Worst Films of Grammy Stars

“Harum Scarum”

There aren’t that many peaks in Elvis’s early ‘60s burst of movie-making, but this 1965 stinker is generally regarded as one of his silliest. How bad was it? Even Colonel Parker, Presley’s any-movie-for-a-buck manager, thought it was terrible. Elvis plays a movie star who is kidnapped on a promotional visit to the Middle East by Arabians who think his on-screen derring-do is real and want him to carry out an assassination. The level of tension in all the derring-do that proceeds is, well, not high, especially since the star seems to believe there is no moment of danger that can’t be paused for a song. As the website 3B noted, “The film's abysmal soundtrack was recorded before filming even began, and when I calculated it out, there's a song approximately every 7.2 minutes -- all of them as forgettable as the film itself.”

“Battleship”

RiRi had a highly promoted supporting role in last year’s sci-fi/military bomb, playing a Navy gal, of all things. It was hard to judge her acting chops, because she was not entrusted with a lot of dialogue to work with, at least in the final edit, even though she was on screen a lot. Vulture.com ran a piece transcribing all 318 words of dialogue she had in the movie; Rihanna only had five lines of dialogue that were longer than nine words. “The Barbadian singer is wet for much of Battleship, her Navy uniform is uncommonly flattering, and the majority of her dialogue is composed of exclamations,” noted the site. “It's a veritable master class in one-line utterances. Most of her lines fall into one of several categories: sassy (‘Get up, princess!’), confused (‘What the hell is that?’), or surprisingly competent (‘Contact two miles out’).” Please don’t stop the mortar!

“From Justin to Kelly”

After an acting debut like this, there was no way to go but down, which perhaps explains why Clarkson seems to have retired from acting since this 2003 debacle. Both Clarkson and her co-star, fellow first-season "American Idol" breakout Justin Guarini, were nominated for Golden Raspberry awards for their performances, and plans to release a soundtrack album were canceled after the film grossed less than $5 million in theaters. Entertainment Weekly awarded the “appalling” effort a rare “F” grade, and the musical got an 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It certainly didn’t kill Kelly’s career, but we’re not quite sure it made it stronger, either.

“Freddy Vs. Jason”

“I remember being on the set with Beyoncé on 'Austin Powers' and when she did 'Carmen,' " Rowland told MTV in 2002. "She was like, 'You go act. I know you can do it.'” But Beyonce probably didn’t tell her Destiny’s Child cohort to go do it in a film that represented the bottoming out of two already bottom-feeding horror franchises. The suspense was unbearable: Would the Destiny’s Child star, in her slumming acting debut, be offed by Freddy, or Jason? Spoilers ahead. “How sweet. Dark meat!” says Freddy as he seemingly goes in for the kill. But it’s Jason, coming up from behind, who offs her with a machete to the chest.

“Burlesque”

If a more painful movie has been released in the last 10 years, there were no survivors left to tell the tale. Aguilera plays a small-town girl who comes to the big city in search of stardom, only to get derailed by a stint working for Cher at a nouveau burlesque club. But if this sounds like a tragedy, think again: Burlesque bumping-and-grinding is portrayed as a totally artistically fulfilling end unto itself, an artform that looks almost wholesome as well as glitzy, an approach inspired, no doubt, by the then-popularity of the Pussycat Dolls. “Given that she spends much of the movie onstage, singing and dancing in what is essentially a succession of music videos linked with backstage filler,” wrote the New York Times in 2010, “Ms. Aguilera doesn’t have much time to embarrass herself.”

“Under the Cherry Moon”

Prince was so hot after 1984’s "Purple Rain" that it would have taken a bomb of atomic proportions to effectively end his film career. Which is, of course, exactly what happened with 1986’s "Under the Cherry Moon" (although his movie canon did anticlimactically limp on after that with one more release, 1990’s arguably even more unwatchable "Graffiti Bridge"). What could go wrong with a period piece that was shot in color but released in black and white… in which Prince did almost no on-screen singing… and which he directed himself after the original helmer quit? The star managed to scoop up awards for Worst Actor, Worst Director, and Worst Original Song at the Golden Raspberry Awards, where the film also collected the top Worst Picture trophy. As the New York Times wrote: “For all those out there who can't get enough of Prince, 'Under the Cherry Moon' may be just the antidote.”

“Glitter”

Not gold, as they say. Carey’s feature film debut grossed just a little over $4 million upon its release in 2001 and won Golden Raspberry award for Worst Actress and for Worst Couple (for her cleavage). In 2005, the film was given a Razzie for “Worst ‘Musical’ of Our First 25 Years.” On IMDB.com, it is listed as #26 on the site’s list of the bottom 100 movies, as voted by users. “Carey seems most concerned about keeping her lips tightly sealed like a kid with braces,” wrote the Village Voice, “and when she tries for an emotion—any emotion— she looks as if she's lost her car keys." No wonder that Mariah had to thoroughly disguise herself, in "Precious", to ever get a real break on the big screen again.

“Obsessed”

After a starring role in "Dreamgirls", Beyonce’s movie career took a sudden downward turn with this turkey of a suspense thriller. It did gross $68 million, proving that Bey is still a selling point, despite the awful reviews and not-great word-of-mouth. She played the dutiful wife in a good-couple-versus-psycho triangle that was a lot like the one in "Fatal Attraction", except for the cop-out that had the husband never even sleeping with his stalker. At least it afforded the chance to have Beyonce participate in a climactic catfight with Ali Larter, which won them trophies for Best Fight at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, even as the Golden Raspberries nominated her in this bland role for Worst Actress.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

When you think of the great narrative operas of our time, you think of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. Actually, you don’t—the Fab Four’s 1967 masterwork was as loosely defined as concept albums get, if it even qualified as that. But that didn’t stop someone from thinking a movie version was a swell idea, with the unrelated songs somehow telling such a fabulous story that additional dialogue wasn’t even necessary. For the Bee Gees, who’d spent a lot of their career being compared to the Beatles, stepping into those iconic uniforms couldn’t have been a more terrible idea. “As for the Bee Gees' acting talents,” wrote Leonard Maltin, “if you can't say something nice..." Having Peter Frampton as the fourth Bee Gee didn’t help, nor did incongruous appearances by Aerosmith, Steve Martin, and Billy Preston. Said the New York Times, “The movie may have been conceived in a spirit of merriment, but watching it feels like playing shuffleboard at the absolute insistence of a bossy shipboard social director… This isn't a movie, it's a business deal set to music.”

“Shanghai Surprise”

Weighing this and other flops like "Who’s That Girl?", Madonna biographer Andrew Morton wrote that her big-screen disasters “do not seem to have caused much soul-searching in Madonna. It may be that she suffers a lack of critical faculty when it comes to judging her own acting performances, something suggested by her almost invariable preference for first takes of her scenes.” It’s tough to pick a Madonna movie that is hardest to sit through, when "Body of Evidence" and "Swept Away" are also in the running. But this one seems to hold a special, painful place in people’s hearts, partly because she played a virginal missionary. But its specialness lies mostly in the fact that it was one of the few times Madonna allowed herself to be paired with an equally iconic lead, Sean Penn. And rather than rooting for the bickering couple to finally realize their love for one another, rom-com-style, you spend the entire movie rooting for the real-life couple to divorce.

“Crossroads”

She was not a girl, not yet a movie star. Given its disastrous reputation, it’s amazing to recall that "Crossroads" actually grossed $37 million in America, or about three times what Mariah Carey’s equally ill-remembered "Glitter" did. But its effect on her reputation was so toxic (sorry) that she hasn’t starred in a film in the 11 years since. Time magazine named the drama one of the 10 worst chick flicks of all time. But that girl power—in a film about some gals taking a cross-country drive—did work out okay in helping establish careers for some of the other people on the project, like costar Zoe Saldana and screenwriter Shonda Rhimes. Anyway, Spears didn’t come away empty-handed from her short-lived feature film career: she won Golden Raspberries for both Worst Actress and Worst Song (“I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”).

“Hearts of Fire”

If you’re looking for a DVD of Dylan’s last major acting role, spare the effort. It’s never been released on any post-VHS format, and we can only presume that Dylan took out a second mortgage on his Malibu compound just to buy and bury this musical drama, which was released overseas in 1987 and eventually went direct-to-video in America three years later. It didn’t help that the misbegotten project had a name director, Richard Marquand ("Return of the Jedi") and even bigger-name screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas ("Basic Instinct"). Or that Dylan contributed three new recordings for the soundtrack—which (surprise) only ever came out on vinyl. Dylan doesn’t get the girl, played by the long-forgotten pop singer Fiona, as he ends up playing third wheel and losing her to the hetero charms of Rupert Everett, whom he punches out at one point.

“The Fastest Guitar Alive”

The gentle-spirited Caruso of rock & roll has a gun attached to his acoustic guitar neck! "In case you're interested, I can kill you with this and play your funeral march at the same time," he informs an adversary. If it had made sense to put Elvis in Westerns, someone thought it would work for Orbison, too, but this campy 1968 release was his only starring role, since, shorn of his trademark shades, he didn’t have much chemistry with the camera or his co-stars.

“Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”

The host of the Grammys had his own often ignoble screen career before landing a spot on "NCIS: Los Angeles". He was shark bait in the laughable but underrated "Deep Blue Sea", and went on to have a mixed carer that ranged from "Any Given Sunday" to "Deliver Us From Eva". But his humblest acting moment may have been his small role in the seventh Halloween movie, where at least, unlike Kelly Rowland in her horror-movie franchise role, he survived. You didn’t think the guy who knocks out home intruders with his bare hands was going to allow himself to be taken down by a mere Michael Myers, did you?

“Door-to-Door Maniac,” a.k.a. “Five Minutes to Live”

He’s going to murder you… but first, psychopathic Johnny Cash is going to sing to you! There may be no better example of casting against type for a figure who would go on to be beloved by tens of millions of Americans, unless it’s Ronald Reagan as a mobster in “The Killers.” Cash would write in his memoirs about how hopped up he was on pills in those days, and you can believe it in his wired performance as a merciless sociopath in this lurid, no-budget, 1961 potboiler.