns out to be a woman.
At the same time, a redhead female on the right is showing off a major camel toe. What the fuck...? Anyway, the
sequel is cheesy, too.
After seeing A Slight Case of Murder, I can't help but feel Alfred Hitchcock ripped off the story from
The Trouble with Harry. Most of it is corny, and many jokes, whether subtle or not, don't work. It's
hard to believe Remy Marco didn't sample his product before distributing it nationally. This kind of dumbness
is irritating. Why does he need to adopt a kid?
What was I thinking in 1992 when I thought 3 Ninjas was a good film? The little boy's bowl haircut still
looks terrible! He has stuff constantly outside of his mouth which probably started with a pacifier before
graduating to his thumb. The next thing I know, he'll be sucking on a dildo, engineering a full-blown cleft lip.
Speaking of the terrible child actors, I won't be surprised if they refuse to watch 3 Ninjas to this day
given how embarrassing they were.
Quick! What's the first thing that comes to your mind about Batman & Robin? If you said, "Nipples," then
yep...you are correct. Fans of the franchise have universally voted Batman & Robin as the worst
Batman movie of all time. Joel Schumacher goes overboard with the use of colors. I can imagine him
trying to decide: "What color should I use? Is red good? Or yellow? How about a pitch of orange and some
purple? I feel blue. No! Yes! No! More green! No! More yellow!"
The high amount of cringeworthy scenes in Coyote Ugly makes my skin crawl. A dopey-looking girl who
dances sexy like never before gets everything going in New York City just like that? That'll never happen in
a million of years. I still have nightmares from my enrollment in Women's Studies, a college course I dropped
out of in the next day. It's because I don't need to be manhandled by being told that women are the bomb and
everything.
The sex-obsessed screenplay is awful. So are the characters. Larenz Tate and Nia Long have virtually zero chemistry.
The poems by their characters? Gee, they're so bad that I had to laugh at every line. Even one threw her book in
the trash can. Larenz Tate looks uncool when he smokes. Then, Nia Long undermines herself when she decides to
adopt his habit. There are a lot of cringeworthy scenes, but the worst is the final one when Larenz Tate went
outside in the pouring rain for Nia Long instead of meeting her inside the club.
I looked at the DVD case to see who the director of Staying Alive was. To my surprise, it's Sylvester
Stallone. After blinking twice, I reread the words, and they still said: "Sylvester Stallone." Yes, that
Sylvester Stallone of Rocky and Rambo fame. Holy shit, he directed a dance movie.
Staying Alive fails on so many levels that it's a train wreck. Forget about the magic of Tony Manero
in Saturday Night Fever. It's gone.
Masterpieces, I have seen. Good films, I have seen. Turkeys, I have seen. But when it comes to Blue Steel,
there's no explanation. Hands down, Blue Steel is one of the worst, stupidest pictures I've seen in my
life. The movie reeks of horrid...I mean really, really horrid...acting. Jamie Lee Curtis fails the eye test
miserably for a female in blue. Ron Silver...wow, he gets my vote as the most annoying, unattractive,
schizophrenic psycho with hideous-looking teeth.
The first twenty minutes of Fury forced me to turn the TV off four times. It was so bad, corny, and
saccharine that I couldn't stop rolling my eyes. There are so many leaps in logic that the entire story is
farfetched to be believable. The court case incenses me, hence the title Fury. It has nothing to do with
the facts or how I felt about either side. It's just that my intelligence was being insulted constantly, no
matter what.
Well, I think the first half of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 was a blessing in disguise because it
forced me to fast-forward to the point where the movie actually started. Eric "Garbage Day" Freeman, the infamous
actor of the franchise, disappeared afterwards and was never heard from again. He certainly was an oddball when
it came to his acting technique by moving eyebrows up and down frequently and mimicking the Terminator's movements.
Child's Play is a lame horror film with the same Friday the 13th formula that's been used too
many times. But this time, it involves a doll. How pathetic is this: a spoiled kid getting what he wants? No
wonder why I rooted for Chucky to kill him. When it comes to annoying characters, Chucky tops the odious
red-haired boy from Problem Child. The rest of the Child's Play franchise is no better.
Not horror but is more of a fantasy film, Swamp Thing is corny. From start to finish, the made-for-TV-feel
is prominent with weird characters and lame action sequences. Apart from the cheap special effects, it's
Adrienne Barbeau who kills the film. Why not hire real mercenaries if the villain is supposed to be a genius?
I hate it when Arcana was transformed into Beowulf or something. At the same time, there's a strange romance
subplot going on.
The plot is thin and dumb that was probably written by an airhead. Audrey Hepburn was cute in Roman Holiday.
Debra Winger was classy in An Officer and a Gentleman. Julia Roberts was timeless in Pretty Woman.
But Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan? Uh, no. Failing to be charming for one minute, she's also
sexless and has dated fashion sense.
Alphabet City represents everything that's wrong with an 80's film. What I see instead is lights, lights,
and more lights. It has been purple, pink, green, orange, purple, pink, yellow, orange, purple, pink, green,
orange, purple, pink, yellow, purple, pink, green, orange, purple, pink, and yellow. These lights are so
distractingly bright that they have to be right in the center for every shot.
Although I'm a huge fan of the ninja genre as it reached the zenith during the 80's, American Ninja is a
cheesy, mindless franchise but has plenty of ninja action. Michael Dudikoff makes for a fun character...not! He
has the personality of a rock. Dudikoff has admitted in interviews that "acting is a real challenge" for him.
*sigh* The fifth part is worst of them all because of Lee Reyes as Hiro.
Girlfight is a damn cheesy movie about a stone-faced female tomboy who tries to act tough but ends up
looking sillier than a monkey licking a lollipop. Michelle Rodriguez is a horrible actress. Her schtick mostly
consists of making the same face that projects "I am badder than you." Uh, no...she just needs to retire from
acting for good.
Many adjectives describe The Five Heartbeats: cheesy, corny, terrible, laughable, stupid, and hard-to-watch.
It's the Barney version of rock 'n' roll that reeks of bad acting. Michael Wright is the only one who gives a
decent performance. No wonder why Robert Townsend, a name I hadn't heard in years, fell off the map.
Do you ever get the feeling of working on a jigsaw puzzle with none of the pieces fitting together? That's what
happened in The January Man. It's not the kind of film that's "so bad that it's so good" or "so bad that
it's bad" but rather "so stupid that it's so ridiculous." Indeed it is. The bizarre murdery mystery plot has to
be seen to believe.
The Principal is one of the sorriest films made. Filled with many useless scenes and hokey dialogue, the
plot is improbable, and the principal should've died on the first day of his new job after pulling off the illegal
stunts. Additionally, his behavior is so inappropriate that it's grounds enough for termination. One reviewer
remarked all of the characters were underdeveloped which is true.
Instead of three or four dramatic moments in an ordinary picture, Vertical Limit manages to go for
between thirty and forty. Pretty soon, the race is on as each scene, no matter how impossible physics is, tries
to top the last one en route to be the most dramatic of them all. The action is too cheesy, and the cast does a
great job of turning in piss-poor performances.
There's a long dragged-out sequence of ridiculousness and pointlessness in Zabriskie Point with the last
ten minutes of stuff being repeatedly blown up in a slow-motion at different angles before closing out with a
sunset. I had been wondering the whole time: was Michelangelo Antonioni mentally retarded? Also, did he watch
2001: A Space Odyssey and Easy Rider too many times and try to emulate them?
Stupid stories make for stupid movies. Think about this: a group of six ugly, unemployed men decide to put on a
striptease for their town in Northern England because they can't figure anything else to do for money. Really?
How about...moving out and getting a real job somewhere else? Why is that so hard to accomplish? The former Best
Picture nominee hasn't aged well with many corny moments and forced jokes.
Crooklyn represents everything that's fundamentally wrong with Spike Lee. The story is god-awful, hitting
the bottom point in terms of moral values while reaffirming the fact that many black children don't behave or
speak properly like their white counterparts. The film's worst line is: "I hope we don't have to dress up for
mommy's funeral." No wonder why she died. Wake the fuck up, Spike. This is not the 60's when he can pretend to
be the Malcolm X of his race nowadays. What a fucking idiot he is.
Rubbish and stupid, Big Trouble in Little China is a schlock film by John Carpenter's standards with Kurt
Russell giving the worst performance ever. The lead star should be embarrassed of himself for playing a fake
character. The thespians speak their lines one by one in an orderly fashion as if they're in a staged play. It
grows worse and worse over time, cementing this crapfest as a trashy Oriental wannabe fantasy-comedy flick.
Chasing Amy is a film that explores intimate relationships.
The material feels fresh as evidenced by the profanity-filled conversations, and the performances are
surprisingly good. But the truth is that everybody is corny as hell. The prevalence of cigarette smoking is also
too much. The story was working well until the last twenty minutes or so, and then it fell apart. The conclusion
doesn't feel satisfying.
Boy, House on Haunted Hill is a real letdown, considering the interesting premise and the upstart
introduction. Contrived acting abounds, the storyline is nonsensical, and there are many silly scenes. Let's
take a look at the ending. There's a hole in the basement, and it's full of acid. So, shouldn't the strings on
the skeleton be eaten away? Elsewhere, why isn't the frightened woman curious about who might be the puppeteer?
I get it already: War is stupid. But does the message need to be repeated endlessly? Cornel Wilde is limited
for a director because he keeps looping the same cycle over and over throughout Beach Red: pick a character,
make him recall memories by showing still images that resemble pornography, and have him walk through the jungle.
He even goes far enough to use war stock footage for the beginning.
The band members of The Sex Pistols would've called SLC Poser! a "piss stain." In fact, punk was
already over before 1980 when Sid Vicious died from a heroin overdose, and it had been fake for a long time
afterwards. It doesn't help matters any when Matthew Lillard is constantly screaming to the camera about how
everybody is a poser. I mean, look at the pot calling the kettle black.
Dishonorable Mentions:
The Spitfire Grill (1996),
Teen Witch (1989),
Cocktail (1988),
Spaceballs (1987),
and
Marvin's Room (1996)