Prize-Winning Turkey

Only once in a blue moon does a movie come along that is so awful, so truly without redeeming qualities that it enters the elite category of films that are so bad they're must-sees. Ever since John Travolta's howler Battlefield Earth thudded into cinemas back in 2000, directors have been vying with each other to produce the next entrant into this particular hall of fame and with the release of Killing Me Softly, Chinese director Chen Kaige has succeeded where so many others have failed. Suspicions that this 'erotic thriller' starring Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham might be a turkey of epic proportions first surfaced back in Spring when it was rumoured that the studios were contemplating going straight to video. Thankfully for cheese-loving cinemagoers the world over, someone somewhere at MGM decided to go for a theatrical release in Europe. Sir, we applaud you. With the sole exception of the Independent's film critic, who complained that, 'The movie didn't attain the level of epic awfulness I'd been promised,' UK reviewers have for once agreed together that Killing Me Softly is comfortably one of the worst films ever made. Empire's reviewer told you that 'you'd be mad to miss it.' Here are just some of the others. * Turkeys don't come plumper than this. It's a jaw-dropping catastrophe of a movie, a gruesome multiple pile-up of reputations.* Guardian A hilarious dud. The Evening Standard *With miscast leads, banal dialogue and an absurdly overblown climax, "Killing Me Softly" belongs firmly in the so-bad-it's-good camp. * BBC This couldn't be funnier if it was actually played for laughs. The Telegraph This is tripe with lashings of gratuitous nudity. The Times To reserve your seat immediately for 100 minutes of butt-clenching, teeth-grinding, ludicrous love-making cinematic history.