Film's Best Worst Movies

8. "Dot Com For Murder"

Directed By: Nico Mastorakis
Starring: Nastassja Kinski, Roger Daltrey, Huey Lewis

Yes, you read that correctly: Roger Daltrey and Huey Lewis both get top billing in this humiliating look at the dangers of online romance. Tommy, can you hear me, can you feel me near you? Oh you can't? I guess that's because I'M NOT STARRING IN A TERRIBLE MOVIE ABOUT THE INTERNET LIKE YOU ARE. And Mr. Lewis, I expected so much from you and your News. For shame you two, for shame.

A naked hacker who cruises across chatrooms on "American Love Online" wreaks havoc in the lives of two dimwitted sisters, turning their most romantic fantasies into violent nightmares. The two women use an IRC client to talk with people in a romance room, unaware that it is inhabited by a murderer named "Werther" who recites sassy goth poetry while making his chatroom text drip red blood and play scary mp3 files. Werther takes a break from being naked and using the computer so he can murder some woman while broadcasting the entire event live on his webcam. The sisters witness this traumatic event and attempt to report it to Huey Lewis, FBI "Cyber Crime" agent extraordinaire, but it turns out the movie they saved was "encrypted." Now a little note about encryption: in our world, the term means to simply "alter a file using a code so as to be unintelligible to unauthorized parties." In "Dot Com For Murder," it means "to show a looping cartoon movie over and over."

Lewis is unable to use his finely-trained FBI cyber crime skills to solve the murder because the footage was encrypted to instead display dancing cartoon characters. I think you can do that with Linux. Eventually Werther disguises himself as somebody who's not naked and attempts to murder the two female main characters. He does not succeed and instead falls to his death where he is subsequently arrested for being a dead murderer.

The film was clearly written by somebody who has absolutely no idea what the Internet is like or how anything more complex than a wooden ladle operates, which makes this movie particularly entertaining to computer nerds like myself. Oh yeah, according to this film a firewall is literally an animated gif of fire with the words "FIREWALL ACTIVATED" glowing in the background. Sure movie, whatever you say! I would also like to take this moment to point out that Nico Mastorakis also directed a movie about a brother who has sex with his sister and then screws a goat. I'm not making this up. (Full review here...)

7. "The Stuff"

Directed By: Larry Cohen
Starring: Michael Moriarty, Garret Morris, Danny Aiello, Paul Sorvino

With the tagline "are you eating it or IS IT EATING YOU?", it's quite clear this movie redefines the entire horror genre, particularly the exclusive "edible killer" sub-genre which includes that one movie where the guy tried to eat Jack the Ripper. A non-fat treat simply named "The Stuff" is released to the eagerly awaiting public and immediately takes grocery stores by storm. Nobody can get enough of the stuff! It's delicious and nutritious and cheap and would be the best food product in the world if it didn't have that slightly annoying side effect of transforming you into an evil zombie who vomits sentient sperm.

Larry Cohen never really bothers to explain what the Stuff is or where it originated or what it does or why it's evil or anything even remotely resembling a motive. It's just kind of there and evil and that's all you deserve to know. Michael Moriarty, who most of you may recognize from various other movies which aren't remotely as embarrassing as this one, plays "Mo Rutherford," a smooth talking corporate saboteur who isn't afraid to have sex with random women and then pick up anonymous children in his car late at night. He is determined to discover the secret ingredient behind the skyrocketing success of The Stuff, unaware that it's not created, it's just kind of pumped out from giant rock quarries in the middle of Alabama. Apparently the entire Earth has a creamy layer of deadly dessert topping flowing underneath its crust, just waiting for bearded fat men wearing plaid to bottle and haul it to grocery stores.

The Stuff does not want its secret exposed so it takes over various people and tries to kill Mo by, well, not really doing anything. In one scene it inadvertently catches a motel room on fire, but that's about it. Rutherford eventually topples the Stuff's empire and forces the evil corporation presidents to eat their own evil product and turn into vaguely evil zombies, which I guess is an ironic ending of some sort. There are an awful lot of great white fluid-spewing scenes in this movie, kind of like a collection of reverse cumshots. I guess this film will appeal to all you reverse cumshot fans, and I know you guys are out there; I've seen what you people search for on this site. (Full review here...)

6. "Nukie"

Directed By: Sias Odendal
Starring: Glynis Johns, Fats Dibeco, a plastic brown alien suit which looks like a drunk, sweaty, bloated roach

"Nukie" tries to capitalize on the success that "Mac N' Me" experienced capitalizing on the success of "E.T.," which can be summarized as "none at all." Much like the epic adventure of "Mac N' Me," "Nukie" follows the exciting experiences of an utterly revolting and pathetic alien with disturbing magic powers that make absolutely no sense.

Nukie and his brother / sister / disgusting friend Miko crash land on Earth and are separated from each other due to the fact that they're both incredible idiots incapable of doing anything even remotely useful or competent. The movie follows Nukie's attempts to reunite with his significant other so they may turn into blobs of light and fly into the stars where they hopefully fall into a black hole and die repeatedly over and over and over in the most violent ways possible. Although Nukie landed in the middle of Africa, Miko gets captured by the Florida-based "Space Foundation" which steals all its props from NASA and then makes sure none of them function properly in any conceivable way.

Nukie waddles his way through the African plains for 90 minutes, befriending some nice English-speaking tribal children and a monkey who also speaks fluent English and is also telepathic. A few other memorable events in this movie include the time Miko programs the Space Foundation's computer to hypnotize the project director into becoming a clown, and the drunken abusive corporal who serves no purpose in this film other than to... no, he actually serves absolutely no purpose at all. I loved this movie and found it to be hilariously awful, while my ex-fiancee Emily "Crazy Person" Reigal absolutely hated it and once tried to throw it into a swamp. Emily also hated being sane, so take that as you will. (Full review here...)