Movies for Sadists II: Electric Boogaloo Quiz

Answer: The Conqueror

There's not much more to say about the plot, but Wayne "won" a Golden Turkey Award for being woefully miscast. Howard Hughes is supposed to have felt bad about making an awful movie and his unwillingness to release the movie until 1974 is cited as evidence for that proposition. (See "Empire," an unflattering book about Hughes). On the other hand, Hughes watched the movie over and over, and while Hughes was a Class-A nutjob, there's no evidence he was a masochist.

Answer: Manos: The Hands of Fate

"Manos" is Spanish for "hands," so the title is basically "Hands: The Hands of Fate." Two characteristics that render this movie truly awful are first, that the director didn't get sound equipment, so the whole movie is dubbed, and dubbed by fewer people than are in the cast, and second, every scene begins with a long pause before anything happens.

It's generally accepted as the worst movie ever lampooned on the TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000." (Which prompts me to mention one of the great mysteries: on the "MST3K" DVD of the "Manos" episode, they've included the original movie.) By the way, my research has not unearthed whether Silliphant paid off; technically, "Manos" is a movie, but saying a movie this bad meets the terms of the wager is like putting apple cores in a loaf of bread and claiming it's a pie.

Answer: Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

Think of that: 105 critics watched a movie starring two actors who have some talent and are easy on the eyes, and not one liked it. Of course, the Internet being what it is, the movie has some defenders on IMDB, where the general public can weigh in. I'm supposed to relate this paragraph back to the movie, but I can't bear to repeat a synopsis, so I'll quote some reviews: "The backyard battles you staged with your green plastic army men were more exciting and almost certainly made more sense" (Nick Rogers), "Banderas mopes through this hideous and unintelligible enterprise like a bloodhound with a hangover, while Liu elects to look cool in leather in lieu of a performance" (Urban Cinefie Critics), and "You'll have more fun setting fire to yourself in the parking lot. You'll be more entertained getting hit by a bus." (Rob Vaux). DVDs, amazingly enough, can be purchased for around $5.00.

This is shocking because first, someone decided to release a movie this bad on DVD, and second, it's about $4.99 too much, and third, the cost for shipping toxic waste would seem to make buying it on the internet cost-prohibitive.

Answer: Psycho

There are a few changes from the original, the most obvious being that it's in color. Which underlines the pointlessness of the movie, because Hitchcock could have made the original in color, but chose not to. And, as proof that it's the singer and not the song, the actors shape the characters differently, so Vince Vaughn (as Norman Bates) and Anne Heche (as Marion Crane) come off differently than Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh (especially Heche, apparently). Anyway, both movies have identical plots and characters: Marion Crane steals a large sum of money from her employer in order to finance a new life.

She stops at the Bates Motel and is murdered by what appears to be the owner's mother. A private detective investigating Cranes disappearance is also killed by "Mother." At the end, of course, "Mother" is revealed to be a malevolent personality of the owner, who has gone insane after killing his mother. Go see the original.

Answer: Tom Green

(All of the answers are names of Canadians, by the way.) The plot of "Freddy Got Fingered" is barely there, but it concerns an aspiring cartoonist who is forced to move in with his parents. He has a struggle with his father, who wants him out, and various experiences in the neighborhood, which form most of the movie.

There are two schools of thought on "Freddy Got Fingered." One is that it's surrealistic meta-humor, akin to Andy Kaufman's wrestling and creation of "Tony Clifton." The other is that it sucks. I like Roger Ebert's view: "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel.

This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." For the record, the movie "won" five Razzies. Tom Green picked up his, arriving in a limo and bringing his own red carpet, unfortunately spoiling the joke by playing the harmonica until dragged off the stage.

Answer: Meet the Spartans

I will admit that people like these movies. They make money. I have no idea why. Basically, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer take a bunch of references to pop culture, characters and situations from other movies, and a ton of low-brow humor, stuff it into a mixmaster, and hit puree. I'd recap the plot and characters of "Meet the Spartans," but Fun Trivia insists that I take into account that this quiz will be on the site for a while, and a year or two from now, no one will understand the references, and there's no other point to the movie. Look, these movies are so cheap and easy that "Meet the Spartans" and "Disaster Movie" were both released in 2008, despite Friedberg and Seltzer writing and directing both of them.

Answer: SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2

Let me tell you how bad this movie is. In researching this question, I read some of the reviews on IMDB. A more visceral cry of horror cannot be imagined. My favorite was the poor parent who took their four year-old to see it and hoped to catch a nap.

Unfortunately, the child was very wise for her age and insisted they leave. The movie was made, by the way, by using computers to animate the babies' mouths so they appeared to be talking, the same technique that was used in "Babe." The tragic thing about the movie is that the director was killed in a car crash three years later, so this is the last movie he directed.

Not a good thing to go out on.

Answer: Paris Hilton

This movie offends me on so many levels: First, there's the word "nottie." It bugs me so much that I'd avoid seeing any movie with that word in the title. Then, there's the fact it stars Paris Hilton, a woman I loathe so much that I consider her "career" as an actress to be one of the signs of the decline of Western Civilization.

Then, there's the conceit that Paris Hilton plays the hottest woman in Southern California. Paris Hilton isn't the hottest woman in this movie, and I can say that without seeing this movie, because Paris Hilton is simply not hot. If she ate something, she might have decent looks, but in my book, you have to be smart to be hot. By that standard, Paris isn't even lukewarm. Oh, the movie? Um. Well, it's terrible. Please don't make me do any more research on it.

Answer: A ventriloquist's dummy

It took me twenty years to mention it to anyone, but one day, my friends and I went to a bar where they had a "Magic" pinball machine. We all looked at it, and with charming simultaneity, admitted that we'd all seen the commercial and been terrified by the evil talking dummy. No, really.

It spoiled "Saturday Night Live" for me for years - I wouldn't stay up for fear of seeing the commercial again.

Answer: Every member of the cast was a midget.

Really. Every actor in the movie is a little person. This gets exploited in that the actors ride Shetland ponies and walk under, not through, the saloon's swinging doors. But other than that, it's a basic B western. With songs. Don't forget the songs. What makes it sadistic is that everyone speaks in soprano.

It's not the actor's fault that they have short vocal chords, of course, but it did grate on my nerves a lot to have the hero and the villain sound like they've just been sucking helium.