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Misty Rowe in Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976), a disrespected, low-budget film about the beginning of Marilyn Monroe’s career. (2.9 at IMDb)

That’s pretty much a typical IMDb rating in the career of auteur Larry Buchanan, who directed 12 films rated below 4.0 at IMDb. He made another, even worse Marilyn Monroe film about a decade later (Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn) which used footage from this one in telling about the end of MM’s career.

When Buchanan died in 2004, the NY Times obit read, “One quality united Mr. Buchanan’s diverse output: It was not so much that his films were bad; they were deeply, dazzlingly, unrepentantly bad. His work called to mind a famous line from H.L. Mencken, who, describing President Warren G. Harding’s prose, said, ‘It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.’”