The Worst Movie Every Year Since 1980

Cinema is a perpetual state of change. Everything about movies is in flux: What they look like, who makes them, who is in them, how are filmed, what they cost to make, what it costs to see them, how they are projected in a theater or screened at home.

The only thing that remains constant: Some movies are good, and some movies are bad. Really, really, really bad.

The list below charts the latter constant, and includes the single worst movie released every year for the past 40+ years starting at the dawn of the 1980s (AKA the dawn of all history) and proceeding through the ’90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and into the early years of the 2020s. The films run the gamut of nearly every conceivable genre: Musical, comedy, action, erotic drama, swords and sandals, science-fiction, animation, horror, raunchy puppet farce, and thriller. A few are low-budget affairs, but many feature some of the biggest stars of their day. (The bigger the star, the bigger the chance for catastrophe, it seems.) What they all share is their general level of crapitude, which is quite high.

Let these movies serve as a reminder to all: That bad movies come in all shapes and sizes, and that any concept under the sun could be made into a fine motion picture. Unfortunately, that just did not happen in these specific cases.