This Is the Worst Movie of the 1960s

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Many different genres of movies were popular in the 1960s, including historical epics, westerns, spy dramas, crime capers, and comedies. It was the decade that gave us the first James Bond movies — starring the recently deceased Sean Connery — and the spaghetti westerns of Clint Eastwood.

Movies of the 60s also responded to political and social currents. There was “Dr. Strangelove,” a dark comedy about nuclear war, and “Easy Rider,” about the hippie culture.

No particular genre dominates our list of the worst movies of the 1960s. There’s something for everybody — or perhaps nobody, as it’s a list of worsts — including action, adventure, comedy, and horror. There are a few surprises, however.

There are two Bond movies, and that franchise is still going, although “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” starred George Lazenby, who was considered a poor choice compared to Sean Connery.

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Even great directors can make bad movies, and Alfred Hitchcock has two on the list — “Torn Curtain” and “Topaz.” Roger Corman is a cult favorite but he also has two entries — “The Little Shop of Horrors” and “The Raven.” In fact “The Raven” is at the top of the list, despite the star power of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff.

To determine the worst movie of the 1960s, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and Rotten Tomatoes. We created an index based on the average critic rating from Rotten Tomatoes, the average audience rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and the average user rating from IMDb. We only considered feature films with at least 5,000 Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews, 10 Rotten Tomatoes critic reviews, and 10,000 IMDb user reviews. All data is for the most recent period available. Data was collected in February 2021.

The worst movie of the 1960s was The Raven, released in 1963. It was billed as both a horror movie and a comedy. Directed by Roger Corman, it starred Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Hazel Court. In the film, a magician who has been turned into a raven seeks help from a former sorcerer. It may not sound like much of a plot, which is likely among the reasons it is so poorly regarded.

Click here to read about the worst movies of the 1960s.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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