I nominate 1977's Damnation Alley, starring Jan-Michael Vincent, long before he began looking like Mickey Rourke and the Elephant Man's love-child. To show a massive army of mutant killer man-eating cockroaches descending on the populace, the film-makers glued hundreds of rubber cockroaches to a sheet of Saran Wrap and simply pulled on it.
A couple of my favorite quotes from Plan 9: "Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds...stupid! Stupid!!" - Eros "Well, I have to have something to keep me company while you're away. Sometimes in the night when it does get a little lonely, I reach over and touch it, then it doesn't seem so lonely anymore. " - Paula referring to a pillow.
For a major motion picture, the airplane crash in Air Force One was pretty bad. Looked like an instructional video from American Airlines.
How about ones that were relatively well done on a technical level, but stupidly wrong in their science? In mission to mars, the guy who was the fat kid in stand by me was modeling DNA using m&ms in zero gravity. The double helix he made from m&ms was ROTATING. Around a non-existent mass in the center? By magic? Also, he claimed that the dna helix he made was of his perfect woman or some such tripe. Of course, it was only long enough for maybe 10 bases, meaning his ideal woman is maybe 3 amino acids.
you know what else gets me. When Bluto falls with the ladder in Animal House, I always see the "grass landing pad" move when he hits it. I don't know why, but everytime i watch that film, i always take note of it.
In Star Trek, the Motiion(less) Picture, there is a scene where a brightly lit V'ger probe arrives on the Enterprise bridge. The scene was created by shooting the bridge in two halves (to hide the tech crew operating the probe) and splicing the halves together. In the final scene, it's obvious that the two halves of the bridge don't line up, the actors are not in the same positions, the effect just looks like ***. I can't believe they didn't "fix" that shot somehow for the special edition DVD.
Shark Attack 3 had some pretty "awesome" special effects. Not to mention an "awesome" one-liner. See You Tube.
The giant rabbit movie was "Night of the Lepus." I remeber going to see it at the one-screen movie theater we had in my small town. Bad, bad movie.
numbereleven, those enlarged rabbits were in "Night of the Lepus" and it was a laughably bad special effect. It showed footage of them blown up to the size of cattle, hopping forward in a buffalo-like stampede. The Link However, I 'll submit the "The Beginning of the End" for using the same oversized camera trickery even more poorly. The Link Here stock footage of grasshoppers was split screened onto skyscrapers so they seemed to be climbing up tall buildings. But, sometimes the footage of the insects was in black and white while the rest of the movie was in color. It was very bad. You could even see wheat stalks that would have been a hundred feet tall next to the skyscrapers. Peter Graves of "Mission: Impossible" was the scientist trying to save Chicago from this idiotic insect invasion. Other bad sci fi effects I remember were dogs made up into tail-wagging, tongue-hanging-out-and-panting giant rodents in "The Killer Shrews" The Link Sometimes they would leg hump or lick their victims until a closeup showed their fake teeth chewing on a piece of meat. And there's also the aforementioned Ed Wood classic "Plan Nine from Outer Space," wherein the flying saucers were clearly suspended "in flight" by fishing line. The Link Some of the examples given in this thread were definitely bad, but, if you've watched many sci fi movies over enough years, you've seen much worse special effects.
Having a guy in a gorilla suit topped by a diving helmet (?) portraying a killer robot from outer space. Robot Monster (1953) (ok, maybe this would be worst wardrobe rather than worse special effect) Director Phil Tucker also used stock footage of a German V-2 missile to represent a spaceship in flight, and a bubble-making machine to lend an eerie ambiance to Robot Monster's cave hideout. Not as bad and inept as Plan 9, but very, very close.
Ah, yes, Night of the Lepus. I remember looking out my bedroom window and watching it shown at the drive-in theatre across the street from our house in Lubbock. Here's a very terrifying scene: linky-poo And the very scary trailer:
Pretty much every space scene in Moonraker I was 13 when it came out, and I distinctly recall it being the first time I eagerly anticipated a movie and was severely disappointed after seeing it.
I'll second the wolves in Day after Tomorrow. Some of the others are excusable by taking place before modern CGI. Not this one.
The Hook of Woodland Heights The Link You could actually rent this movie from Blockbuster back in the late 90's.
The reunion scene from Poltergeist II, after the the Dad jumps into the fire Taylor makes. They all hug, "in the light," and then Carol Ann does a quadruple-backflip before being rescued again. Just horrible.
