"The cultural equivalent of leprosy."

Several years ago, I flew from Dallas to Las Vegas with my dad. On the nighttime flight, Dad was reading a book by Joe Queenan -- I believe it was Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon. (I could call him to confirm this, but an aversion to hard labor -- like fact-checking -- is one of the things that led me to blogging.) Queenan's diatribe about popular American culture was making Dad laugh, hard. How hard? A couple of days later, in a casino, a guy walked up to him and said, "Hey, you're the guy who was laughing on my plane the other night. I have to ask, what were you reading?"

Last week, in The Guardian, Queenan wrote about the recent Paris Hilton vehicle (a Pinto, to be specific) The Hottie and the Nottie, using the movie's release as an excuse to ponder what makes a movie a candidate for The Worst of All Time.

Though it is a natural impulse to believe that the excruciating film one is watching today is on a par with the excruciating films of yesterday, this is a slight to those who have worked long and hard to make movies so moronic that the public will still be talking about them decades later. Anyone can make a bad movie; Kate Hudson and Adam Sandler make them by the fistful. Anyone can make a sickening movie; we are already up to Saw IV. Anyone can make an unwatchable movie; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. And anyone can make a comedy that is not funny; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. ... A generically appalling film like The Hottie and the Nottie is a scab that looks revolting while it is freshly coagulated; but once it festers, hardens and falls off the skin, it leaves no scar. By contrast, a truly bad movie, a bad movie for the ages, a bad movie made on an epic, lavish scale, is the cultural equivalent of leprosy: you can't stand looking at it, but at the same time you can't take your eyes off it.

For his king of the all-time stinkers, Queenan selects Heaven's Gate, "a movie in which Jeff Bridges pukes while mounted on roller skates."

I haven't seen Heaven's Gate (though its flaming collapse is detailed in a book I recently raved about). It's hard to come up with my worst ever off the top of my head, so I won't make any final pronouncements. I'll mention Titanic as an early contender, though, because in addition to all of its flaws (meaning, its first two and a half hours), many people think it's good. And as Queenan writes, "an authentically bad movie has to be famous; it can't simply be an obscure student film about a boy who eats live rodents to impress dead girls."

So, readers, leaving aside whatever rock-bottom cable atrocities you've happened across, what are your feelings about Worst. Movie. Ever.?