This week: Worst performance by an actress in a leading role.
My nomination: Kathrine Victor, star of “Wild Wild World of Batwoman.” Clunky and unconvincing from start to finish.
Who’s your pick?
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Weekend Discussion Thread: Worst PerformancesWith the Oscars this weekend, I thought we’d follow up on the recent “worst movie” discussion with some “worst performance” picks.
158 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Worst Performances”Commenting at Satellite News
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I’m watching Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders at the moment, and Madeline Cooper (she of the barren womb) barely edges out Susan (Toni Tennille) for “worst” actress.
Incidentally, Hugo from Devil Doll was played by a woman; s/he would get my vote if I weren’t terrified of it coming to life to kill me while I’m asleep.
Well, I thought about putting something down related to MST, but there is a performance much worse than anything known to man. Chesty Morgan from Deadly Weapons fame. There is nothing worse–her ability to deliver lines and stare weirdly at the camera takes all bad acting awards. Because of the nudity in the film, Mystery Science Theater could not do it, but it is bad. Actually, I wish that there was a naughty side to MST–they could deal with performances that are really bad.
Rose Corman (Rose Gorman?)… the lady with the kids in “The Dead Talk Back”. Just awful. She made Aldo Farnese look like Sir Alec Guinness.
Hilarious. Sampo suggests a female actor as his nomination for worst performance, and all of a sudden the topic is “worst female performance” instead of “worst performance” as intended. Sad.
I allways thought my fellow dorktacular mst3k fan base would be a little sharper than that. Anyway, the worst performance I ever suffered through, with the aid of mst3k riffing or not, would be the abysmal attempt at comic relief by one Jonathan Ledford in Attack of the the Eye Creatures. Forgive me if I’m not identifying the right perpetrator, but whoever had anything to do with the peeping related funnies in this one needs hanged, shot, harassed(whatever that means) and given a not-too-kind blogging. So there.
Ah….to be fair, before this closes…I have to pardon everyone who suggested all or any of the cast of Angels Revenge. Hussagh.
Hm… Does it not say in the original post, “worst performance by an ACTRESS in a leading role”?
I’d have to go with the aspiring movie actress in Sinister Urge.
At her ‘audition’:
Girl: “Oh, I’ll do a great job in your picture!”
Mike: “Not like now!”
Let’s not forget the Mom in Teenage Strangler. “Yes, she’s DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!” in her musical delivery. Wait, she didn’t actually deliver that line, but I don’t know why she didn’t. “From community theater to the big screen”. Yes, I know she was a supporting player. (you call that support?). Anybody know her name?
I also have to throw in my defense of Katherine Victor aka Batwoman. As the guys say, she brought a quiet dignity to the role. And let’s face it, even Meryl Streep couldn’t have done anything with it. Although, that is fun to think about.
Ummmmm, SchlockValue, here’s the start of the topic by Sampo:
“With the Oscars this weekend, I thought we’d follow up on the recent “worst movie” discussion with some “worst performance” picks.
This week: Worst performance by an actress in a leading role.
My nomination: Kathrine Victor, star of “Wild Wild World of Batwoman.” Clunky and unconvincing from start to finish.
Who’s your pick?”
Is it still so sad that we all chose actresses?
EDWIN:
Hey pal, you want to fill my pool of happy with your negative fact-checking-uppity-understanding-of-english? Lets check up on Sampo’s original intent…
“This week: Worst performance by an actress in a leading role.”
Crap.
Um…I cant read? Yeah! Honest mistake. My apologies to you, and ANYONE who nominated ANYONE from Angels Revenge. Unforgivable. Until they make a sequel that involves the same crew of now-dilapidated cardboard honeys go-go punching the daylights out of the monsters that supply me with MY weed, I will not feel any sense of closure on this one.
And I would have to agree with Htom here…Whoever got stuck playing Jan was sold a sour crumpet. She was beautiful, not at all untalented, and in that way, not unlike many unfortunate actresses in movies that ended up mstyd. Oh well. Maybe a good enough topic for discussion would be what actors/actresses WEREN’T so horrible despite what they’ve been cast in? Screw it…what’s everybody’s favorite cake?
Never watched Batwoman, but the worst that I’ve seen would be either Marinda (the potato girl) from “Deathstalker III” or, of course, Natalie (the actual potato) from “Werewolf.”
Schlockvalue: For me, it’s a tie between Black Forest and Devil’s Food.
No kidding? I would have said the tie is between German Chocolate and Red Velvet…but ooh…Devil’s food…that’s clever…
Tony Cardoza
Tony Cardoza is your favorite type of cake? Ewwwww…
Schlockvalue (#111): My vote for best actress performance would be any and all of the four convict ladies (one of whom was an undercover cop) in “Swamp Diamonds”.
Favorite cake? Boston cream pie
Any cake flavored or shaped like Tony Cardoza should be avoided at all costs.
Well Sampo old man you really hit on something here. Great topic. And my own opinion… well there is too much to chose from. As soon as I agree with one fellow poster, I read 5 more nominating 5 others and THEY all work.
Even if you break down into subcategories… worst performance by an female actor (WPBAFA ) as a victim, WPBAFA as a lead villian, WPBAFA as comic relief, as supporting character etc. there are SO many
I’ll just sit back and read.. there is nothing I can offer. But it is ALL good.
Tony Cardoza cake? I’m really gung-ho about that cake…
Lots of good(bad) choices to be had here.Best worst actor:Paper Chase guy from Deathstalker.What the hell is he talking about and/or to?Best worst actress:Cissy Cameron in Space Mutiny,even though Reb Brown and her do make “some kind of(wtf?)” a team.Best worst supporting actor: Joe from Skydivers.Can you make coffee from wood?Best worst supporting actress:The faux English gal from Horror of Spider Island.Gaaurryy!I admit it seems that for most of these movies the ladies had a lot less to work with than guys.
Boston Cream Pie!mmm, that’s the good stuff!
Aw, c’mon, let’s hear it for the “blink” lady in Indestructible Man” You could have replaced her with a mound of lime jello and not have known the difference!
Hey John (comment #93) Jan Shepard is the Mom of a good friend of mine, and she took us to the NBA finals in 1973 in L.A. She may not be a great actress, but she’s sure a nice person!
Oh, just so many to pick from, and so many “great” actresses already mentioned..
For a lead role I guess I would go with Cissy Cameron as well. Just awful.
For supporting female role I would nominate the manly stripper from “The Thing that Couldn’t Die”….the horror of imagining Jan in the Pan’s head on that linebacker like frame was truly horrific.
For me a tie between the teacher in “Angel’s Revenge” and hysterical Betty in “Teenage Strangler”.
Although the cop in “Angel’s Revenge” is pretty bad also, but the teacher with her little “Oooh, oooh, I know it’s in here somewhere. Ohhh oohhhh.” really annoys me to no end. :roll:
Roman – I agree about the teacher. I think she learned her phrasing from Olive Oyl. Ooh, Popeye! BTW, is it fair to nominate Pia Zidora for Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? I know it was just a supporting role, and she was only a kid, but it was just awful and proved she had no promise as a leading lady-to be. All the kids in that movie were terrible, though. So were the adults. Just awful…
Joan Lora, who plays the squirrely and shrill Jeanie in ‘Bloodlust.’ When she squeaks ‘Treasure? Pirate’s treasure?’ upon seeing the girdle, I want to lunge through the screen and throttle her. It’s as if someone is pointing a shotgun at her off-screen and mouthing ‘Perky. I said PERKY.’
The sex-change dancer who ‘performs’ with the Nazi in TISCWSLABMUZ. Alternately utterly blank and wooden, mutters her lines indecipherably, makes me squirm with uncomfortableness for her. She’s also oily but not as majestically shiny as Joanie Nichols in Girl in Gold Boots. I actually like Bara Byrnes’ performance; she’s so over-the-top wasted with her five pairs of false eyelashes and total lack of rhythm that she’s fun to watch. Her frug lesson is especially silly- ‘Bum- bum- bum…’ as she jerks robotically.
Chocolate cake with raspberry filling.
Jeanie actually says ‘Armor? Pirate’s armor?’ Apologies. Her delivery of ‘Let’s go ashore!’ is more annoying still.
I just can’t wait for the SUPPORTING Actress to come up. I got mine all ready, but here’s a hint:
“You say you will come, but YOU NEVER DOOOOOOOO.”
..du’..h….m…is this the bacon room?
:idea:
are these here emo-tee-kons FREE?
Kathy Ireland and her helium addiction. Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up!!!!!!!!
Tina Luezey model in Angels’ Revenge – “I wish to make a BIG donation.”
The dubbed 40-year-old heroine in Horror at Party Beach “But I have such feelings for him.”
In reply to Edwin B. Miller:
To each his own, I suppose. It may be a cliche, but it’s a particularly annoying one to me. As I said, if the character didn’t annoy me, the voice sure did.
But if you can manage to like someone who was HALF A BEAT LATE, then by all means!
To be fair, she probably had the most personality of the girls in the movie. Greg Brady’s competing female admirers are both extremely forgettable, despite the puffy 80’s coat and the “let’s move her spine around alot” scene.
“That’ll keep ’em!”
A tough category but I have to go with Angelika Jager as Valaria in Robot Holocaust.
The whole movie has that ‘let’s put on a show’ type of feel. It’s as if they found their dads camera and went to Central Park one day to shoot a film.
I forgot Leslie Parrish in The Giant Spider Invasion; and her kid sister too, I suppose.
Ah, Wisconsin actresses. Cheese all around.
Matt D.–Um…Mary? She’s in her special place, waiting for you…
A shiny new cookie for those who get the reference.
Kathy Ireland gets my nod. Her mere name besmirches an entire nation and people !
Ok – here we go:
The older mom-lady in the short about Marriage.
“Crow: Geez – how many times was she held back?”
Billy (dont be a hero’s) girlfriend in Laserbalst:
“You know nothing of my chest holes”
Katherine Victor looked a little embarrassed to be in Batwomen, so that’s to her credit.
Cisse Cameron is shameless as well as utterly clueless and those are major marks against her.
A very cringe-inducing performance.
I’ll jump on the Valeria bandwagon also.
Of course, none of these performances seem quite as bad to me since I experienced Deborah Reed as Creedence Leonore Gielgud in Troll 2. She transforms bad acting the way Babe Ruth transformed baseball, you can’t look at other bad actresses the same way after you see her. Check it out if you dare. Rifftrax has a very good commentary track (though Mike is unusually harsh-sounding) pre-synced with the video for 4.99.
Been sick over the weekend so my mind’s pretty fuzzy to think about such a question, but I’ll try to muster up enough mental strength to do a Bottom-5 countdown based on some recently watched ones (either by character name or actress name, whatever’s easier).
5. Lisa Hansen from Time Chasers – The only way she was able to convince tower control that she was crashing was because it said so in the script.
4. Jenny Whitlock (the wife) from Screaming Skull – Quoth Mike, “One of these days, she’ll look back on this and worry about it.” Her performance in Space Children is just as bad.
3. Elizena from Deathstalker – I can’t blame Torxartas for interrupting her during her whine fest.
2. All of the Seven from Angel’s Revenge – Been touched on enough, no further explanation necessary.
1. The woman who dubbed all the female voices in Manos (3 people, 2 men and 1 woman, dubbed all the voices) – Speaks for itself.
Honorable Mention: The (obvious) woman who dubbed Tommy’s voice on Pod People.
Alice Lyon and Adrianna Miles are tight runners-up, but the prize has to go to Donna Leigh Drake from ‘Track of the Moon Beast’. Miles was incredibly wooden, but did manage some emotion on occasion and, as mentioned, probably learned English a week before the film. Lyon was dreadful, but at least had the sad face down. Drake was so stiff and unemotional in every single scene, and nearly every reaction from her was inappropriate for the scene. It looked like she was straining her brain to the limit with each word, which is probably true. Bonnie Pritchard from ‘Time Chasers’ gets an honorable mention as well.
The searching through the large pocketbook by a woman is a time honored comical bit made famous by Imogene Coco.
My top (bottom?) 3;
1) Betty from Teen Age Strangler – does everything she say have to go straight to hysterics? Look how worked up she got poor Mikey.
2) The angry psychic from Merlin’s Mystical Shop of Magical Wonders – even though I have a hard time breathing with Servo’s “I could stab your eyes out so help me!” comment.
3) Natalie from Werewolf – as stated by so many before – just yikes.
Like I said, earlier, there were so many bad performances it was tough to pick ’em. All the selections here (yes, even Tony Cordoza, awful as either sex! :wink: ) are excellent ones! Nicely done everybody. Hey, Sampo, how about worst performance by a lead actor/supporting actor/actress? Let’s keep this theme going!
InsectMan #122: Forgive me, for in retrospect, I WAS rather harsh on Jan Shepard, considering there are other, more deserving targets out there. For the record I didn’t mean to attack Jan Shepard as a person. Instead, my new pick for worst actress (that hasn’t been mentioned in this thread) is the woman who played the brunette friend in ‘Bloodlust’.
Oh boy. Let’s see. THe Werewolf chick, English aint so hard there. Valeria from Robot Holocaust.
I’m going with the Werewolf chick.
Damn. The brunette friend in Bloodlust HAS been mentioned (post 126), so my last picks would have to be 1) the women who played the saloon dancers who harassed Beverly Garland in ‘Gunslinger’ and 2) Marie Windsor (an otherwise okay actress), whose character killed Beverly Garland’s character in ‘Swamp Diamonds’. (She deserved a better fate…)
Pixiesnix: I have no idea who Matt D. was describing, but you were obviously referencing Mary Shepherd-Sunderland from “Silent Hill 2.”
I’ll take one Pecan Sandie, high gloss.
Oh, wait; I think Matt D. was talking about Mrs. Heintz from “Time Chasers.”
Definitely Kathy Ireland in Alien from L.A.
Bad bad bad acting and her voice just drills holes to my head.