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Rider wrote:

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Before this thread devolves into arguing about the word classic let's just define it as this:

If you are sitting in a room full of 20 movies buffs and said the following line "I don't like film X", if 18 out of the 20 will turn around and look at you like you have 5 heads and start to lecture you then we can define it as a classic for the purposes of this thread....

An opinion that would raise eyebrows in a roomful of movie buffs. Okay. Well, to start with, I wouldn't trust the reaction a roomful of HORROR fans, since they tend to run wild and in packs and at any given time are likely to be in full cry after a movie with little or no following in the outside world. So I'll assume a crowd of general movie fans, and probably not college-educated ones graduates; ordinary joes, so to speak.

As a means of triangulating my tastes in movies, I'll begin with the opposite of what was requested: admitting to liking movies I'm not supposed to, according to the collective wisdom. So let me say straightway that I found Exorcist II was more exciting than Exorcist I, Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein more meaningful than Coppola's Dracula, and Gus Van Sant's Psycho more interesting than Hitchcock's; Nomads the best horror movie of its decade, Catwoman the best comic book movie of all time, and Dune the only real sf movie ever.

To hate a movie is a rare reaction for me, which I'd never thought about until I ran across one I truly did hate, in the same way I'd hate a person. Before that, when I used the word I only meant I thought the movie was poor. I've hated the EXPERIENCE of some movies (e.g. Hellbound) because they were doing something to me I didn't like having done (in the example named, being pummeled in the face). But hating a film for its personality rather than its method or object is something else again.

About 20 years ago, there came out a fantasy called Photographing Fairies, a fable or allegory on either child or adolescent sexuality (I can't remember the children's exact ages) as symbolized by a fairy tree. I couldn't deny that it was more intelligently worked out than almost any other fantasy of recent years; and I loathed it. The leading character had a pinched, icy personality that seemed to seep into everything in the movie, even the fairies that represented carnal desires. But I was able to watch it through.

Memento, I couldn't. In fact I switched it off as soon as the credits started; I knew IMMEDIATELY I was going to detest it. I told myself that was impossible, and kept going; but as soon as the first actors appeared I saw I was right, and endured five or ten minutes of it before switching it off again. The repugance it aroused in me was so thorough that I drove it right back to the video store; I couldn't stand to have it pollute my home any further. The reasons for my repulsion were less clear to me than with Photographing Fairies, but one of them was its extreme youthfulness. It was about Alzheimer's, disguised as something else; and it was a young person's view of it, insensitive, inexperienced, ignorant, and arrogant. Its view of adult characters was also that of youth, brash and cocksure and believing it's doing something new and original that other people have done before. And the movie had Joe Pantoliano in it, which would have been enough in itself.

By mischance I've ended up seeing all of the director's other films except Insomnia (of which I'd seen the Swedish or Norwegian original, which was his kind of movie already), and the only one from which I derived some enjoyment in his second Batman movie, unpleasant as it was, because--what I couldn't believe his fans didn't notice--it was an unfinished movie, as if Heath Ledger's death had interrupted production, so that the director couldn't finish off the scenes according to his wont: all to the better, because for the first time some life came through! It's as if he presses his materials like butterflies and imprisons them in a scrapbook, but this time he didn't have the chance. It could be that the movie was more finished than I think but thrown askew by the force of Ledger's performance--not that it was good, but it drew one's attention, like a road accident. The director's last movie, Inception, I saw some of because I was catching up on the Oscar nominees, but either the premise or its exposition was so garbled trying to concentrate on it was like translating an unknown tongue, and I tuned out.

So, I don't exactly hate the movies mentioned below; I just dislike them and find them of virtually no interest.
Sometimes the dislike extends to almost an entire career, as with Brian de Palma, David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, James Cameron, Tim Burton, and Frank Miller.

As for individual movies:

The Cat and the Canary (the original)--Supposed to be a cornerstone of the genre, but to me it seems a mess. Leni's other American movies are efficiently controlled; this one looks as if had been cut about a lot. The mood swings back and forth from creepiness to overplayed comedy, and the sense of the play is lost. It isn't a great play, but The Bat is a worse one, yet the sound version of it makes a suspenseful, exciting film.

The Old Dark House (the original)--Supposed to be one of James Whale's masterpieces, but it isn't really funny or suspenseful and it has nowhere to go. To me its main interest lies in the set design.

Bride of Frankenstein--Supposed to be Whale's other masterpiece, but it's a horror movie most of which isn't scary and isn't intended to be, and there's 'WAY too much of Dr. Pretorius, who throws the balance of the story off. Also, literalist that I am, the prologue bothers me because what follows is nothing like what Mary Shelley wrote or imagined.

The Wolf Man (the original)--Supposed to be one of the classic Universal monster movies, but it seems to me to trail far behind Werewolf of London in suspense, Gothic atmosphere, drama, or anything else. Square script, square actors, square design, and an unbelievable monster. As Ivan Butler pointed out, the wolf man doesn't look anything like a wolf, and nobody would have taken him for one even in the dark. The saving grace is Maria Ouspenskaya, but it's sad to see a great actress having descended so far.

The Uninvited--Supposed to be one of the classic ghost movies, and based on a suspenseful novel with a vivid setting, but the movie has a plastic a studio look and the ghost is unconvincing compared to those in e.g. A Christmas Carol or Topper.

Phantom of the Opera (40s)--Supposed to be a remake that holds its own against the original, but it's all boring opera melodrama, and if you blink you miss the phantom (now just a guy with acid scars) altogether.

Creature from the Black Lagoon--Does anybody really like this?

War of the Worlds (the original)--Supposed to be one of George Pal's best, but although the scenes with the ships and the ETs are evocative, most of it is flat and undramatic.

Les Diaboliques (the original)--Supposed to be the ne plus ultra of Clouzot's dark thrillers. I'm not unappreciative of his talent; Wages of Fear, imo among others', is the greatest suspense film ever made. But this movie, I just don't get. I understand that the characters aren't supposed to be likable, but to me they aren't interesting either, and I'm neither surprised by nor involved in what they do. Both of the remakes were bad, and some of the many imitations, but I got more from all of them than from the original.

Peeping Tom--Supposed to be a once unfairly despised but now recognized great film. To me its style is ugly, garish, and old-fashioned, and its story obvious and prolonged. The DVD comes with a documentary that explains why we're supposed to like it; I got the idea that it may be based on theoretical reasons more than actual enjoyment.

Brides of Dracula--Supposed to be maybe the best Hammer horror of all. Of the first wave, it's one of only two I saw in a theatre at the time, so I always wanted it to be thought as significant as possible; but on seeing it again I realized it's only half there. The producer liked it, the director didn't, and that pretty well sums up the problem: production values overwhelm a half-baked script. The movie has found a kind of political support in some quarters because the actor playing the vampire was gay; but to me, now, the sensibility he puts across is definitely bisexual, as the story somewhat indicates, whereas Christopher Lee as Dracula suggests a deeply closeted queen.

The Haunting (the original)--Supposed to be THE classic ghost movie. In my 20s and 30s I used to cite this as my favorite horror film. But when I'd seen it on first release,  having just read the novel, my reaction was: so what? I thought the movie had reduced a uniquely eerie book to a mostly formula movie. Later, after the memory of the novel had faded, I came to admire the movie on its own terms; but when it came out on DVD I again read the novel beforehand, and again found the movie a letdown. I don't hate it; the photography is nice and Richard Johnson gives a very sound performance; but it's basically an uninteresting treatment of an unconventional work.

The Saragossa Manuscript--Supposed to be a great, once-forgotten, but now revived Polish epic, which I'd wanted to see it for years because of the laudatory review in CoF. Warning: NEVER see a movie after decades of pining for it and expect it to live up to expectations. SG looks great, and if I'd seen a collection of stills from it I'd have moved heaven and earth to see it. But its visual and dramatic style is heavily theatrical, with every nuance underscored, and it literally put me to sleep; later I rented it on video, and it put me to sleep again. The director made only one other movie in the same vein, Hourglass Sanatorium----and it also put me to sleep. HOWEVER, the movies did steer me to their literary originals, which are very much worth reading. The Saragossa Manuscript is a brilliant picaresque extravaganza, sometimes digressing for tales and tales within tales; rather like The Arabian Nights, only readable.

Kwaidan--Supposed to be another of the great ghost movies. I first saw it in my teens, thought it was so obviously studio-set that it never allowed me to suspend disbelief; seeing it again more recently, I still thought the same. It seemed like the work of an aging director, and an aging industry.
 
The Wicker Man (the original)--Supposed to be a great, deep horror film. Maybe you had to be there at the time. The story is one of those one-way streets that are obvious from the beginning; the filmmaking has the kind of 70s flair that looks very mannered now; Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland stick out like sore thumbs; and the music sounds like the product of academic research, which it was, rather than any kind of indigenous music.

Clash of the Titans (the original)--Supposed to be Harryhausen's crowning achievement, but I saw it at the time, and it looked sad; saw it again after seeing the messy but REALLY COOL remake, and it still looks sad. It was a cheap, faltering effort by old guys to latch onto a new wave of fantasy movies and moviegoers; and nothing in it works. ...Just sad.

Gods and Monsters--Supposed to be very good, I guess; McKellen is the whole movie, and he can hold the camera. But I hated several of the ideas that went into it. First of all, it was a crock, a totally fabricated story, being offered to an audience who knew nothing about Whale as if it were gospel. And then McK. himself, publicizing the movie, said, "At last a movie tells the truth about the gay lifestyle." It's about as much that as Sunset Boulevard is the truth about the straight lifestyle! It's the truth--or, actually, a myth--about a Hollywood has-been cloistered from reality. I also was mad with it because it robbed Brendan Fraser, the only other actor in it with a notable role, of his one big scene by favoring McK. all the way through. But my main complaint was that like some other movies (e.g. Dreamchild, the movie about Lewis Carroll) it showed a psychological reaction to a well-known work, Bride of Frankenstein, that was false to what it was, and what the experience of it was, especially to its creator. I could describe what I mean more clearly, but this description will do; either a person will be onto things like this or he won't.

The Sixth Sense--Supposed to be good, but telegraphed its surprise ending in the first reel (to anyone who grew up on Twilight Zone) so that the viewer was left with not much to do beyond observing ways in which the movie cheated, and had to contort its script out of shape to conceal its secret.

I do understand how people can fail to guess what seems blindingly obvious in a movie; I often do, myself. For instance, The 13th Floor begins with a character in a VR construct sneaking a note out that reads, "The world isn't real! The world isn't real!" to which the recipients respond: Why's he bothering to tell us that?, we KNOW his world isn't real, what a maroon. Given this elephantine hint, the smallest child should be able to leap to the obvious correct conclusion immediately; but I had to sit through the whole thing to have it unfolded for me. The Others had a story I HAD ONCE WRITTEN MYSELF--identical clues, identical ending--and I STILL didn't guess it. What it is, I'm sure, is that most movies are so dumb and so far divorced from reality we have to put ourselves in idle to watch them and are only half paying attention.

Silence of the Lambs--Oscar winner for Best Picture. So-so story, like all of this author's, but a botch as a movie, compared against e.g. Hannibal, directed by Ridley Scott, who can direct a suspense movie. The director of SL can't. For one reason, he's geographically illiterate: in the scenes where Jodie Foster has to stay behind a certain line while talking to Anthony Hopkins, you can't tell when she is and when she isn't; when she's traversing dark spaces, you have no idea where she is or where she has to get. It's just an inept job.

The Ring (American)--Supposed to be better than its Japanese model, but goes in wrong directions throughout: the forest of tv antennas, the mild suggestiveness of the video, the Addams Family children, the horse(!), and the use of a large-screen tv for the climax, so that the ghost only has to step through. Not to mention the make-up on the ghost itself.

Return of the King--Oscar winner for Best Picture. As an old-time Tolkien fan I was totally, enjoyably immersed in the world of the first two LOTRs, especially the second, but this one threw me out almost at once, and 15 minutes into it I felt like I was at a Star Trek movie, with characters I'd seen before doing what I'd seen them do before, and wanted to leave; and very seldom did the movie win me back. It seemed like a whole series of wrong choices, with no deeper meaning or character payoff at the end.

Black Swan--Oscar nominee for Best Picture. All dancers are crazy, but in a specifi way, which this movie misses. Every other movie or tv show about dancers pictures them as they are; in this one they seem a lot more like actresses--but not very good ones, since they're impersonated by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. (Who is this Kunis person? She's now being marketed as the new Vanessa Hudgens or somebody, but to me she looks like a #%$+. Which was what's supposed to be in BL, so she wasn't entirely misplaced.) The biggest problem with this movie is, you know from the beginning the main character is delusional, and where do you go from there?

One distraction, in a story about the disintegration of a  personality that features crazy girl in big close-ups much of the time, is that the actress has obviously undergone a few facial improvements and the aging actress playing crazy girl's crazy mom has undergone a lot; so they already look like they're falling apart, literally. This was even more true of Nicole Kidman in The Stepford Wives and the most recent Invasion of the Body Snatchers-- which also had actors using obviously fake American accents, so that the real humans seemed as artificial as the alien imitations.

...And I'm sure there have been more.

Rick wrote:

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...you're entitled to your opinions, but I have to wonder why in the world you even bother to spend time on a board such as this one. 

Okay, then I won't.