The 5 Crappiest Movies Filmed in Toronto

5. Short Circuit 2
Whereas the original 1986 Short Circuit—also filmed in Toronto—was surprisingly successful, and had a compelling plot in a U.S. military robot that gains intelligence and escapes after “short-circuiting”, Short Circuit 2 catches up with the same robot several years later. He is embroiled in a gangster storyline as he struggles to fit in with human society, and it doesn’t get better than how that sounds.
This movie suffers from a lot of the same problems that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace received criticism for several years later: too much focus on animatronics/technology and too little plot, as well as some weird racist allusions with Fisher Stevens in brown-face depicting a South Asian character. But while Phantom has created a legacy for itself, Short Circuit 2 simply “short-circuited” the franchise, seeing as it’s been completely forgotten.

4. Humongous
It seems like the director of 1982’s Humongous was a real horror fan, because it’s got everything: an apparently deserted island, a man-eating monster picking characters off one at a time, blood and guts flying everywhere, and girls in bathing suits running around. But it seems like the director was trying to do too much with too little, because it’s safe to say the movie has no focus; there’s no glue holding the movie together. It’s hard to tell what the audience should be feeling at any given moment, and the terrible acting only adds to this confusion. The movie currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I can’t argue against that.

3. Deadly Eyes
Humongous wasn’t the only crap movie filmed in Toronto in 1982, as this year also produced a man-eating giant rat movie. Deadly Eyes received a significantly higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes, around 20%. But just consider that the giant rats in the movie aren’t rats, but are actually costumed dachshunds. Just let that sink in.
Something else to consider is that the movie was directed by Robert Clouse, also known for directing the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon in 1973. Oh wait, yep, also a crap movie. Nice martial arts but not so heavy on plot or much else, and the same can be said about Deadly Eyes (minus the martial arts).

2. Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century
In any discussion of campy Toronto-filmed horror movies, 1977’s Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century has to be acknowledged. It feels like a bad, under-budgeted Japanese monster movie except the film is very openly set in Canada; specifically Toronto, Newfoundland, and Niagara Falls. This movie is terrible, with overuse of blue-screen, bad acting, and a bad script, but it’s also incredible. To think that Toronto created something like this… well, it’s something else.
Fun fact: Yeti was released in 1977—the year the Blue Jays became an MLB team—so watch for a pointlessly long scene where a crowd waves Blue Jays hats at the camera. Why is this scene in the movie? Perhaps ’s director was given money by the team or the league to endorse them, but that information has been long lost to the sands of time.

1. The Love Guru
All other movies on this list have some endearing qualities from cute robots and sorta-cute giant rats to bad/low budget special effects and yetis and, while they’re terrible, I’d recommend you watch all of them. They’re pure joy in a lot of ways, but Mike Myers’ 2008 film The Love Guru is on a different level of bad.
It has the typical fart/poop jokes you expect in a Myers movie, but nothing about this movie is funny. It manages to offend African-Americans, French-Canadians, women, dwarves, Aboriginals, and even Hindus. The final group was, I think, a particularly bad decision considering that the movie is openly set in Toronto, which has a large and growing population of Indian-Canadians. It’s a really flawed concept for a movie in 2008, and I really wonder why no one took Myers aside and pointed this out to him. In any case, no one did, and Myers’s career hasn’t recovered since.
But is The Love Guru really that bad? Really, this all sounds memorably bad on paper, but watching the movie, all I felt was boredom, because 95% of the jokes fell flat. And I actually think that’s a distinct insult in and of itself. It’s also weird considering the pool of comedy talent in this film: John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Jim Gaffigan, Kanye West, and Ben Kingsley are just a few featured actors. It’s amazing how bad and unfunny it turned out.