I was listening to The Flop House podcast on the way home yesterday, and one of the hosts mentioned that "Nothing But Trouble" was the first movie he saw as a kid in the theater where he realized movies could be bad. Up until that point, every single movie was amazing...even the bad ones weren't "bad" until he looked at them when he got older.

I saw a lot of bad movies when I was a kid, but I didn't think of them as "bad" until later....and even then I've got so much nostalgia for them that I'll still rewatch them. "Superman IV", "Condorman", "Dune", "Howard the Duck" all come to mind. I think the first time as a kid that I walked out of the theater and knew I had just seen a terrible piece of crap was probably "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", and I was already 15 by that point. I don't know why it took that long for my critical faculties to kick in.

Do you remember the first movie you saw that you instantly knew was terrible?

I honestly don't remember, but I didn't get to go to the movies much as a kid, so it was pretty selective. I doubt I saw anything really bad until the advent of home video. Nothing But Trouble certainly wasn't the first bad movie I ever saw, but it ranks to this day as the worst one I've ever seen.

Our parents took us to see Rex Harrison's Doctor Doolittle (1967). I was 10, but I remember not liking it. Except for the pushmi-pullyu.

Star Trek V.

Somewhat traumatic for me as a young Trekkie, simultaneously realizing that not only could movies be bad, but that Star Trek could be bad as well (I had never really engaged my critical faculties with Trek before).

We went to Hawaii for vacation in 1989 the month Star Trek V came out. I read the novelization on the plane because I thought I wouldn't get to see it. One day when my parents were shopping, I went by myself to this huge theater in Waikiki that had a balcony section. I was the only person in the theater, and I leaning over the edge of the balcony just loving every single minute of it.

(I can't imagine letting my 15 year old kid wander around a strange city on foot by themselves today. )

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was a bad movie

Anyway, my answer is Superman IV. That was the first bad movie that made an impression on me of being bad, that I can remember.

My brother used to take me to the movies all the time when I was a kid (he's 8 years older than me). I had the option of seeing either Superman IV or RoboCop, which was really no choice at all. If there's a new Superman movie out, you go see Superman! He audibly groaned, because he knew it would suck.

I know it now, but at the time, it was awesome.

Superman IV was a weird little thing that to me almost seemed not to really exist. I never saw a trailer for it or commercials for it on TV. It never played at all at the nearest theaters (my small town was 30 miles away from the nearest movie screen). None of the businesses in town that rented VHS tapes ever stocked it. It was never the ABC Sunday Night Movie, which seemed to have the first two Superman movies in regular rotation and the third to a lesser extent.

The only way I even knew that it really existed was because of a few articles Starlog magazine ran on it. I never did see it until I rented it in college about 7 years after it came out.

Batman (Adam West); I wanted Batman to be dark and serious.
But subsequent Batman movies gave me a new love of my previously hated Batman,
just like Man of Steel caused me to love the previously hated Superman Returns.

The most traumatic event of my childhood was when my parents refused to let me stay up past my 9pm bedtime to watch Superman: The Movie on ABC's Sunday Night movie.

Man, that was such a weekly staple back then....the Superman flicks, the James Bond movies, the first couple Star Treks, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom, and so many others. Nowadays, I don't even remember the last time one of the big 3 networks showed a movie on any night of the week.

I used to love Shock Theater, so probably probably some old B horror or sci-f movie.

I grew up loving the first hour of all the old Bond movies. I don't think I saw the conclusion of You Only Live Twice until I was 20 or so.

I turned 16 in 1981, and started going to the drive-in pretty regularly, it would be something from that year.

Ha. We spent our childhoods thinking that the dirty movies at the drive-in were really dirty movies. Then we snuck in as teenagers and realized they were just really shitty movies that showed boobs now and then.

The first Star Trek movie. It was a love/hate thing. SO happy to see them again, but it was a retread plot, with non-interesting and disposable secondary leads (one of whom was revealed to be a pedophile much later, but I didn't like him even then). Plus it was boooorrrrring. The fan-wank fly-around of the ship was just the start. I still haven't seen it in its entirety since.

The Man With The Golden Gun. I was a big Bond fan and had been really excited to see a Bond Kung Fu movie, since all the Bruce Lee movies were X rated and so impossible for me to see in the days before home video.

And it was just shit. I was 11 or 12 or so, and I remember thinking 'Wow, this is just shit'. I was a sponge for any and everything 'super-hero' at the time, so they had to go pretty far down the shit scale to get me to react that way. To this day, I have still not seen it again. ,

This is crazy, but mine is also "Nothing But Trouble". It's the first time I can remember thinking, "God, this is awful. How did they not realize how bad this is?"

Yes.
My first naked boobie movie was actually a good one.
Body Heat with a young Kathleen Turner.

Poltergeist 2....it was the only time I had a strong urge to walk out of the theater. .

It was an anthology movie (along the lines of Stephen Kings's Cat's Eye) called Deadtime Stories (1986). Worst thing I'd ever seen and walk-out bad.

It had Nick from Family Ties in a starring role.

When I was a kid, my Dad took me, my sister, and our grandmother to see "Annie." No big surprise why, especially considering that the woman I called "Nana" was named "Anne." But I was bored to tears by the movie and I vaguely remember scampering around the balcony room where the movie was showing. I sincerely hope that I didn't ruin the movie for Dad and Nana...