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If you’re like me, every time the Razzie Awards announce their dubious nominees each year the first thing you think is “The Razzies are still a thing?” Yes, incredibly, despite their ever-diminishing relevance, they’re still around. Whereas once they were a fun and much-needed rebuttal to Hollywood excess, the Razzies in recent years have gotten lazy, obvious and a little mean-spirited. Not helping are such embarrassing snafus as announcing an entirely new category dedicated to Bruce Willis mere days before Willis’s family revealed that the actor would be retiring due to a dementia diagnosis. 

The Razzies rescinded and apologized for the nomination, but the damage was done, and the question remains: in an era where seemingly one-third of podcasts are dedicated to shredding bad movies (the remaining two-thirds are, of course, related to true crime), what purpose do the Razzies even serve anymore, if they ever served one in the first place?

Flipping the script a bit, the Criterion Channel is “honoring” the Razzies in March, featuring a collection of movies that have been in their crosshairs since the awards show’s inception in 1980. Several of the featured films have reputations that improved over time, a few should have never been nominated in the first place, and some absolutely deserved their pillorying: we (or rather, I, it’s just me writing this) rank them from “actually great” to “literally the worst.”

The Blair Witch Project (1999, dir. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez): Nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Actress (won)

Starting things off with a real “wait what” is The Blair Witch Project, which was both critically acclaimed, and arguably ushered in an entirely new horror subgenre (while costing about $37 to make), but also a Razzie nominee for Worst Picture (and winner for Worst Actress), somehow. To choose this as a Worst Picture nominee over, say, Garry Marshall’s embarrassing The Other Sister, the sinister Baby Geniuses, and the idiotic Wing Commander is perhaps the most inexplicable decision the Razzies nominating committee ever made, other than nominating Ennio Morricone for Worst Score for The Thing. Or Shelley Duvall as Worst Actress for The Shining. Actually, they’ve made a lot of bad decisions, that’s why I’m doing this.

Xanadu (1980, dir. Robert Greenwald): Nominated for Worst Movie, Worst Director (won), Worst Actor, Worst Actress, Worst Screenplay, Worst Song

I will concede that, being it was my favorite movie when I was eight years old (and obviously my taste was impeccable), Xanadu may be too tangled up in nostalgia for me to regard with clear eyes. Nevertheless, I simply refuse to believe that Robert Greenwald, who won his respective category, did a worse job directing this sweet and harmless comedy-musical than Nancy Walker did with Can’t Stop the Music, which was terrible then, and has only gotten worse over time.

Cruising (1980, dir. William Friedkin): Nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay

Though of course it wasn’t well received at the time, to see Cruising up against such woeful, long forgotten works as Middle-Age Crazy, Neil Diamond’s unwatchable remake of The Jazz Singer, and the above mentioned Can’t Stop the Music seems like a weird joke. At any rate, Cruising got the last laugh, earning a more positive critical reassessment over the years despite its lurid themes. As more evidence of the Razzies’ nominating committee’s questionable taste, William Friedkin would be overlooked for 1995’s Jade, unquestionably a far worse film (Joe Eszterhas got a nod for Worst Screenplay, but lost to himself for Showgirls).

Heaven’s Gate (1981, dir. Michael Cimino): Nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director (won), Worst Screenplay, Worst Musical Score

Considering how quickly the doomed-from-the-start Heaven’s Gate died at the box office (it was handily beaten by Sylvester Stallone’s Nighthawks, an Elvis concert movie, and the woeful Ringo Starr comedy Caveman), nominating it nine months later for multiple Razzies was like digging up a corpse just to pee on it. Also like Cruising, while Cimino’s career would never recover, time has been somewhat kinder to his $44 million boondoggle, and it’s now generally regarded as, at worst, an interesting failure hampered by scope and ego, if not genuinely good. Plus, who can argue with a movie that stops dead in its tracks for a choreographed roller skating sequence?

Ishtar (1987, dir. Elaine May): Nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director (won, tied with Norman Mailer for Tough Guys Don’t Dance), Worst Screenplay

This is a tough one. Thanks to a 2013 Blu-ray release, Ishtar’s reputation has significantly improved, even earning a handful of votes on the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest movies of all time. Nevertheless, it can’t be denied that Elaine May sank her own ship from the very beginning, battling seemingly every single person involved in the film’s production (with the possible exception of Dustin Hoffman), and demanding that an already inflated budget go towards such questionable expenditures as finding a blue-eyed camel when a regular camel just wouldn’t do. A strong case can be made for May actually deserving her Worst Director Razzie (shared with Norman Mailer, who definitely earned his). On the other hand, unlike Jaws: The Revenge director Joseph Sargent, she didn’t include a scene of a shark roaring, so who can say for sure.

Showgirls (1994, dir. Paul Verhoeven: Nominated for Worst Picture (won), Worst Actor, Worst Actress (won), Worst Supporting Actor (dual nominees), Worst Supporting Actress (dual nominees), Worst Screen Couple (won), Worst Director (won), Worst Screenplay (won), Worst New Star (won), Worst Original Song (won), Worst Remake or Sequel

Though there have been convincing arguments for it, I’m not quite on the side of “Showgirls is good, actually” yet. However, when you consider that 1994 also saw the release of unmitigated (and far more expensive) disasters like Waterworld and Cutthroat Island, plus the extremely misguided adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, and the surreal nightmares of It’s Pat, Showgirls being considered worse than all of those is really kind of an achievement in and of itself. In keeping with the spirit of that, Paul Verhoeven (a true king) showed up in person at the awards ceremony to collect his Worst Director trophy, as he should have.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001, dir. Tom Green): Nominated for Worst Picture (won), Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Supporting Actress, Worst Screen Couple, Worst Director (won), Worst Screenplay (won)

If nothing else, Freddy Got Fingered stands out like a huge, rotting fish among an otherwise boring roster of Worst Picture nominees, including the $140 million sleeping pill Pearl Harbor, and Sylvester Stallone’s Driven, a movie I didn’t even remember until looking it up for this article. That’s almost a compliment: 2001, while wildly profitable at the box office, played it safe creatively, putting more effort into elaborate special effects than interesting stories. For Tom Green to make a movie so aggressively off-putting as Freddy Got Fingered during that time is its own sort of artistic achievement, and the armload of Razzies it won for it is more a triumph than anything else.

Under the Cherry Moon (1986, dir. Prince): Nominated for Worst Picture (won, tied with Howard the Duck), Worst Actor (won), Worst Supporting Actor (won), Worst Supporting Actress, Worst Director (won), Worst Screenplay, Worst New Star, Worst Original Song (won)

Let’s just get it out of the way: there is no way on God’s green earth that Under the Cherry Moon is as equally bad as Howard the Duck. I’ll go one step further and say that neither of them are worse than Shanghai Surprise, one of the other nominees for Worst Picture. Howard the Duck is loud, ugly, and incapable of maintaining tone for more than eight seconds at a time, while Under the Cherry Moon is an elegant feast for the eyes, with an impeccable soundtrack that features both “Kiss” and “Sometimes It Snows in April.” It is also, however, very, very boring, and in a way that’s worse than just bad, so maybe it did deserve its Razzie nominations, and I’ve been wrong about everything..

Barb Wire (1996, dir. David Hogan): Nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Actress, Worst Screen Couple, Worst Screenplay, Worst New Star (won), Worst Original Song

If you’re wondering if when the Razzies committee nominated Barb Wire for Worst Screen Couple they meant Pamela Anderson’s notably large rack, you better believe they did. 

Gigli (2003, dir. Martin Brest): Nominated for Worst Picture (won), Worst Actor (won), Worst Actress (won), Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Supporting Actress, Worst Screen Couple (won), Worst Director (won), Worst Screenplay (won)

Honestly, when the competition is The Cat in the Hat, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, From Justin to Kelly, and whatever the hell The Real Cancun was, that’s like asking to choose between a hangnail, a splinter, a paper cut, a stubbed toe, or a skinned knee. 

Cocktail (1988, dir. Roger Donaldson): Nominated for Worst Picture (won), Worst Actor, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay (won)

To date, no one has attempted to redeem Cocktail, the extremely late 80s comedy-drama that attempted to make bartenders doing elaborate juggling routines while pouring drinks a thing. What’s notable here is what wasn’t nominated: its theme song, the Beach Boys’ inescapable plague upon the ears “Kokomo.” That it was overlooked in favor of three other songs that never got a single moment of radio airplay, as opposed to “Kokomo,” which was inflicted on an innocent public every fifteen minutes or so, might possibly be the Razzies’ most baffling decision in its over forty years of existence.

Swept Away (2002, dir. Guy Ritchie): Nominated for Worst Picture (won), Worst Actor, Worst Actress (won, tied with Britney Spears for Crossroads), Worst Screen Couple (won), Worst Remake (won), Worst Director (won), Worst Screenplay

I’ve never seen Swept Away. Have you seen Swept Away? Who’s seen Swept Away? I don’t know that anyone has, but going by the quotes section on IMDB, it sounds incredible.

The Wicker Man (2006, dir. Neil LaBute): Nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Actor, Worst Screen Couple, Worst Remake, Worst Screenplay

Well, here it is, for my estimation the platonic ideal of a Razzies nominee. Neil LaBute remade an iconic, slyly funny horror movie into an ugly, humorless slog chock full of his trademark misogyny, and it deserved every bit of the roasting it got. The only mistake here is that it didn’t actually win any of its respective categories, overlooked mostly in favor of Little Man, a movie that was merely dumb rather than actively offensive, and had 100% less scenes of Nicolas Cage punching a woman square in the face while wearing a bear costume.

Querelle (1983, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder): Nominated for Worst Original Song (dual nominees), Worst Musical Score

Feel free to come back to this someday and let me know if I turn out to be wrong, but I’m pretty sure this will remain the only movie based on a Jean Genet novel to be nominated for a Razzie. I didn’t rank Querelle last because of its quality, but because I’ve never seen it. A queer arthouse drama that barely saw release in the U.S., it might be the most bizarrely random nominee, particularly when it was only nominated for its music. In fact, two songs from its soundtrack were nominated, but ended up losing to the theme song from Pia Zadora’s camp classic The Lonely Lady, which is somehow more embarrassing than if either of them had won.

And the Razzie Goes to…is available on The Criterion Channel starting March 1st.