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Okay... I've got to know..... (1 Viewer)

Edith-Marie

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What is the worst special effects you've seen? Which movie was it in? AND how old is the movie?

The first one to come to mind is really from a Sci-Fi mini series. It whole it was great. I think from 2000. It was a re-make of the 1984 Dune movie. Like I said,it was a great movie, but the special effects to make their eyes blue got carried away. You could see a "blue" light bouncing off things in the room. When they road on the worms the "blue" screening was terrible!!! William Hurt was great in it, but certain parts were just too poorly done. I'm sure with a better budget, it could have been awesome!

OH YEAH!!! I forgot one! I can't remember the year 1998 -99 I think. Mortal Kombat II! The 4 armed woman sucks!!

Let's hear your movies.....
 

Jeff Kleist

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Edith, you ain't seen nothing

I think the worst I have ever seen is probably the Turkish version of Star Wars, where they sit there in straight back chairs and watch star wars pretending to shoot at TIE fighters. They didn't even bother to edit out Luke and Han

otherwise there are a million movies with worse effects than those 2 films. Many of which are in the Mystery Science 3000 library :)
 

Patrick McCart

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The Mummy Returns. I can't even say I expected Bugs Bunny to appear in the cartoonish CGI. At least the Looney Tunes had well-done animation.

What is SAD is that The Mummy (1999) had great and more realistic CGI. Did ILM REALLY do this film? Was Sommers looking for a "look, CGI!" motif?

On the subject, I've seen films made in the 1920's with better effects than films made 80 years later. I'll take a matte painting over a phony CGI set any day.
 

JohnRice

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Hello, and welcome to HTF. I do have one suggestion. You might try to come up with a more descriptive title to your threads, since virtually every thread on the entire forum could have the same title as this one.




Enjoy.
 

Todd Terwilliger

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This one falls in the category of a horrible FX in an otherwise good movie: T2: Judgment Day. The scene where Arnold is driving the car at night is awful. They are clearly sitting in a car in front of a screen. C'mon James, couldn't you afford to sit them on a trailer and drive it at night? It is laughable in an otherwise gret film with otherwise great FX.
 

Henry Gale

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Flash Gordon.

Even a six year old knows that a spaceship can't be propelled by a sparkler sputtering sparks out the back end.
 

Andy Sheets

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The plane crash in Air Force One. Terrible.

Also, I'm not sure if this falls under special effects or not, but there's this part in The Abominable Dr. Phibes that always cracks me up. It's this guy who's flying a plane and he's supposed to be eaten alive by rats while flying. So this actor's covered in all these big rats and he's screaming in pain, but the thing is that it's quite plain that the rats aren't doing anything at all to the guy. They're just crawling on him and some are even trying unsuccessfully to get off of him but the actor's still howling like it's the worst pain he's ever felt. It's just like that moment in Ed Wood where Bela has to wrestle the "octopus", except these are real animals. Hilarious :)
 

David Rogers

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Worst effect ever

Collateral Damage

Shot of Arnold in a white water river, and he goes over a waterfall. The waterfall shot is a 2-d cutout of Arnold they just physically dropped over the waterfall. It's the most awful effect shot I've ever seen.
 

Terry St

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I think the worst I have ever seen is probably the Turkish version of Star Wars, where they sit there in straight back chairs and watch star wars pretending to shoot at TIE fighters. They didn't even bother to edit out Luke and Han
Hot damn! That sounds hilarious. Does it have a hungarian title or is it just some bootleg? Might be a film to pick up for a weekend movie roast.
 

Edward J M

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OMG!!! I LOL when I read your post! I actually have that movie! It is funny!!!!

How about this one:

Keanu Reeves in Johnny Mnemonic with Dolph Lundgren! I love the part where Dolph says, Halt Sinners!!! I laughed so hard!
 

Edith-Marie

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I found another! How about everything in Conan the Barbarian!!!! That thing at the end was terrible. Which also reminds me of a classic film... Clash of the Titans! Harry Hamlin.... How funny!!!
 

Kim D

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Last night I watched "Don't Say a Word". Because it has Sean Bean.

I could not believe the scene where

The sides of the grave fall in and Sean gets crushed.


It should have been a great moment. But it wasn't because it was so poorly done.

- kim
 

Kami

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Re: The Dune Mini-series. Poor special effects yes, but the first sand worm scene was very well done IMO (when it jumps out of the sand). I think half the effects budget was spent on that shot.

Dune Mini-series is one of my BIG guilty pleasures.

As for bad special effects, any film that tried to use primarily computer generated effects in the 80s or the very early 90s. ;) Also that Dinotopia mini-series was pretty awful. Off the top of my head, I'd say Jurassic Park was the turning point for CGI. Maybe someone can come up with a film before that though.
 

Edith-Marie

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I agree on the first worm shot. They probably did run out of money after that!:)

I also thought the Dinotopia was dumb. And JP & JP III were great! The CGI of Spider-man running on the roof tops was dumb along with the fight scene in Blade II. Very rubberband-ish!
 

Kevin M

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The Goonies has one pretty crappy matte shot with the kids, a landscape and a doubloon...it even get's razzed on the commentary track!


I am a huge John Carpenter fan but I find it funny that, IMO, the CGI in Escape from L.A. is sub-par to the lower budget (yet very well executed by among others Jim Cameron) optical effects provided by New World in the original Escape from New York.
On the EFNY LD commentary track Carpenter says "yeah it's pretty good but we could have used some nice CGI".....if he had taped that commentary after he made EFLA he might have said "I guess the new movie's CGI is pretty good but we could have used some nice traditional optical effects".
 

Andrew Chong

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Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain goes over the top (and further) with its meager attempts at special effects. Truly annoying to behold.

One example of many: the ineffective albeit colourful effects don't at any point blend well with other onscreen elements (the 'actors', landscape).
 

Matt Pelham

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The plane crash in Air Force One. Terrible

Yup, that was just plain bad.

One that always bugged me was the original Howling. The transformations were good, but there is that one long shot of the "sex/transformation" scene where the wolves are cartoons drawn into the shot that look awful!
 

Steve Christou

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Space Hunter, a huge spaceship crashlands on a distant rocky planet, but whats this? At the left of the screen you can just make out a road with cars parked along side, dwarfing the miniature set, nice one chaps! :)
This is in the first 10mins of the film and I saw it on tape.
 

Anthony_H

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Old school...but my vote would have to go to EMPIRE OF THE APES ('76?) which featured ants essentially walking on air. They filmed the ants through a glass panel and matted to the film.. lovely.
 

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