Allegedly, the worst movie ever made
"Allegedly" because it wasn't released, but it's legend has only grown since 1972.The lead actor? Jerry Lewis, who had grown annoyed at his "snubbing" by the Academy and decided to make a film so dramatic, so powerful, that he could no longer be ignored.
The film was The Day the Clown Cried.
The plot, incredibly, is this: "a circus clown imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp." At the end of the film, the clown leads children to the gas chamber, distracting them on the way by entertaining them. The clown is so distraught that he follows the children into the gas chamber.
Well.
In the Wikipedia entry, actor Harry Shearer (who saw a rough cut in 1979, said this: [It would be as] if you flew down to Tijuana and suddenly saw a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz. You'd just think, 'My god, wait a minute!'
The original script, written by Joan O'Brien and Charles Denton, was changed substantially by Lewis, gutting the film of much of its meaning.
Lewis said the film would never be released, given the amount of ridicule, but he did donate footage of unedited scenes and sound reels to the Library of Congress with the stipulation they not be publicly available until June 2024.
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