There's nothing bad about the phrase "it was a dark and stormy night" per se. However, that's not the full opening line. What follows is the most abysmally convoluted sentence imaginable:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."^[0]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Clifford

And the opening paragraph gets worse from there, something about lighting his pipe with a "promethean torch." Whether it's a change in tastes over the years, or a continuing annoyance is subject to debate, but the general style is called "Purple Prose".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose

Tastes have changed, largely because media have changed. Back in the day, there were no movies, video games, TV, or radio. Novels were the only form of personal, portable, escapist entertainment (aside from opium, I suppose). As such, they were very "visual." Readers enjoyed long bouts of description. It helped to set the scene.

Sample some mass-market Victorian fiction, and you'll find a lot of openers like that one. The style is anachronistic today, though it survives in some genres, and it has its famous practitioners. (George R.R. Martin is about as purple as they come.)

That's not unduly convoluted for Victorian English. It's mostly concrete language that sets up a scene pretty well. I'd say it isn't half bad, and surely not the worst opening sentence of any English novel. There has to be some other reason why it acquired that status.

If you're familiar with Victorian writing styles, including "Purple Prose," then Bulwer-Lytton is merely an example of the era in much the same way as Shakespeare is an example of his era of Modern English.

Charles Shculz, the creator of the Peanuts comic, regularly poked fun at Bulwer-Lytton's "It was a dark and stormy night..." until it became a running joke. Since Peanuts was published for nearly 50 years, the joke was well known.

The Bulwer-Lytton writing contest started quite a long time ago (80's) at San Jose State University, but I remember it was originally called a "Bad Writing Contest." Some support for my failing meatware memory can be found here:

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about.html

The only fashion that never goes out of style is poking fun at past fashions.

I don't think it's bad on its own, it's just cliched. I think its frequent use in the "Peanuts" comic brought it to widespread anti-fame.

To me, starting a story (or movie) in the middle a giant fight scene, and then jumping "12 hours earlier" is the contemporary equivalent lazy opening. It just means you're not trying, you're relying on convention to create drama.

The lazy equivalent is waking up from a bad dream