Stinkers Bad Movie Awards

Stinkers Bad Movie Awards

Stinkers Bad Movie Awards logo
Awarded for Worst in film
Country United States
Presented by Hastings Bad Cinema Society
First awarded 1978
Last awarded 2006

The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards (formerly known as the Hastings Bad Cinema Society)[1] was a Los Angeles-based group of film buffs and movie critics devoted to honoring the worst films of the year.

The society was founded by Mike Lancaster and Ray Wright, two former ushers who met in the late 1970s at what is now the Pacific Hastings Theater in Pasadena, California (from which the society originally got its name).[2][3]

The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and on the BBC, CNN, as well as in several newspapers and magazines.[4][5]

History

Founding

Lancaster and Wright offered the annual Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, which was a parody of the Academy Awards. The Stinkers were similar to the Golden Raspberry Award (the "Razzies"), which debuted four years after the Stinkers. Aside from the usual categories one might expect in an Oscar parody (Worst Picture, Worst Actor, etc.), the Stinkers offered other clever categories such as Worst Fake Accent,[6] Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy, Least 'Special' Special Effects and Worst On-Screen Hairstyle.[7][8] Unlike the Razzies, the Stinkers did not have an awards ceremony.[9]

The Stinkers' first ballots

The Stinkers' first ballots were handed out to the public in 1997. In the years that followed, the Razzies and Stinkers rarely agreed on a list of nominees or winners. The Stinkers initially opened their balloting to the general moviegoing public but soon discovered that most people surveyed hadn't seen many of the films on the ballot and often just voted for the person they hated the most, usually someone like Mariah Carey,[10] the Spice Girls or anyone connected with the film Gigli.[11]

In 2001 the Stinkers created 100 Years, 100 Stinkers: The Worst Films of the 20th Century, a list that parodied AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list.[12][13] The next year the Stinkers made a special trophy of a miniature flushing toilet for comedian actor Tom Green.[14] Green's Freddy Got Fingered was nominated for seven awards and won Worst Film, Worst Sense of Direction, Worst Actor and Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy. That same year the Stinkers gave a special award to David Manning, the controversial Sony Pictures fictitious movie critic.[15] The Stinkers included in 2003 another special category for Worst Performance by a Child, dedicated to child actor Spencer Breslin.[16]

In 2004, the Stinkers went to a more selective way of obtaining votes. They dismantled their membership and offered ballots by invitation only to a small, select group of film geeks and critics, who had seen a majority of the films during the year.

Nominating Paris Hilton

In 2006, the Stinkers refused to nominate hotel heiress Paris Hilton for her supporting role in the horror film House of Wax. Said Lancaster, "To get on the Stinkers ballot you are judged on your performance, not your tabloid persona. Anyone that would put Paris Hilton on a list of the five worst supporting actresses in 2005 didn't see a lot of movies in 2005. I could list twelve actresses who gave worse supporting performances than Paris Hilton."[4]

The next year, the Stinkers did nominate Hilton for Worst Actress for her performance in the barely released National Lampoon's Pledge This!. Society co-founder Lancaster had this to say about Hilton's nomination, "It was like Paris was baiting us, I'm not sure why she needs us to confirm to her that she's a bad actress appearing in a bad movie, but if she has the nerve to play her movie in a theater five minutes from my house, I will take notice. I still have my ticket stub if any one doubts this film played in a theater. It was like a gift from the bad movie gods."

Closure

In late January 2007, it was announced on the website that following the announcement of the year's winners, the Stinkers website would be officially closed down after ten years on the internet. On July 1, 2007, four months after the announcement of the worst of 2006 winners, the site was taken down. Its final headline was a review quote from Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper calling the film Evan Almighty "a paper-thin alleged comedy with a laugh drought of biblical proportions."

A book about the Stinkers Awards and their history was also promised on the website, just before the site closed down. It was to be released "before the end of the decade." This never came to pass. To this day, the Golden Raspberry Awards have continued to "award" the worst of film-making in lieu of the closing of the Stinkers.

Award categories

Motion picture

Special awards

1994: I'll Do Anything
1995: Johnny Mnemonic
1996: The Phantom and The Stupids
2000: Motion Picture Association of America
2001: David Manning, Sony Pictures' fictitious movie critic.
2003: Spencer Breslin (The Cat in the Hat)
2004: Soren Fulton (Thunderbirds)
2005: Adrian Alonso (The Legend of Zorro)
2006: Spencer Breslin (The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, The Shaggy Dog and Zoom)

See also

References

  1. ↑ S. Perkowitz (2007). Hollywood science: movies, science, and the end of the world. Columbia University Press. p. 255. ISBN 0-23151-239-2.
  2. ↑ Vice, Jeff (February 6, 2000). "Stinkers fouled silver screen in '99". Deseret News. Retrieved 2013-04-01.
  3. ↑ Vice, Jeff (February 11, 2001). "Lots of 2000 films fighting for bottom spot". Deseret News. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  4. 1 2 Weinberg, Scott (March 3, 2006). "2005 Stinker Awards Announced!". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  5. ↑ Terry, Pilaar (March 21, 2000). "Film: Stinkers Bad Movie Awards recognize the worst in Hollywood with humorous categories". Daily Trojan. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  6. ↑ Thompson, Gary (February 28, 1998). "Group Recognzes Stinkers". The Free Lance-Star. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  7. ↑ Milvy, Erika (March 24, 2000). "Movie Web Sites Offer Alternatives to the Hollywood Oscar Hoopla". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  8. ↑ Milvy, Erika (March 23, 2001). "If You Don't Take the Academy Awards Seriously, Try These Sites". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  9. ↑ Richard Crouse (2005). Reel Winners: Movie Award Trivia. Dundurn. p. 277. ISBN 1-55002-574-0.
  10. ↑ Campbell, Duncan (March 23, 2002). "Bombed... Pearl Harbor dubbed a stinker". The Guardian. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  11. ↑ Wolf, Buck (February 24, 2007). "Hollywood Awards (Almost) Everything". ABC News. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  12. ↑ Dominguez, Robert (January 21, 2006). "Tarnished Silver". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  13. ↑ Vice, Jeff (December 27, 1998). "What's that stench? Group set to name 100 worst movies". Deseret News. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  14. ↑ Waters, Darren (March 23, 2002). "Green gets fingered for Razzies". BBC News. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
  15. ↑ "2001 24th Hastings Bad Cinema Society Stinkers Awards". Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 4, 2007. Retrieved March 30, 2013.
  16. ↑ "Awarding the absolute worst". The Daily Collegian. March 6, 2006. Retrieved 2013-04-01.
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