We’re they disco? I always thought they had a slightly religious bent à la The Mike Curb* Congregation (the latter of whom sang at the end of Kelly’s Heroes and makes the movie groove that much more 
). I thought that UWP’s purpose was to take bland non-offensive 70’s or 80’s pop songs and sing the shit out of them for T.V. variety shows, all the while doing it for God.
*Yes, that California Lt. Governor Mike Curb.
Nawp. I left out the slash. Up With People slash disco.
Without a doubt “Nightfall”. I remember nothing about it except that in the year 1988, my ever-frugal father was excited to take his teenage sons to see a big-screen adaption of an Asimov story dear to his heart. Even it was unable to break his lifelong commitment to “I paid for this and by God, we are going to suffer through this experience in its entirety.” We watched the entire thing. Every other person in the theater had long ago walked out. And then I watched as he spent another 30 minutes arguing with the manager for a refund.
Under no circumstances watch this film. If you must, look upon the IMDB reviews and despair.
As a poor student I was searching the video store’s budget rentals for something to see. I was beside myself with joy when I found a film version of an Asimov classic. The 25p (40 cents) I spent on the rental is the worst investment I’ve ever made. Nothing happened in the film. Nothing at all. Then it got dark and the titles rolled. I’ll never get those 90 minutes back.
Elsewhere:
The casting was atrocious. The acting was terrible. The story was appallingly bad. The lighting was so dark you couldn’t tell who was speaking. If you want to compare my opinions with those of real people, I actually liked ‘Howard the Duck’ and ‘Transylvania 6-5000’. This is lightyears worse than those.
In fact, the IMDB reviews may be the only sliver of good to come from its creation - a warning to all future generations.
Might be either AI or Armageddon. Or Bridges of Madison County.
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005) written by Alan Passes and directed by Brothers Quay. I’d finished a generous cup of coffee when I settled into my seat at the theatre and by thirty minutes in, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Seriously, just reading the synopsis of this film is sufficient to induce stage-1 sleep. I say ‘synopsis’ because the ‘plot’ is absolutely psychotic.
Like @ActionAbe, I would actually pay money to not have to watch that film again.
I don’t think Asimov stories are that well suited to movies.
The Bicentennial Man sounded terrible but then the source wasn’t much cop either.
Entirely fair point - now that I think back to all the Asimov that I marveled at in my youth - I’m not entirely sure any of them would have adapted well to film.
Counterpoint: shouldn’t a sufficiently talented crew with sufficient support be able to pull it off? Although that may be nothing more than a pure thought exercise these days.
It worked well enough for a short story but I really was boggled at how it would make an interesting feature length film.
We may never know. No less than Harlan Ellison bent his considerable talent and extensive screenwriting experience to adapting I, Robot back in 1978 and even though the script is great and was popular enough to get published in book form in its own right, the eventual movie that came out a quarter century later bore almost no resemblance to Ellison’s screenplay, Asimov’s book, or a good movie.
I don’t know why they didn’t buy the rights to The Caves of Steel for that one. It’s (superficially, at least) a lot closer to what they made.
EDIT:
Hmm.
I can’t think of a single bad movie that could have been measurably improved by throwing more money, time, or talent at the crew. I can forgive a whole lot of shoestring-budget production-value-poverty. To my eye, bad movies are bad because of some combination of bad direction, bad acting, bad editing, or especially and most commonly, bad writing.
The Phantom Menace is a perfectly cromulent movie with the dialogue track muted. It only really falls apart when you hear what the characters are saying.
Taking the dialogue out, way too much CGI killed it for me, beyond the “sets” also being CGI and the actors suffering for it. There was also the late Lucas trying to put too much into each scene, impressive as a tech demo but the details were all cacophonous.
Less is more.
The edited versions (sometimes available on YT, although not right now, it seems) are a definite improvement. Although still not good.
I also hear that the fanedits are superior but I’d have to watch to be sure…not sure if I have the patience beyond the Plinket tracks.
It is hard to fix the ‘I really have no clue what to do with the plot’ that it suffered from.
That’s how I feel about Attack of the Clones. At least TPM was still shot on film. When Episode 2 went all-digital it freed Lucas up to get even more nuts with the CGI.
Man, I’ve missed this thread!
Weirdly, though, TFA has made me want to reconsider the prequels. (Very) Bad as they were, they were at least more ambitious than JJ Abrams’ film.
See, I can’t believe that was bad. That looks awesome.
On the other hand, I watched Independence Day: Resurrection this weekend.
A new vote for what might be the worst film I’ve ever seen:
Searchers of the Voodoo Mountain, which as far as I know can only be seen with Finnish subtitles, is not only a bad movie, it’s a boring-as-hell bad movie where nothing ever happens. As far as I can tell, the entire movie consists of a lot of angry looks, muttering, and shambling around a rocky terrain.
