15 Worst Movies That Somehow Won Oscars

10. The Greatest Show On Earth (1952)

Won For: Best Picture, Best Story

There is no sense in diminishing what Cecile B Demille did for Hollywood - and probably no way to do it even if you were inclined. He was a protected legend, the inventor of blockbusters who made some of Tinseltown's first great epics. Sadly, he also made The Greatest Show On Earth, which looks even worse in proximity with the likes of Cleopatra.

The Greatest Show On Earth is another exercise in excess, a lavish celebration of circuses the same way Cars and Cars 2 feel like personal tributes to muscle cars and racing by John Lasseter that we were all duped into watching too. It's effectively like watching a soap play out under the big top, knitted together barely by the thinnest plot as talent is squandered all over the place by a lack of focus and an uncharacteristic absence of directing control.

There's some pleasure to be had in the pageantry, but ultimately the substance simply isn't there to match it and for a title like that, for the end result to be dull is just criminal.