Top 10 "Worst" Razzie Nominations and Winners

Tomorrow, the Golden Raspberry Awards return to their proper night for their ceremony, right before Academy Awards. "Honoring" the fine men and women who brought the worst films imaginable, as set forth by John Wilson, back in 1980. Because of these festivities, we have the dark elements of pop culture forever on display, in order to show future generations the stupidity people had to sit through in theaters. Unfortunately, like many award shows, there is debate to what was included and even won. This is my view on the failures of the Razzies.


In order to be picked, I have to have a real strong dislike for what the Razzies have done and willing to defend it. For instance, the attack on Sly Stallone and his 1985 two films, Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV, can be debatable due to the merits and sheer dumb intentions of those films. And, as always, I need to have seen the films.


Before we embark on the list, let's get some honorable mentions that I didn't seem fit to discuss more about: One of the 1980's 15-minutes of fame winners, Angelyne was nominated for Earth Girls Are Easy despite having a very minor cameo. Die-hard fans of The Ramones may loathe the song but "Pet Sematary" isn't really bad at all; just another pop-punk ditty. I don't remember anything of ill will in Harvey Keitel's supporting performance in The Last Temptation of Christ to warrant a nomination. The same goes with Demi Moore's "win" for G.I. Jane. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of Annie but beyond its notoriety at the time of being a major bomb, it really didn't warrant such dishonors, especially compared to the other awful kids' film that year, The Pirate Movie. Jim Carrey certainly wasn't one of the Worst New Stars of 1994 for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Betsy Palmer got the bad rap for her shocking and risky turn in Friday the 13th. And finally, Cruising has grown in the years since his controversial filming and release in 1981, capturing a now lost era of New York, unlike the still-unreleased and more infuriatingly homophobic Windows.



10. The Joe Eszterhas Worst-Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million Award (1996)

Every now and then, the Razzies create a new category either to skew one of the repeated offenders or to mock Hollywood trends. The success of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas was a mighty big thorn in their side, so they crafted a commemorative category for him, designed to include audience favorites that did well in the box office. How this was not brought back up during the Twilight years is anyone's guess. The problem is that all of its nominations didn't really truly and absolutely stink in the story: Independence Day and the "winner" Twister were just exciting big-budget B-movies, A Time to Kill is pretty harrowing at times and has a famous if clumsy monologue, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame actually touches upon themes truly shocking to see in a Disney film. The last nominee, Mission: Impossible, I can kinda see fitting since the complicated multiple betrayals are still hard to understand but the film was still entertaining.


9. Robing Hood: Prince of Dweebs (Thieves): Worst Actor (Kevin Costner) (1991)

Yes, Costner didn't even try for a British accent for the movie but he was enjoyable as the renowned outlaw. The reason he is on this list is the fact that he "won" the award largely for such a small excuse compared to his opponents: an unfunny misogynist in his own concert film (Andrew Dice Clay, Dice Rules), a failed attempt to forego action heroics for stilted comedy (Sylvester Stallone, Oscar), an unbearable walking experience of egotism (Bruce Willis, Hudson Hawk), and a graduate of Prince's Academy of Singers Who Can't Act (Vanilla Ice, Cool as Ice). Then, there's the other actors who were off the list but deserving to replace Costner, like Brian Bosworth in Stone Cold (though he was included as Worst New Star) and Chevy Chase in Nothing But Trouble.


8. Brian De Palma: Worst Director (1980, 1983)

Long mocked for being a Hitchcock plagiarist, De Palma did rightly get his just desserts with multiple nominations, including Worst Director, for his helming of the colossal, catastrophic adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities. However, the man was unfairly picked upon in the past. Though I can't defend his work on 1984's Body Double, since I still haven't seen it, he did do wonders with 1981's Dressed to Kill and especially in the now iconic Scarface, which was noteworthy among harsh critics in 1983 for its graphic violence.


7. The Supporting Actresses of Sci-Fi (1993, 1997)

Sandra Bullock, Milla Jovovich, and Uma Thurman all received proper justice for other films but some of their standout performances were unwisely given the raspberry treatment. Sandra Bullock broke through in Hollywood with her charming, deliberately dim-witted turn as a futuristic police officer in Demolition Man yet had to suffer dishonor at the 1993 Razzies. The same went for Jovovich and Thurman in 1997. Jovovich ran the gamut of crazy in The Fifth Element as the sexy titled character while Thurman channeled Julie Newmar as the very campy Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, often heralded by critics as the sole redeeming thing from that fiasco.


6. S.O.B.: Worst Director, Worst Screenplay (1981)

Blake Edwards has had a very checkered career when it comes to his films and his choice of comedy. I certainly did not like his 1989 film Sunset, which he shared the award for Worst Director with Steward Raffill for Mac and Me (a FAR worst film!). But attacking one of the funniest satires of the 1970's, the attitudes of New Hollywood, and his own life and career? I call bull.


5. No Love for Electronica (1981, 1982, 1985)

The Worst Musical Score category fell be the wayside in 1985, after six years of largely unfair attacks at scores that often used synthesizers and created moody landscapes. I may let Giorgio Moroder's score for the re-edit version of Metropolis to continue be laughed at but certainly not Tangerine Dream for Thief, Vince DiCola for Rocky IV (which "won" in 1985), and most especially John Carpenter for The Thing.


4. The Blair Witch Project: Worst Actress (Heather Donahue) (1999)

A way too, too easy target for the Razzies, Heather Donahue's widely parodied performance as a lost and scared documentarian is and forever shall be one of the most famous in film's history. It helped usher the film and the found footage horror genre into serious discussion. Looking back at her fellow contenders that year, it seemed the Razzies had to bite the bullet, as the other nominees weren't truly memorable in their badness.


3. Attacking the Action Heroes (1993)

Cliffhanger and Last Action Hero. One is a rip-roaring action film set in the mountains while the others mocks Hollywood conventions literally inside a Hollywood world. Of the two, I still truly enjoy Cliffhanger far more though Hero has more depth in the thinking department. Even after reading all about the production problems, I still think the Schwarzenegger vehicle is fun to a degree. However, the Razzies always have to mock Stallone and Schwarzenegger whenever they can, giving them multiple nominations for these films. I could argue against John Lithgow and Janine Turner getting bad notices or the attacks at their scripts but the very real problem lies in the Worst Picture category. These two action films were given slots, only to most likely lose to one of three sexual thrillers that year (Sliver, Body of Evidence, and the "winner" Indecent Proposal), over much, much more deserving fare: Cop and a Half, Son of the Pink Panther, the failed remake of Born Yesterday, and most especially, one of my most hated films of all time and winner of Worst Director, Boxing Helena.


2. The Shining: Worst Director and Worst Actress (Shelly Duvall) (1980)

I don't have to describe why these two nominations for one of the most perennial horror films is sheer stupid. Just watch the film. I will mention that these came from the very first "ceremony" of the Razzies, when the committee was just John Wilson and a pile of his friends and their show was at his tiny living room alcove in Hollywood.


1. Razzies Go Political (2004, 2011)

For the 2004 awards, the Razzies nearly destroyed everything they ever accomplished, all to seek publicity in a tumultuous time in American history. For the first and last time, a film that was largely deemed top quality, successful with critics and audiences and even the winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, had multiple nominations. The film was Fahrenheit 9/11, the latest documentary from political provocateur Michael Moore. Just to spite the Bush administration, the Razzie committee had the film nominated for Worst Actor (George W. Bush), Worst Supporting Actor (Donald Rumsfeld), Worst Supporting Actress (Britney Spears and Condoleezza Rice), and Worst Screen Couple. Bush, Rumsfeld, and Spears would later win. There was much outcry for all of this, mostly accurate. The fact that a high caliber documentary, regardless of your political attitudes, would get nominate for anything ruins the whole motive of the awards; bringing reality and personal/national pain into something specifically designed to lampoon narrative drivel and egocentric individuals is a giant culture clash. Then, there's the fact that these political targets won their "awards". What is particularly distressing, and shows how shallow they could get, is that the Razzies wanted to dig at Britney Spears one more time so her extremely brief (i.e. a soundbite) appearance in the doc warranted an award. The Razzies quickly learned their lesson, going back to true blue movies in their nominations. All until the 2011 awards, where Sarah Palin was nominated for the documentary The Undefeated, despite the fact she doesn't appear in it (only in voice-over and clips) and had no part in the beyond terrible propaganda piece (her voice-over came from her audio-book readings of "Going Rogue", which the producers got the rights to). Mocking the idiots on all sides of Washington and cable television is one thing; mixing it with Bill Cosby riding an ostrich, Pia Zadora vanity movies, and the horribleness of Eddie Murphy is another thing.