Worst TV Movies of All Time

Riding the Bus with My Sister

This is a great idea. I will probably watch most of the ones listed. Thanks in advance for the suggestions.

OMG, OP... watching Lucy eat a raw egg! You have my vote for that being the worst TV movie of all time! Puh!

Madonna: Innocence Lost starring some poor forgotten Madonna Wannabe named Terumi Matthees

Does Netflix count?

Not sure if its the worst but I recently watched Scream Pretty Peggy. Bette Davis has a supporting role but doesn't get to do anything challenging except wear a bad wig and had yellow teeth, looking like Baby Jane in color. It stars the cross-eyed Ted Bessell and the underwhelming Sian Barbara Allen as Peggy. With Tovah Feldshuh in an unbilled part with no lines.

Winnie. Any movie where an actor portrayed someone “special” was usually groan-worthy.

This was terrible

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

You know it was a bad TV movie when Mary Katherine Gallagher would draw her dramatic monologues which she could best express herself from, in this case The Long Island Lolita: The Amy Fisher Story, based on not one, not two, but three made for TV movies.

Scream Pretty Peggy looks dreadful.

I was scandalized, SCANDALIZED, I tell you to watch the Dark Secret of Harvest Home at such a young age to find out they were taking the most strapping, virile, handsome man in the village and and fucking and then killing him! All under the eyes of Bette Davis!

That trailer for Scream Pretty Peggy is misleading because Bette plays a supporting role.

Those shitty TV movies about Meghan and her ginger lapdog

Most TV movies that try to depict intellectually disabled people in a sensitive, realistic way belong on this list.

Remember “Like Normal People”?

BILL starring Mickey Rooney

9.5, the movie about a huge earthquake that devastates the west coast.

From 1972 - Gargoyles

Anything with Tori Spelling.

I saw a bemusing one where a Parisian madam (Jacqueline Bisset) took a harried journalist (Linda Hamilton) under her wing and taught her to secrets of the brothel in order to land a new man.

The Weekend Nun

"This movie is based on the true life story of a nun who goes to work as a probation officer. The story follows Sister Damian to her day job as probation officer Marjorie Walker. The naive nun is exposed to the seedy side of life, dealing with drug addicts and a suicidal teen prostitute, Audree. The show focuses on the conflict Sister Damian Marjorie has between her vows and her need to do the social work she feels is her calling."

The stupid cow movie thing

The 'Downtown Abbey' movie...oh wait, that followed in the footsteps of other money-grabbing movies based on free TV shows.

Stone Pilllow would have worked better if Lucille Ball played her character as if she were a homeless Lucy Ricardo / Lucy Carmichael / Lucy Carter. Approaching strange men on the street - "Ricky! RICKY! RICKEEEEEEEE! Don't you remember me? Your wife? RICKY!!!!".

THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION (1975) was part of the onslaught of ‘70s movies featuring ants, spiders, bees, snakes, etc. It starred Barbara Hale (Perry Mason) and Alan Hale Jr. (Gillgan’s Island).

I remember Harvest Home and thought it was pretty damn good

I guess mine wasn’t for TV, but for movie theatres. My mistake.

Luck of the Irish (2001). A Disney Channel movie about leprechauns and extremely lazy stereotypes about Irish people. Even for a Disney Channel Original Movie, this was a massive piece of shit.

Stone Pillow was far from the worst tv movie of all time. Compared to some others, especially 99% of the Hallmark Countdown to Christmas movies, Stone Pillow looks like Citizen Kane.

Run for the hills! It’s HERPES!!

I'll just leave this here...

Can you fucking pro/anti Meghan assholes just leave one thread alone. Christ!

I can't find it in his filmography, but I once saw an early Richard Dreyfuss TV movie where he played a mentally retarded young man who was actually just faking it. It was kind of excruciating to watch. Anyone know what that was?

The Ghost of Flight 401.

Ernest Borgnine!!

Based on True Events!!!

Big fan...but we all make mistakes. Yikes! (BTW I didn't know Opal Gardner directed it)

Cloris gets VD!!!

R35, Dorothy Lyman is in it, but someone named Oz Scott directed it.

This Judy biopic, unbelievably directed by Jackie Cooper, should have been titled Somewhere Under the Dumpster. A mostly good cast sunk by the wooden acting and forceful bleating of Miss Andrea McArdle, poor thing. The writing isn't so hot, either. A mess.

I want to know more about the Richard Dreyfuss pseudo Corky role!

It looks like the Richard Dreyfuss movie was called "Untold Damage" (1973). He actually plays twins.

I remember seeing This House Possessed when I was a kid and thinking it was bad, but it was also great. Parker "The Big One" Stevenson as an exhausted (but sexy) rock star, Lisa Eilbacher, so cute in Beverly Hills Cop, as the nurse who's hired to look after him when he moves into a modern, yet spooky house, which turns out to be POSSESSED. Some trampy whore meets a grisly fate in the shower, and what happens to poor Joan Bennett (in a very undignified final role) I wouldn't wish on anyone. Haven't seen it since it first aired but it's on youtube, so maybe I'll watch it!

Mother may I sleep with Danger?

r42, see r19

Ivan Sergei would hardly ever need to stoop so far as to have sex with Tori Spelling.

ALL of the tv movies listed here are still better than ANY episode of Friends

Has anybody ever seen The Cradle Will Fall from 1983. Basically, they took Lauren Hutton and Ben Murphey in a Mary Higgins Clark plot, and put them in Springfield and featured numerous Guiding Light characters. I will say the locations they used for the movie looks better than the ones GL used at the end.

It isn't the worst soap opera type tv-movie, that honor would go to "Murder in Peyton Place."

Worst performance by a leading lady - Vanna White in "Goddess of Love" from 1987.

Every ABC After School Special

R45, are you the one who keeps saying Friends is a rip off of some FOX show with a totally different concept that no one watched?

The teen reboot of Someone I Touched.

Before Kate Jackson and Cheryl attended the police academy to become angels they took this detour...

What was that Melissa Sue Anderson ESP movie?

>>>The 'Downtown Abbey'

Oh, dear!

Mr. Wrong

R53 I'm surprised someone didn't create a mockbuster with that title.

R28, I'm Irish and my family loves Luck of the Irish... A lot of my friends liked it when we were kids too. I think the movie is good for a kids movie.

The Next Best Thing

Neither “Mr Wrong” nor “The Next Best Thing” were TV movies.

So far, the only cringingly bad tv movie that rivals the first two listed, (Stone Pillow and the Rosie Retarded Sister movie) is the Joan/Melissa Rivers tv movie. I had forgotten all about that.

Thank you, poster!

"Killdozer" (1974), a TV movie about a possessed bulldozer that goes around killing people. Played completely straight by a bunch of '70s actors who must have been mortified.

"Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives" each had TV-movie sequels. In the new Stepford, the women were made into domestic zombies after sitting under what looked like an old-fashioned hair dryer.

1971's The Feminist and the Fuzz. Pretty crazy cast includes Barbara Eden, Julie Newmar, Jo Ann Worley, Farrah Fawcett, Penny Marshall, David Hartman and Herb Edelman to name a few. So, so bad.

That awful Jayne Mansfield biopic with Loni Anderson. She looks nothing like her and can't act.

Camp Rock is shit. Maybe not the worst but it's pretty bad.

Daddy 1991

Two acclaimed actresses gone amiss.

What’s Daddy about?

R58 sorry, I broke the rules.

Tori Spelling in “Mother May I sleep with dance?” Sounds a little to close to her real life marriage.

They should just repackage that Tori Spelling movie as “Mother, May I Sleep with Dean McDermott.”

Liz and Dick

R68 I meant sleep with Danger

Nothing like a 40 year old - playing herself - at 16!

I would think any movie titled Daddy and starring Patrick Duffy would be something COMPLETELY different - and not suitable for general audiences on network television.

Get out your pearls and smelling salts, DL…but “A Very Brady Christmas” OWNS this thread!

SPOILER ALERT: Mike Brady gets stuck in collapsing building. Everyone starts singing Christmas carols…he suddenly emerges covered in a little dust! A Christmas miracle! When this first aired on TV, one critic wrote that the movie “redefines the bottom of the barrel.” That line stuck with me all these years. Didn’t matter, the ratings were phenomenal.

And of course I watch it every freaking year. Go figure.

Surprisingly they didn’t spin it out into another movie the year after called A Very Brady Chanukah, where Cindy brings home a Jewish boyfriend and they learn about the eight nights and the miracle of the lights.

Has anyone seen the new Discovery+ original Christmas movie "A Candy-Coated Christmas"? It features that well-know dramatic actress, Ree Drummond!

I smell EMMY!

R74 It's not the worst, because it does exactly what one would expect from a Brady Bunch reunion tv-movie. It knows what it was and it delivered what it promised.

R52, Midnight Offerings, and it's on youtube! She's such a bitch in that.

Babes in Toyland, 1986, a travesty of the original Victor Herbert operetta, with a drug addled 11 year old Drew Barrymore and an imbecilic Keanu Reeves.

^ Stick with the Laurel & Hardy version, March of the Wooden Soldiers.

There Must Be a Pony with Liz, RJ Wag, and that Lowe dude - the little one.

R74 how dare you. You don’t enjoy me being all coked out on that TV movie?

There Must be a Pony got hype because Liz appeared after having lost the weight she had gained in her marriage to John Warner. The plot is very odd because RJ plays a man who is seemingly more interested in Liz's son that her. There is also a memorable scene where Liz espouses the wonder of films and James Coco has a line along the lines of "Somebody open a window?!" as if she has been farting.

Invisble Child 1999- A British nanny takes a job for an upper middle class couple played by Rita Wilson and Victor Garber. Rita's character is mentally ill and believes she has an invisible child. The nanny is basically taught by Victor and the couple's oldest child played by Mae Whitman on how to go along with the invisible child crap.

The Langoliers, a good cast wasted in a Stephen King story. Bronson Pinchot gives an unhinged, scenery-devouring performance.

Yeah, that was bad, R85. Despite such acting talent as David Morse, Patricia Wettig and Dean Stockwell, it sucked. The special effects weren’t very good either.

I don't know if Harriet Nelson had a weird thing about car crashes or what, but after Ozzie's death she appeared in both "Smash-Up on Interstate 5" and "Death Car on the Freeway" both were basically all-star disaster films about car crashes. I though Smash-Up was the better film. Harriet and Buddy Ebsen's story was the only one I cared about though.

My Breast

starring Meredith Baxter Birney

Smell My Cunt

[quote] Most TV movies that try to depict intellectually disabled people in a sensitive, realistic way belong on this list.

[quote] Remember “Like Normal People”?

I remember that one and the previously mentioned Winnie. That trend seemed to go into the late 90s or early 2000s. There was a movie called About Sarah where Mary Steenburgen played an developmentally disabled woman. That wasn't as cringe worthy as other TV movies like Winnie or Like Normal People.

The most disturbing TV-movie I remember watching was "Our Guys: Outrage at Glenn Ridge" the sight of that disabled girl getting gang raped and to then be treated like she was by everyone else. it actually gave me nightmares for a few weeks.

The first three that came to mind were mentioned within the first 15 posts. I love that!

I will have a triple feature ready for this winter's first snow day: Like Normal People, Winnie, and Riding the Bus With My Sister.

This was pretty bad

R93 I disagree. I loved Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Anyone else?

The Karen Carpenter Story (1989)

The TV movie where Deidre Hall played herself about her fertility struggles and later turning to surrogacy to have kids.

Didn’t that It’s a Living actress play herself in a movie about breast cancer?

Another one to file under the "never go full re--rd" pile. Kelly Mcgillis marries ret...I mean Treat Williams..."Bonds of love" from 1993

Full movie here

Vh1’s “Man in the Mirror”.

Actually R93 The Boy in the Plastic Bubble was a ratings hit and featured young, exploding star Travolta in a continuous display of short shorts, tank tops, tight T shirts and various states of undress.

The Rape of Richard Beck

The Ivory Ape

The Mysterious Island of Beautiful Women

My Two Loves-Sada Thompson is scandalized when Lynn Redgrave moves in on recently widowed daughter in law Mariette Hartley.

Consenting Adult-Martin Sheen dies of a heart attack, mowing the lawn at midnight because his son is gay.

Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby

The Stepford Children

Fallen Angel-Richard Masur as a child pornographer.

Obsessed With A Married Woman

Baby Cakes-Rikki Lake is a mortician locked in combat with a snotty skinny bitch for the love of some dweeb during the winter holidays in New York City.

Born Innocent-Linda Blair being gand raped in the shower by by her fellow prison inmates with the hard end of a mop was the talk of the playground the following day.

There was some movie where Sissy Spacek became a radicalized terrorist and at the end she blew herself up and all that remained of her was a tooth. I remember Art Carney played her Dad.

The 1991 remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Despite the great idea of casting the talented real life Redgrave sisters, it somehow missed all the beats.

There was one from the 70s that had mental patient Martin Sheen escape from the loony bin and kidnap Linda Blair...she ends up falling for him and sleeping with him....kind of a guilty pleasure of mine..its really not bad except for the Stockholm Syndrome thing .

Well I rename

Mr. Wrong Nell The Next Best Thing Saving Private Ryan

Mr. Wrong

Nell

The Next Best Thing

Saving Private Ryan

R108, R109...you already said that. Plus we're talking about worst TV-MOVIES, not theatrical.

R47 WINS. Truly, THE worst tv movie of all time. Vanna White can't register any human emotion. Dumb as a piece of _ _ it.

[quote] Remember “Like Normal People”?

How could anyone forget it? The next day, everyone ran around the playground at recess shouting, "WOGER, I WANNA HAVE A BAY-BEE!"

From "Someone I Touched"--the most hilarious reaction.

R110 shit, I did it again.

I love bad TV movies

Devil’s Food where Suzanne Somers is trying to lose weight and she makes a deal with the devil to lose it.

R19 Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?

That film that starred M. doing blackface made by Steven Soderbergh for Netflix.

Why hasn't she been cancelled?

r111 But what a WRITER!

The Yarn Princess-Jean Smart plays a mentally challenged woman married to guy with mental illness. She has to fight for custody of her kids when two of them are sent to foster care.

Can You Feel Me Dancing-Justine Bateman plays a blind teenager who lives home with to live with her boyfriend and enter a dance contest. Jason Bateman was also in the movie as the main character's brother who resents his sister.

Obsessed-Cheesy campfest movie where Shannen Doherty plays a 20 something who starts dating a much older guy played by William Devane.

Visitors of the Night-Markie Post and Candace Cameron play a mother and daughter who abducted by aliens.

What was that Jane Fonda movie about doll making during the Depression all about?

The Intruder Within, 1981. Shameless rip off of Alien set on an oil drilling platform; the twist here is the alien morphs and rapes a female worker on the oil rig. I saw this before I saw Alien and felt queasy. Then when I later saw the real Alien I knew why.

SMUDGE owns this thread!

[quote]R121 What was that Jane Fonda movie about doll making during the Depression all about?

That movie’s fine. Fonda plays some dust bowl housewife during the Great Depression (?) who has to keep her family together. She eventually makes some money off whittling dolls and toys out of wood, one of her only marketable skills.

Prior to filming, Fonda went on tour with Dolly Parton and was introduced to real country people along the way - even living with them and learning to split logs for firewood, etc. She’s very good in the role… as she is in just about everything.

Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, Linda Blair as a big lush with a young Mark Hamill.

Second Serve - Vanessa Redgrave plays a man who's really a woman, watch the transitioning fun and bad hair pieces.

And it's cousin R125, "Alexander, the Other Side of Dawn", starring DL fave Leigh J McCloskey, and in her last role, Jean (Singin' in the Rain) Hagen.

Anyone remember this TV movie from the 80s where the wife is married to an abusive husband?

I mainly recall a scene where they are painting the living room or something and she is on a ladder.

Anyways there is a tarantula or other large spider on the ceiling and she starts screaming and freaking out as nd his only reaction is to grab a camera and start taking pictures while laughing maniacally.

Does this ring any bells? I'd love to see it again.

Lina Lamont and McCloskey in action at 11 minutes in...

What was that movie where strung out on LSD Helen Hunt jumps out the second story window, glass and all, and then jumps up and runs off screaming?

Death Car On The Freeway with DL fave Shelley Hack.

"Money on the Side" from 1982. Jamie Lee Curtis, Linda Purl, and Karen Valentine play financially strapped housewives who have to turn tricks in Ramada Inns in order to make ends meet.

…as one does….

[quote]R132 Jamie Lee Curtis, Linda Purl, and Karen Valentine … have to turn tricks in Ramada Inns in order to make ends meet.

At least Jamie Lee could charge more - as she has a penis.

What about the side splitting comedy “It Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Guy” (1974)

[quote] Harry Walters, a stout real estate salesman who is randomly picked up by a beautiful woman, Wanda Olivia Wellman, then raped at gunpoint as a prank. He is later dropped off naked in a small town and left to explain to his wife, friends, and the police how he was both kidnapped and raped by a woman.

[130], Angel Dusted.

Based on a true story? I want to find out if the son ended up a druggie.

"Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life," about a teenage boy who becomes addicted to [bold]looking[/bold] at pr0n on his computer BUT NEVER EVER FAPS TO IT.

Anything made by this queen.

All three Gilligan's Island movies are pretty terrible.

R136 Nipe, according to Wikipedia it’s Desperate Lives, which I remember as a weird Southern movie with that shirt Gay man?

Well obviously my “o” isn’t working, that’s “Nope” and “ short.”

And here is future Academy Award Winner Helen Hunt in her most dramatic moment.

[quote]r140 All three Gilligan's Island movies are pretty terrible.

Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) was a Ginger Grant finalist for one of those.

I was looking up Judith Baldwin (who was one of the replacement Gingers) and was shocked to read she’s a member of the Actors Studio (!)

R1- You win. That movie was even worse than ANY episode of Friends.

R116- Did she use the THIGHMASTER in that movie?

R124 I thought it was good, as well. I'm glad to read she used her Dolly connections to craft a respectful performance. It was a film I remember them showing us in school when we studied the Great Depression.

I rewatched the Queen of Mean because of this thread. I love this 1, it is not bad at all.

The Queen of Mean is a fabulous campfest. Great job by Suzanne Pleshette.

I didn't realize A Vacation in Hell is a direct ripoff of Deliverance when I first saw it, but I loved it!

R149- It's definitely a movie I can watch over and over- I'm SO gay.

R150 As someone who attended the University of South Carolina, where James Dickey largely wrote Deliverance, I cannot in good conscience watch a rip-off. We are very proud of the fact that he served us for many years as a Professor of Literature and as our writer-in-residence.

Pleshette is fabulous, and WAY too beautiful to play Leona.

Its worth slumming for, r152. Very entertaining.

R150 Omg I remember watching that with my brother a million years ago late at night. We still sing "Fire FIRE, Fire FIRE, AND WE HAVE NO WATER, we have no water" from time to time.

There was a TV movie where Victoria Principal played a blind woman whose husband was murdered and the killers stalk her. I can't remember the name, but it was so campy.

Victoria Principal also played a dumped mistress who has to land a new sugar daddy. It wasn’t necessarily bad, tho.

R157 I now think that I understand why all of a sudden my mother hated Victoria Principal. She always hated the other woman.

R157, That whore Victoria couldn't even grieve properly when her lover/meal ticket has his sudden, unfortunate heart attack! She really hit the skids before landing the next schmuck, Alan Rachins. And she was cold-hearted about it and made it all business!

The unmitigated [italic]harlotry.

The Karen carpenter story was produced by Richard and was a sanitized certified their story. I think the script had to be revised multiple times in order to placate Agnes carpenter and not make her look like the massive cunt she was.

[quote]There was a TV movie where Victoria Principal played a blind woman whose husband was murdered and the killers stalk her. I can't remember the name, but it was so campy.

That sounds like a blatant rip-off of Wait Until Dark.

Should we really exclude regular movies that we saw on tv ?

Yes. These are MADE FOR TV MOVIES. Very different from full on studio films.

I think Valerie Harper was menaced on a deserted highway for 2 hours in some TV movie, as she searched frantically for a telephone.

R165, I believe you are referring to the masterpiece known as "Night Drive", sometimes known as "Night Terror".

Otherwise known to Val as a vehicle for "cleaning up some back taxes and taking care of my divorce from Dick."

Those Stepford Wives sequels…all of them made for television…all of them shit.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

I remember watching the Valerie Harper movie when it originally aired. It was actually very good. Scary.

R126 - Cancel Vanessa Redgrave now!

The ending of Something About Amelia where Ted Danson’s only punishment for molesting his daughter is going to counseling

R161 - no matter how much that story was sanitized by Agnes, she still comes across as a horrible and controlling person.

Second Serve is remarkable in that once you see Vanessa Redgrave as a man you can't unsee him when she transitions into a woman that she really is.

The overwhelming majority of Lifetime telemovies. Very few of them are anything remotely resembling quality programming. For a network that makes a big deal out of making television for women, most of the 💩 they make is all about women as victims or scorned psychopaths. Shoddy, cheap shit.

This load of shite.

^NOT a TV movie

She Lives, a really maudlin movie starring Desi Arnaz Jr & Season Hubley

For the Love of Nancy-Tracey Gold plays an anorexic college student who is taken to court by her parents in order to save her life by obtaining medical guardianship. William Devane and Jill Clayburgh played her parents. Cameron Bancroft and Mark-Paul Gosselaar played her brothers. The movie came out a few years after Tracey's anorexia battle and there was a lot of press. But, the movie wasn't all that great.

I always liked Season Hubley ! Vice Squad is one of my favorite B movies .

Why are there no stories about Asians???? Did we not exist on TV???

R178 Probably because The Best Little Girl in the World stole its thunder. Jodie Foster was to star in it, but after that Presidential shooting incident she obviously ate too comfort food in the Yale cafeteria.(Who could blame her?) Instead Jennifer Jason Leigh shed even more pounds off her slight frame to star in the first big Anorexia TV movie by which all others were measured by. Charles Durning and Eva Marie Saint played the parents and Ally Sheedy had billing as “First Girl.” Aaron Spelling produced.

DL fave and national treasure Jean Smart stars in "Change of Heart". She comes home to find her husband in bed with....a twink! They can no longer live a lie. But at least the soon to be divorced closet case is a doctor, so Jean's character gets a pretty hefty settlement, so there's that.

"The best little girl in the world" deserves props considering it was the first film, tv or otherwise, to talk about anorexia, 2 years before Karen Carpenter died.

[quote]R183 “The best little girl in the world" deserves props considering it was the first film, tv or otherwise, to talk about anorexia, 2 years before Karen Carpenter died.

The obscure actress Lisa Pelikan (who was the young Vanessa Redgrave in JULIA) plays the sister in that.

She married Bruce Davison, of “Longtime Companion” and “X Men”.

^^ i mean in real life, not in that TV movie

OPI'll see your Stone Pillow and raise you After Diff'rent Strokes: When the Laughter Stopped.

The film (and I use that term loosely) is a little more than an hour long.

You have a voiceover of Dana Plato speaking from the grave. You have the actor playing Gary Coleman wearing prosthetic lips.

And save the best for last, in the film Todd Bridges buys drugs from a drug dealer who is.... Actually played by Todd Bridges.

The film is written and directed by Matthew Bright, who gave us a foul mouth Reese Witherspoon in FREEWAY.

Pure Fucking Gold.

R187 I need to see this dumpster fire.

How about the 80s one where Gary Coleman played an arsonist?

R187 I believe its on youtube, at least part of it.

[quote]Why are there no stories about Asians???? Did we not exist on TV???

The only TV movie that comes to mind is one from the mid-'70s called Farewell to Manzanar, about the internment of Japanese Americans during and after WWII.

I found a Pat Morita tv movie from 1990 "Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes."

[quote]R191 Farewell to Manzanar, about the internment of Japanese Americans during and after WWII.

When I was reading this in junior high, the back cover said something like, “We’d dance to anything the camp band played at night… except ‘Don’t Fence Me In’.”

Da da da dum!! I thought, Wow, That’s Dramatic!

But then when you got to that actual part of the text inside, it read, “We’d dance to anything the camp band played at night,[bold] including[/bold] ‘Don’t Fence Me In’.”

I was horrified… they’d made a mistake! Or LIED!! I thought either possibility was [italic]despicable.

[quote] Why are there no stories about Asians????

The best we can do is take this little break for [big screen] cultural appropriation of the Japanese.

Pretty song:

Murder of Innocence. Valerie Bertinelli stars in a hilariously bad tv movie based on a non-hilarious true story.

Surely there must be some bad TV movies about split personalities?

(waiting)

R195 That movie creeped the FUCK out of me when I saw it as a teen. I give props to VB for playing very against type but damn, that was a dark af t.v movie.

The Birds II: Land's End. A piece of pigeon poo.

The Couple Takes a Wife w Bill Bixby

Coffee, Tea or Me? w Karen Valentine

Linda w Stella Stevens

[quote]R198 Linda w/ Stella Stevens

How dare you?! I thought that movie was fascinating when I was 12!

What was the name of the TV movie where John Ritter's character ends up in a wheelchair and Carrie Fisher played his love interest? It was awful.

Not movies but miniseries. The last 1990s entries to both The Thorn Birds and North & South were pale imitators of their glorious 1980s versions.

Didn’t Desi Arnaz Jr. do some sappy one that was kind of like “Love Story”?

That POS telefilm bio on Whitney Houston. Directed by Angela Bassett. I was expecting too much. Huge letdown. The film was unfocused and poorly acted.

The Violation of Sarah McDavid

I remember watching this as a kid seeing Patty Duke as a teacher brutally raped by a student in her classroom. And this was a TV movie!. Wtf?

Of course I want everybody to experience this. Enjoy!

The finale "North and South" was unnecessary and should have been rewritten with a tacked on conclusion to be one of the two remaining character's nightmare. How many times can this villain die and n How many body parts can he lose?

R202 - that's the one I mentioned at R177.

Thank you : )

[quote] DL fave and national treasure Jean Smart stars in "Change of Heart". She comes home to find her husband in bed with....a twink! They can no longer live a lie. But at least the soon to be divorced closet case is a doctor, so Jean's character gets a pretty hefty settlement, so there's that.

I remember this movie. I vaguely recall a similar TV movie in the 80s about a teenager who finds out that his widowed or divorced dad was gay.

[quote]Surely there must be some bad TV movies about split personalities?

In [italic]The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver[italic] (1977), starring cross-eyed DL icon Miss Karen Black, a mousy housewife is intermittently overtaken by the spirit of a slut. She changes wigs and everything.

[/italic]

Santa Who? -- in which Santa (Leslie Nielsen) gets amnesia -- makes the average Hallmark Christmas film seem like Shakespeare.

Daddy at r64 was one of those Danielle Steel TV movies. I remember watching some of them with my grandmother back in the day. I don't remember much about it, but I do seem to remember it was fairly decent as those went, and certainly wasn't among the worst of them. Reading the summary, it at least has a lot of camp value today. Patrick Duffy's wife (Kate Mulgrew!) leaves him to take a job in another state. His teenage son (young Ben Affleck!) gets a girl pregnant and has to marry her, then she leaves him and he ends up in a custody battle for his son. Patrick Duffy finds new love with Lynda Carter (!), but when she gets an acting job on Broadway, he thinks she's just another woman leaving him for her career so he breaks up with her. But he realizes the error of his ways and they wind up together!

The one I'd be kind of interested to see is Family Album (I think?) with Jaclyn Smith (!) as a famous actress and matriarch of a big family. One of the sons was gay (Joe Flanigan--whatever happened to him?) and I'd be curious to see how the handling of his subplot (father disowned him, but eventually came around--after his only other son died; he had two love interests over the course of the story) would look today.

[quote] That movie’s fine. Fonda plays some dust bowl housewife during the Great Depression (?) who has to keep her family together. She eventually makes some money off whittling dolls and toys out of wood, one of her only marketable skills.

The movie was "The Dollmaker." And the movie was not "fine." Jane Fonda was woefully miscast as Gertie Nevels, a rough hewn, raw boned Kentucky woman who had known hard work all of her life. Although she was made up to look disheveled (and padded to look bigger) she still looked unlike a woman of that type, what with her pretty, dainty features. I didn't buy her corn pone accent, either. Fonda was overpraised for her performance. I guess there are a lot of critics who, like you, think Jane Fonda can do no wrong.

Bad Ronald

Wow, whoever recommended "Second Serve," I just skimmed through that video to see Vanessa Redgrave as a man, and she kind of pulls it off (I watched a scene with her in her psychiatrist's office). She looked like Laurence Harvey.

There are too many bad tv movies to list. HUNDREDS of them are terrible.

[quote]The ending of Something About Amelia where Ted Danson’s only punishment for molesting his daughter is going to counseling

Well, that and having to work with Shelley Long.

Speaking of awful Desi Jr. movies ...

R126, Vanessa was amazing in that movie, almost astoundingly believable as a man. The critics raved at the time.

[quote] The one I'd be kind of interested to see is Family Album (I think?) with Jaclyn Smith (!) as a famous actress and matriarch of a big family. One of the sons was gay (Joe Flanigan--whatever happened to him?) and I'd be curious to see how the handling of his subplot (father disowned him, but eventually came around--after his only other son died; he had two love interests over the course of the story) would look today.

I remember that one it was a two part miniseries. It wasn't that bad. The gay son subplot was ok. But, I couldn't stand the subplots about the two daughters. One wanted to be an actress and the other ran away and got pregnant and then got pregnant again by a much older guy.

I also remember Kaleidoscope which was another Danielle Steel adaptation that I thought was an ok TV movie. Jaclyn Smith starred in that one. It was basically about how her character was separated from her sisters after their father killed their mother when they were children and how a PI tracked her character to reunite with her sisters who were adopted by other families. Of course, like Danielle Steel novels and adaptations secrets were revealed about what led up to the dad killing the mom.

"Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones-

Jo from Facts of Life as a schizophrenic daughter to Valerie Harper. She goes off to college then starts hearing voices. The creepy score was unsettling.

I think we need a companion thread on good TV movies.

Agree with r70, Liz and Dick was terrrrrribbbbbble

R223 God, it seems everything Dunaway did after Mommie Dearest is tinged with Crawford!

Curse of the Black Widow. A private eye (Tony Franciosa) links two cursed sisters (Donna Mills, Patty Duke Astin) to murder victims covered with spider webs. Patty Duke writes amusingly about this movie in her later book.

[quote]Jaclyn Smith (!) as a famous actress and matriarch of a big family

Smith as an actress?teehee

1972 Madam Sin with Bette Davis A more miss than hit Bond film.

The one where Jennifer Love Hewitt played Audrey Hepburn

That "Dark Secret of Harvest Home" was based on "Harvest Home" , the novel by Thomas Tyron. His books tend to be interesting (his others included "The Other" and "Crowned Heads"). His books tend to be interesting reads but preposterous. "The Dark Secret of Harvest Home" is a prime example of that. It's entertaining but ridiculous.

R230 Is his The Other what that Nicole Kidman film was based upon?

There was one where Jaclyn Smith played Florence Nightingale - lol!

I don’t consider a TV movie bad if it holds my interest or entertains me.

I’m sure it’s considered a bad movie, but I thought this was fun as hell when I watched it at 12 years old!

r231, No, the Nicole Kidman fim was The Others, plural, and was completely different. Tryon's book The Other was made into a movie in 1971 under that title.

or 1972...

"The Other" deserves a remake. The first one featured a good performance by twin boys but was greatly flawed (there was an unbelievably stupid plot change). It could be a really good remake with the right director and screenplay.

[italic]The Savage Bees[/italic] (1976), starring Miss Gloria Swanson

HELL HATH NO FURY…Barbara Eden and Loretta Swit. Kim Zimmer in a supporting role as Barbara’s understanding bff…made me realize what a rotten actress Eden is.

a bad tv movie cheers me up.

I have a soft spot for anything starring ABC soap stars of the 80s, so HAUNTED BY HER PAST featuring not just Susan Lucci but also Finola Hughes is spectacularly enjoyable in its crap.

Lucci plays a mousy librarian type, married to the magnificently coiffed John James. They go on vacation and stay in a colonial-era inn, which houses a mirror haunted by Hughes, who’s wearing a bar wench dress.

Most of Lucci’s tv-movie oeuvre is pure shit as well, including THE BRIDE IN BLACK (again with Hughes), DOUBLE EDGE, and EBBIE.

Cage Without a Key starring DL fave Susan Dey and should-be DL fave Jonelle Allen. Also, that bitch from 8 is enough is in it, I think Lani O'Grady. Lots of lesbianism. The LA times said that not since Mamie Van Doren got sent to the slammer has there been such a distorted view of juvenile hall.

Thanks to the poster way upthread, I watched "Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones" yesterday and today. I was curious because over the years when I would go thrifting, I found countless copies of that book in the thrift stores. Always wondered what it was about.

The two leading performances, by Desi Jr and Christopher Norris, were OK. They had their moments, but they weren't especially good. The two sets of parents, including Dina Merrill and Tom Bosley, were pretty good. Overall, it was an interesting bit of time travel back to the early '70s (though the movie was set in 1956, they didn't do a very good job of portraying that era).

Reba did a few tv movies in the 1990s. She was great in The Gambler Returns, and the one she did about the real life story of a woman in the coma who wakes up to discover everyone basically wished she was still in the coma was too bonkers to be truly bad (Forever Love). Is There Life Out there was pretty solid and basically just fleshed out the song and existing music video. The Secret of Giving is still something I occasionally watch at Christmas time, and very much feels like a Dr. Quinn or Little House episode.

But, the one she did with the biggest co-star was the worst, in my opinion. The Man From Left Field starred and was directed by Burt Reynolds, and produced by his production company and filmed in the town he lived in, in Florida. Reba is fine in the film, the problems were a script that was uneven and meandering and Burt Reynolds failing as a director and star. He just seems tired during the whole thing. It was like they took Reba and a bunch of little kids and gave them a black hole as a costar. There was none of the trademark Burt Reynolds charm and charisma in that film. It was the year before his divorce from Loni so maybe that is the reason.

[quote]R242 I watched "Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones" yesterday and today… The two leading performances, by Desi Jr and Christopher Norris, were OK.

I didn’t know it was about gay marriage.

"Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night" from 1977, portrays Susan Dey as a bitchy, drunken, totally abusive single mother. She's out of control! Poor Mary Jane.

R18 I LOVED Gargoyles.

R245 So, it was typecasting?

R246 Gargoyles has Grayson Hall, never seen without a drink in her hand. That makes it a classic to me.

I want to watch ask these movies! I'm especially partial to the woman in peril ones.

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but Horror at 37,000 Feet is hideous. I wanted to throw both Tammy Grimes and the little British girl into the fire to satisfy the demonic creature on the plane.

Not sure this counts, either in genre or quality, but Square Dance (1987) was broadcast on tv in 1988 under the title Home Is Where the Heart Is. It takes place in Texas. Rob Lowe convincingly plays a special person ("Pork chops! Mah favorite!") with whom Winona Ryder strikes up a tender relationship. Jane Alexander and Jason Robards costar. So the acting is pretty good, in line with its big-screen origins; but the camp potential is also high.

I couldn’t stand Tammy Grimes. After seeing a clip of her awful sitcom on YouTube, who thought that she should have been on television? I guess most of her success was on the stage?

"Gargoyles" was not one of the fucking "worst." It was actually pretty good for what it was, a tv horror movie. And it won an Emmy for it's effective gargoyle make up.

There was a Jaclyn Smith holiday TV movie about how she and her kids help Santa Claus out...it was pretty bad, no thanks to Jaclyn's lack of acting skills.

"Mother May I Sleep With Matt Gaetz?"

1974 TV movie...

The Elevator

James Farentino, Roddy McDowall, Craig Stevens, Carol Lynley , Teresa Wright, and Myrna Loy trapped in a...

you guessed it...an overly long TV movie that is worse than actually as bad as you might imagine

Myrna Loy, "I survived all these years in the business for this?"

[quote]Lots of talk about Lucille Ball of late made me think of my choice for worst TV Movie I've ever seen:

[quote]STONE PILLOW

In fairness to Lucy, if Mr. Mooney hadn't keep appearing and saying, "Young lady, would you move your shopping cart down the street,"...

It wouldn't have been so annoying

I liked "Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night." It was actually quite shocking, an unsettling depiction of mental illness and child abuse. And it allowed Susan Dey to break out of Laurie Partridge mode and do some acting for a change. She played Rowena Harper, a beautiful young woman who comes from a well off family. Her father molested her as a child. Her mother hates her. She has a brief marriage with a detestable jerk (she still carries a torch for him) who doesn't give a damn about her or their child. Although she's well taken care of financially (her Daddy pays her bills; she even has a maid) she's friendless and alone, and she takes all her pent-up emotions out on her little daughter, breaking her bones, burning her with cigarettes and leaving her alone without a babysitter (the child almost burns to death when the apartment catches fire from a lit cigarette catching the curtains). I thought Dey conducted herself well in this. And the battered little girl was played by Natasha Ryan, who also played another tortured child in the tv movie "Sybil." Boy, I wonder how SHE turned out as an adult after being in THOSE movies.

Madame Sin was great fun! Thank you for the recommendation up thread.

R249 the “women in peril” TV movie I remember was “Five Desperate Women” starring Stephanie Powers, Joan Hackett, Denise Nicholas, Julie Sommars and Anjanette Comer! Maybe on Youtube

It was bad, but I enjoyed it. A TV movie where a man got mugged and knocked out in the bathroom of a big department store and when they locked up at night guard dogs policed the store. He awakes and spends the night fighting to survive the vicious dogs who terrorize and try to kill him.

[quote]"Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night" from 1977, portrays Susan Dey as a bitchy, drunken, totally abusive single mother. She's out of control! Poor Mary Jane.

Neither Miss Dey nor Mary Jane Harper will dignify your unfounded allegations with a response.

Hostage (1988), starring Carol Burnett and Carrie Hamilton is unbearable.

Unbearable sounds great :)

Ice Quake (2010). SyFy. Poor Victor Garber.

Any TV movie with Stefanie Powers in it. She’s a lousy actress.

There’s twenty minutes left I’m trying to force myself to watch, but Jingle All the Way, a gay Christmas romcom on Netflix is pulling ahead.

Killdozer!

A small construction crew on an island is terrorized when a spirit-like being takes over a large bulldozer, and goes on a killing rampage.

Robert Urich is killed off in the first 15 minutes.

Deat Car on the Freeway. I’m too lazy to see if it’s been posted already.

R269, anything starring Miss Shelley Hack can’t be all bad.

R268 - unfortunately, Clint Walker doesn't show anything in this movie. Even in 1974, he was still hot!

Any of the TV movies about the Titanic. Always cheesy with wretched special effects. The 1979 one with Clorox Leachman as Molly Brown, the two-parter made in 1996 with Marilu Hefner and Catherine Zeta Jones and the Julian Fellowes 100th anniversary miniseries.

R270 Then you've never seen If Ever I See You Again. It was a theatrical movie, but it's worse than any lifetime movie ever made. A true bomb.

R263 - I remember that. I cheered when Carrie punched mom in the mouth.

A team of scientists discover a secret underwater community within the wreck of an ocean liner that sank during World War II.

R49- No

R275, that’s my first time seeing Emma Samms. It was a terrible movie. Emma was so lovely though. But no way would that scenario be realistic. The ship would have been crushed by ocean pressure.

R270- The good old days Katherine Wentworth is getting her Honda Civic filled up for 63 cents a gallon at a full serve station- The good old days! She looks exactly the same as she did one or two year later when she first appeared on Dallas.

A Short Walk to Daylight was a really frustrating movie about an earthquake that hits NYC.

The story is about a group of people, lead by policeman James Brolin, on a subway as they try to get out.

Just as they reach an exit - you know, when you think everything is going to really kick into gear - the movie comes to an end and we get the closing credits.

We don't know what happens to any of survivors or even get a sense of what NY looks like.

What about us?