Bad movies far outnumber the good, but to earn the title "worst film of all time" you've gotta really smut it up, leaving viewers feeling forever unclean by taking trash cinema to the bottom of the heap.
As far as I can tell The Lonely Lady isn't quite that bad, since it doesn't include gratuitous gore, racism, animal abuse or any of the other trashy elements filmmakers love to include to shock the audience.
But the film does include Pia Zadora as an aspiring screenwriter who gets literally and figuratively screwed by showbiz, and Ray Liotta appears as a rapist in one of his first roles.
According to Christian McLaughlin of Dangerous Minds The Lonely Lady is smutty enough to make audiences feel dirty after watching, but his grandma actually bought him a ticket to the movie back in '83 so how bad can it be?
Now, nearly 34 years after its initial release in theaters, The Lonely Lady is available on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory so you can decide for yourself whether it truly is "the worst film of all time".
But, in case you're still wondering what to expect, here's a taste:
8. Pia’s brilliant writer character is named “Jerilee Randall.” Jerilee Randall!
7. Jerilee’s attempt to get her indecently too-old, impotent and obscenely hairy-backed husband hard by cooing “Gently, gently”.
6. Instead of the luscious bi-sexy babes of Cinemax, the lesbos here are all repulsive predatory gargoyles, like the long-breasted bikini-clad matron in the hot tub who purrs the horrendously looped pick-up line “It’s wonderfully relaxing!”
5. The lesbian Italian movie star (who tricks Jerilee into a threesome with her toad of a husband) is cross-eyed, but her nipples point in different directions, too.
4. Post-threesome, Jerilee is so disgusted with herself she showers with her clothes on and promptly suffers a nervous breakdown.
3. The best nervous breakdown scene EVER, in which the keys of Jerilee’s typewriter become the faces of her tormentors, before rising from the keyboard into a swirl of mocking sound-bytes and cheesy shattering optical effects.