Worst film with best cast poll

[chickenfeet2003]

The point of this poll is to identify the stinkiest of a set of real stinkers that, by virtue of their casts, should have been much better. Note, I have included all nominees despite a personal view that one of the movies is not a stinker and that a couple of the others have decidedly less than stellar casts.

Poll stinkers[1]Bonus for having Aldous Huxley as

Comments

[kalypso_v]

I'm not sure whether I'm qualified to vote, as I've only seen half of them (five definitely, and I can't quite remember whether I saw Caligula or not). But it strikes me that Olivier managed to do an extraordinary number of stinkers. I've heard that in later life he was willing to do any old thing in order to provide for his family; with the earlier ones, I suppose it's just that the style has dated horribly, and a period drama seen through the lens of a different era can be hard to take.

Mark Lawson did a piece on him in The Archive Hour; I think it includes the interview with Joan Plowright which I heard in Front Row, and she admitted to finding his performances in films like Rebecca too stagey.

[chickenfeet2003]

I think there's a strong feeling among British actors with a stage background that one has to keep working, even if the roles are stinkers. I think with Olivier part of the problem is that his acting style does look very dated. More so than many other actors of his generation.

[kalypso_v]

Plowright thought his Shakespearean films stood up well, but the "contemporary" ones less so.

[chickenfeet2003]

I'm not overly impressed by his Henry V or Richard III.

[kalypso_v]

Oh, but Richard III is a wonderful black comedy! I first saw it with a boyfriend who I'd met through the Richard III Society; we were falling about laughing, and couldn't understand why everyone else in the cinema looked so serious.

[kalypso_v]

By "contemporary", obviously I'm meaning set in his own era but before Plowright's; I'm sure she'd still admire The Entertainer.

[knirirr]

Patrick Stewart was in the version of Dune in your poll, and was very good in that role.

[shezan]

So was Jürgen Prochnow, who also was good. And Sting. It's almost impossible to do Dune, and this version is still the best.

[a_d_medievalist]

I'd heard that the recent TV mini-series was very good.

[knirirr]

I still think that the Sci Fi channel version is good, and Lynch's horribly cheesy, despite the vast superiority of the actors in the Lynch version.