5) Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck landed on cinema screens in 1986 all the way from outer space, and really ought to have stayed way up there in the galaxy where he belongs. Widely considered to be one of the worst films ever made, this George Lucas picture used the Marvel comic book character of the same name as inspiration, and went on to create a truly weird, creepy and unfunny live version of the surly bird that had previously tickled Marvel readers with his cynicism in print and pictures.
There’s a probably a funny film to be made about a cigar-chomping duck from a different world, but Howard the Duck gets it all wrong before the opening frame – senselessly utilizing live-action puppets when animation might have worked wonders. A severely underwhelming special effects show from start to finish, the film alienates every potential audience by being too boring for adults, too raunchy for children, and too dumb for anyone in between.
A catastrophic miscalculation of epic proportions, Howard the Duck goes down in history as easily one of the worst comic book adaptations of all-time.
4) Son of the Mask
Jim Carrey might be a little too much for some audiences, but his gonzo-like attitude towards his acting roles comes up trumps more often than not. That was certainly the case with The Mask, a comic book inspired movie that required a lunatic for the lead role and got one – leaving us with a memorable, wacky experience. Son of the Mask required an utter miracle to work and got nothing – leaving us with a final product that fell way below even the dismal caliber of typical slop-standard sequels.
The plot consists of a dog who finds an ancient mask washed up aside a riverbed and drags it home with him, eventually poking his head in the wrong way and becoming bewitched by the mask’s wacky trance. Mayhem ensues, and before long the owner of the household, Tim, is succumbing to its wild green power.
Son of the Mask doesn’t even make it into so-bad-it’s-good territory, instead leaving the viewer mind-boggled by a barrage of trigger-happy special-effects that dominate the entire picture. It’s supposed to be amusing, but when a dog and a baby bounce off the walls with manic, wild eyes, the result is quite simply freakish and unsettling.
The movie crashed at the box office as well and was torn to shreds by the critics in the same sort of crazed manner that the picture is shot in. Incoherent and messy from start to finish, watching Son of the Mask is like banging your head against the wall in a nightclub filled with circus freaks. There’s so much light, sound and weird stuff going on, and every single bit of it is awful.