The 20 Most Unbearable Movies of 1998

Christian group picks worst movies of the year—Oscar® favorites and other critically-acclaimed movies lead the pack of immoral, Anti-Christian Movies

Author:Dan Wooding of ASSIST Communications and Dr. Ted Baehr of Movieguide
GUEST CONTRIBUTORS

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE may have earned the most Oscar nominations this year, but the Oscar favorite also leads the pack of the Worst Movies of 1998 in the eyes of the staff of The Christian Film and Television Commission, based in Southern California.

Dr. Ted Baehr, founder and chairman of the Commission and publisher/editor-in-chief of MOVIEGUIDE: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment, said, “SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE has a banal plot that distorts history. It demeans Shakespeare's genius by neglecting the nobler passions that permeated Shakespeare's work.”

Sharing worst honors with SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE was another Oscar favorite, ELIZABETH. “This movie portrays Queen Elizabeth as a weak woman who merely wants to play with her paramour and who fails to grasp the basic principles of the Protestant faith for which she was willing to die in real life,” Baehr said. “This is the ultimate anti-feminist movie. To call it a “feminist” movie, as some critics have done, is one of the most ludicrous criticisms of a movie we've ever heard.”

Other critically acclaimed movies that made the commission's Worst List are PLEASANTVILLE, BELOVED, THE OPPOSITE OF SEX, HAPPINESS, and THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY.

“PLEASANTVILLE advocates a self-contradictory, therefore false, moral relativism that attacks traditional morality while at the same time setting up its own permissive morality that the audience is supposed to support,” Dr. Baehr said. “It also accepts the neo-Marxist view of psychological, sexual and social “repression” developed by the Frankfurt School, the neo-Marxist think tank that influenced those confused 60s radicals. American public schools and colleges, using taxpayers' money, have force-fed this insidious new morality to our nation's youth for the last 50 years. It has also infected the secular mass media, including film critics and many nationally-known journalists. This is one reason for our being assaulted by such despicable movies such as THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and SCREAM.”

MOVIEGUIDE'S upcoming annual issue describes BELOVED as “Kunte Kinte Meets Rosemary's Baby and the Exorcist.” “BELOVED is peppered with occult images and themes, graphic violence and explicit nudity,” Dr. Baehr noted. “It preaches a silly, New Age gospel of self-love. It's pop psychobabble that only mind-numbed, limousine liberals and fools could love.”

MOVIEGUIDE'S review of the critically-acclaimed independent movie, HAPPINESS, which made many critics' Top Ten List, summarized the movie in the following manner: “Filled with frank talk about masturbation and homosexual pedophilia, HAPPINESS portrays the lives of a bunch of losers searching for fulfillment, including a married homosexual pedophile who has frank talks with his son about sex. It is a misanthropic, mocking exercise that self-righteously moralizes about the characters it portrays.”

Dr. Baehr added, “It is morally irresponsible and aesthetically bankrupt for critics like Roger Ebert to put this boring, reprehensible movie on his Top Ten List.”

Below is a full list of the movies that made the Commission's Worst List:

The 20 most unbearable movies of 1998

  1. Promoting the Worst PC Banality—THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY

  2. Most Politically Correct cinematic Voodoo and a new level of visual disgust—BELOVED

  3. Bloodiest Comic Book Promoting Occultism for Children—BLADE

  4. Teaching Children to Kill—THE BUTCHER BOY

  5. Tying for Most New Age, False Religion Award—WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

  6. Worst Promotion of Anti-Christian Occultism—PRACTICAL MAGIC

  7. Tying for Worst Pedophilia—HAPPINESS and LOLITA

  8. Worst Anti-Christian Sex Farce—ORGAZMO

  9. Worst Perversion—THE OPPOSITE OF SEX

  10. Worst Pro-Suicide Propaganda for Teenagers—DEAD MAN ON CAMPUS

  11. Tying for the Most Banal, “Nerd Gets the Girl Before Her Wedding” Revisionist Histories—ELIZABETH and SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

  12. Worst Frankfurt School Antinomian Revisionist Propaganda—PLEASANTVILLE

  13. Worst Infomercial for Political Correctness—PRIMARY COLORS

  14. Worst Anti-Jewish Feminism—A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES

  15. Worst Anti-Christian Revisionist History—DANGEROUS BEAUTY

  16. Most Shrill Proclamation of Anti-Christian, Anti-Communist, Darwinian Individualism—AYN RAND—A SENSE OF LIFE

  17. Worst Sleaze—BASEKETBALL

  18. Worst Drug Promotion—FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

  19. Worst Content—VERY BAD THINGS

  20. Dumbest Bad—KRIPPENDORF'S TRIBE

A special “UNBEARABLE TELEVISION AWARD” goes to FROM JESUS TO CHRIST: THE EARLY CHRISTIANS, a documentary by PBS’s FRONTLINE “journalists”

According to MOVIEGUIDE's review, “The recent PBS documentary FROM JESUS TO CHRIST: THE EARLY CHRISTIANS combines scripture, skepticism and pretentious German higher criticism to form a very confused portrait of Christianity. Despite various attacks on Jesus Christ, this documentary cannot deny that Christianity has flourished since its inception, a phenomenon based on the validity of Jesus Christ's claims which goes beyond humanistic criticism and debate.”

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