Skepticism

Afternoon Inquisition 9.13

As a longtime fan of MST3K, I have what could be seen as an unhealthy appreciation for terrible movies. I actually want to see Gigli and Catwoman…seriously.

What is your favorite bad movie?

Links to trailers/clips are encouraged.
Thanks to Gabrielbrawley for inspiring this question.

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79 Comments

  1. I used to own Gigli. I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

    I still presently own Manos – Hands of Fate, which is probably the ultimate bad movie. I also own Hercules against the Moon Men: not the MST3K version, but the actual movie. It’s… a little painful at times.

    A bad movie that is truly unwatchable: Psyched by the 4-D Witch. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s about.

    Sorry for the lack of links or trailers, but I’m not sure that I want to spread the curse of some of these =P

  2. Dunno if I’d call it my favourite bad movie, but I’ve always been partial to Deep Blue Sea, to the point where I find myself quoting LL Cool J’s perfect omelette recipe with some regularity. And also Sam Jackson’s departure scene was a running joke with one of my friends for a long time.

  3. @CrimsonBeard: I think I used to have a copy of that (hercules vs the moon men) on vhs, I used to love that move, watched it several times. I had completely forgotten about that one.

  4. Doood, I was at Gigli on opening night baby!

    My favorite bad movie for the longest time was Showgirls but I have since seen Torque, which is non-stop laughs.

  5. I LOVE bad movies! In fact, I’m a member of several MST3K groups and a bad movie group on Yahoo! groups. I’ve seen some real stinkers, most of them obscure. To pick a favorite is extremely difficult. I recently watched Black Angels aka Black Bikers from Hell, a really horrible movie that was so much fun to watch. Just about anything from Ed Wood is a candidate.

    If you want a good movie that parodies bad movies, I highly recommend The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. A truly loving spoof of 1950’s B sci-fi movies. (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0307109/ and http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe9Fs10IIk0 for the trailer)

  6. @Joshua: I guess that depends on what you define as “bad”. From a stand point of acting and screenwriting, it was pretty bad, I mean, Sam Raimi and Co were really trying to make a truly scary horror film and ended up with something a lot more funny than scary. As far as directing skills, it showed Sam’s early promise, and ultimately, the film finds itself under that auspicious category of so bad it’s good. Though, in comparison to the other films listed so far, it is practically Citizen Kane.

  7. Oh, and I kinda liked the film Masters of the Universe (based on the He-Man cartoons of which I was a big fan). And that definitely can be counted as a bad movie.

  8. Oh my! Bad movies are my speciality! How can I pick just one?

    Spoiler alerts abound from here on.

    Critters is amazing and bad. The critters are big fuzzball creatures that are pretty much half mouth. The critters’ language sounds like “MAALAMAALLAMAA,” but it’s subtitled.
    My favourite part:
    A critter: They have weapons.
    Another critter: So what? [Is blown away by a shotgun]
    A critter: Fuck!

    Slither is about some podunk town that becomes infested with alien slugs after a meter impact that turn all fo the people and animals into a one-minded zombie/blob/Dilophosaurus/Rosie O’Donnell creature. In short, they share the same mind, have slugs in their brains, puke acid and eventually assimilate into a big fat man.
    Favourite part:
    A woman is impregnated with thousands of slugs and her perfectly round body (think Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) fills a barn. She says, “Something’s wrong with me,” in a thick drawl minutes before exploding with a tidal wave of sluggies.

    Stay Alive was pure trash, but I loved it. It’s the Luther Burger of movies: It’s terrible, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, in all probability it will kill you and you love every second of it. It’s about a video game that brings Elizabeth Bathory back to life and she kills anyone who dies in the game in a similar way to how their player died. It features more geek culture references than you can shake a stick at and stars Frankie Muniz… what more could you want‽ You want Frankie Muniz to have a name like Swink? Okay. Done. His name’s Swink.
    Favourite part:
    Frankie Muniz yells, “Bitch, that’s cheating!” when Elizabeth Bathory tries to kill him before he dies in the game.

    Pulse tried to be The Ring so hard and failed so much harder. The basic premise is that anything that transmits and collects data (computers, PDAs, cell phones, etc.) provides a conduit for crazy albinos to come into our world and make people explode in a cloud of dust. The only way to stop them is to completely cover the insides of your room with red duct tape. It was never explained how this was found out or why this worked.
    My favourite part:
    The creatures that crawl out of the computers are just Hungarians painted white.

    After much consideration, I would have to say that the worst of my favourite bad movies would have to be…
    DRUMROLL
    Mr. Jingles. This scene captures the essence of how bad it is:
    YouTube (NSFW)
    ‘Nuff said.

    Forgive the Elvis music. I couldn’t find this clip without music.

  9. I don’t know how I missed this thread earlier in the day, but I think it’s tailor-made for me to chime in.

    As a few of you know, I’m something of an expert on one bad film in particular…I have an MA in Film Studies, and I got this MA by writing an 11000 word dissertation on Snakes on a Plane. And, really, it is an enjoyable bad film, though I personally think it will never be the same for anyone who wasn’t there to see it during its first few days in theatres (when all the internet people went).

    That’s not my favorite bad movie, though. I am not sure WHAT is, but I’ve always been an MST3K fan and just about every movie they’ve watched has been simply priceless.

    I have a few particular soft spots. I love Pod People, Manos, Horror of Party Beach, any of the Gamera or Hercules flicks, and Future War.

    But if we’re going for an all-time favorite, I have to say I’m equally split between The Final Sacrifice (featuring Zap Rowsdower, the best and greatest hero of all time), and Space Mutiny, with Santa piloting a space ship made of mostly basement while Big McLargehuge fights off a man named after bath soap and sets a crippled person on fire.

  10. I’m loving this thread, it’s really reminding me of other bad movies that I actually have enjoyed. How could I have forgotten Critters? I mean really. We could also through Leprechaun into the mix. That was particularly bad, and it also was the platform that launched Jennifer Aniston’s career.

  11. My name is KayEssAy, and I watch Mommie Dearest on a weekly basis.

    Whew. Feels good to get that out!

  12. I can’t believe someone hasn’t mentioned “Battlefield Earth”.

    Evil Dead and Critters deserve Oscars by comparison.

  13. reedbraden, I think I’d personally disqualify Slither as a “bad” movie, since it’s an intentionally comedic film. Unless you thought it didn’t work as a comedy, in which case I guess it would be bad.

    As for me, I loved it.

  14. They Live is easily my favorite bad movie. Granted, like Evil Dead, it’s not exactly MST3k bad. But it’s a cinema goldmine of cheesy trash talk. It also has all the hallmarks of the greatest movie ever as foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

    Made in the 80’s: Check
    Features Rowdy Roddy Pipper: Check
    Best Fight Scene Ever: Check -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKFadyJxwg
    Has A Rockin’ Bubblegum Quote: Check -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_K8prLfso

  15. I’d nominate The Killer Shrews. There’s nothing scarier than dogs with shag carpets attached to them.

    I also seem to recall a really bad dubbed japanese movie called Star Man. It had such low quality that many scenes were repeated. The most nonsensical movie I’ve ever seen.

    P.S. I watched Leprechaun a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t bad. The sequels, however ,cannot say the same…

  16. I’m disappointed in you guys.. No one has mentioned any Troma movies yet! Terror Firmer and Tromeo and Juliet are all time favorites!!! Not to mention any of the many Toxic Avenger flicks!

  17. @killyosaur42: Masters of the Universe If you’re talking about the one with Dolph Lundgren, then yes. :P

    Some people have mentioned Critters, but… Critters 3 and 4 were truly abysmal. And I own the box set. :P

    Then there’s Munchies. I don’t know whether to shudder or giggle…

    Oh! And Never to Young to Die! :D

    But I do believe my favourite bad movie is Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. The second coming, with JC fighting lesbian vampires and atheists. :D

    And I like too many MST3K shows to mention. Hmm… *misses movie collection*

  18. @Expatria: I went to Snakes on a Plane opening night with my friends and it was the best movie experience I ever had. When the snakes were let out it was like New Years in the theatre. We then bought the movie so we could keep watching it ala Rocky Horror, but it was just so terrible we could barely get through it once. :)

  19. wow…now i have a whole new list of bad movies to find!

    some of my favorites:
    doomsday
    leprechaun 4
    black christmas
    slither
    the last two were intentionally bad, so i’m not sure they can quite count….still awesomely bad, though.

    if you haven’t seen doomsday, please go find it now. it may be the best bad movie ever. i mean, seriously, the tagline is “humanity has an expiration date” or something to that effect. so completely terribly hilarious.

    keep ’em coming!

  20. Oh, oh….

    1. Mars Needs Women

    2. The Screaming Skull

    3. Monster on the Campus

    4. Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster

  21. Ultraviolet!

    Bad guy: You got hemo blood on me! IT’S ON!!!

    *Camera swirls around dramatically*

    Good guy: Yeah. It is.

  22. Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World

    Terrible film. Awful. The plot is poor. Not nearly as good as the first one. In fact, it ruined the first one.

    But…

    John Rolfe is oddly attractive for a two-dimensional animated character. He’s all… gentlemanly and for some reason this causes me to watch it again and again.

  23. Mars Attacks! 1996. It was an homage to B movies of yesteryear. It was supposed to be an intentionally bad movie filled with big stars that was accidently so bad it became good. Got it?

    Dialogue:

    Martian Translator Device: All green of skin… 800 centuries ago, their bodily fluids include the birth of half-breeds. For the fundamental truth self-determination of the cosmos, for dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.
    General Decker: What the hell does that mean?

    Exactly.

  24. Mission Impossible 3!

    God, is it bad.

    I especially like the last scene, were Tom and “the girl” run toward the cable shot while holding hands.

    I’m not saying he was on a ramp, (because dude’s only three feet tall and they wanted to make it look like they were about the same height), but his knees are pretty much level with the girl’s chest while they’re running.

    HI-stare-ik-all! (With lot’s of Ik).

    rod

  25. Oh God, The Core! Me and my engineering buddies got the DVD and watched it over and over. God, that was just such a ridiculously terribly movie.

    “The core of the Earth has stopped spinning”, indeed.

    But to contribute another one I just remembered, Godzilla: Final War. As a movie, it’s pretty bad, but nonetheless it’s completely awesome. It’s a Godzilla movie as directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, the guy who made Versus. It’s a movie that features an American wrestler who captains a flying submarine with a giant drill on the front who speaks English through the entire thing even though everyone else is speaking Japanese. And also aliens that mind control every monster on Earth, forcing the humans to wake up Godzilla so that he can fight all of them. Which he does. And wins, because he’s freaking Godzilla.

    And then Godzuki shows up to prevent him from turning on the humans. Awesome.

  26. I quite like Spaced Invaders: an alien patrol gets lost and crash-lands on Earth. When their leader is run over by a pick-up truck, the remaining aliens decide that human technology is far too lethal for them, an they must unleash the D.O.D. – the Donut Of Destruction…

  27. @theobroma: Yes, but did you actually enjoy that tripe. I would have thrown out Bloodrayne or House of the Dead, if we were just talking about the worst movies ever made, but I think the question was about bad movies you actually enjoyed watching, not just bad movies.

  28. @Solitas:

    @killyosaur42: Masters of the Universe If you’re talking about the one with Dolph Lundgren, then yes. :P

    yes, yes I am.

  29. @halincoh: I saw Mars Attacks in theaters and later regretted it. The problem with trying to be intentionally bad is it usually fails to create the desired effect. Though I did have a friend in college who argued that what made that film entertaining was the act of watch a whole host of A List Actors fail to create an effective satire.

  30. Night of the Lepus – Huge killer pet-shop type fluffy bunnies, and it also had DeForest Kelley! Can’t beat that!

    And please don’t forget Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

  31. The original Harvey Corman directed Little Shop of Horrors! Featuring a rather young Jack Nicholson (looking a bit like a Jerry Lewis impersonator) as a masochistic dental patient.

  32. I love these things,

    Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula

    Jesse James Vs. Frankensteins Daughter

    Blackula

    Count Yorba: Vampire

    Clerks

    Mall Rats

  33. Clerks doesn’t count as a bad movie in my estimation. Neither does Mallrats, sort of.

  34. Star Odyssey.

    Somebody picked it up for a dollar at walmart and it was SO BAD it was hilarious. Bad 70s Italian scifi FTW!

  35. Oh hell I almost forgot about this one… FIST OF THE NORTH STAR staring Malcom McDowell and Chris Penn. There were a couple of others in there who were sorta recognizable but I can’t recall who. It is of course based on a Japanese Manga, it was absurdly silly and entertaining at the same time.

  36. @Gabrielbrawley:

    Clerks and Mall rats are excellent movies, and since my home state is New Jersey I will go to fisticuffs to defend these movies, I actually had the chance to meet Dante at a convention and he was a really chill guy.

    As far as my favorite bad movies I haven’t seen nearly enough, but some of my favorites are:
    MST3k
    Killer Klowns from Outer Space
    Evil Dead II and Army of the Dead

    My least favorite is:
    A.I. or Why I hate Steven Spielberg with a burning Passion for the rest of my life

    And a movie I doubt anyone else will have seen besides my dad is called Treasure of the Lost Desert. He saw it at a Film Festival in Cairo when he lived there for a year. It was an “American” film that was clearly made by Egyptians. I don’t know if it had a real plot to it but the camera work was so bad by dad had to leave the theater.

  37. I love clerks and mallrats . I own all five of the movies. But come on they didn’t get good until chasing amy. Love or not they were bad. Hell, I think I can probably recite the entire script to clerks from memory.

  38. @Gabrielbrawley: Hardly. The acting was off in the first one, I will grant you that, but from the perspective of the writing the directing, all the things that really matter, they were good, very good, and highly original. The rest of the films listed lack many of the qualities that made Clerks an excellent film. Mallrats is largely problematic because it’s really just a retelling of Clerks in a new setting. But Clerks was not a bad movie.

  39. @TomDG: And I will go to fisticuffs defending Evil Dead II as not a bad movie. It was far better cinematically than the first and simply does not belong on a list of favorite bad movies. Favorite good movies certainly but not favorite bad movies.

  40. @killyosaur42: Okay, I think I understand what you are saying. And I am willing to grant every point you have made. I must stress once again that I love this movie, it may possiblly be my favorite movie. I guess I rated it as a bad movie more for the production value and the stilted acting. I love this movie because it felt like the first movie made about me and my friends. I never thought that much of slacker and I have been a Kevin Smith fanatic since then. I pretend that he didn’t make jersey girl. I have nothing good to say about it.

  41. @alcari: Yeah someone mentioned that one, it’s the collected works of Ed Wood that haven’t been mentioned. I guess no one considers those to be Favorites. Thankfully no one is a fan of Uwe Boll here. If anyone is, I feel sorry for that person.

  42. I hadn’t caught the Ed wood stuff, maybe I just need to brush up on my knowledge of his filmography. Uwe Boll is basically the worst director of our generation, who has devoted the vast majority of his time making crappy films based on So-So videogames. Such marvels of filmic trash as Bloodrayne, Bloodrayne 2, Dragon Siege, House of the Dead, and the soon to be released Postal. The last one he told David Jaffe (creator of the God of War videogame franchise) would prove that he would be able to direct a movie based on Jaffe’s game series. The movie for God of War is probably going to be directed by Bret Ratner (X-Men III).

  43. oh, oh! i almost forgot about van helsing!
    really terrible. but awesome!
    i mean, come on…they totally do a gratuitous wolverine reference when hugh jackman turns into a werewolf.
    so awesome.

  44. aw, come on, solitas…you have to embrace the bad.
    it has an asploding bunny rabbit! what more do you need?

  45. I’m sorry, but I really feel that was a bad bad movie. :P

    There were a couple of interesting/funny scenes, but all in all I felt it was just bad.

  46. Of course, it’s not as bad as In the Name of the King – A Dungeon Siege Tale.

    Now that is a horrible movie!

  47. @Solitas: That was the film name I was trying to remember! Of course it’s horribleness was predicted by myself, simply cause the director of that film has yet to make a film that doesn’t make me wanna smack him with a two-by-four.

  48. It would have to be “Judge Dredd” How can a movie with Sly on a golden, flying motorcycle blowing things up not be great?

  49. Uhhhh….”Plan 9 from Outer Space,” anyone? Possibly the worst movie ever committed to film? It even has Leonard Nimoy in it!

    Oh, I miss watching MST3K…

  50. So many to choose from
    For MST3k episodes: Space Mutiny, Jack Frost, Cave Dwellers, The Wild Wild World of Batwoman, or Touch of Satan

    Other movies, Battlefield Earth of course, and anything from the deathstalker series (esp 4)

    My 2 favourites:
    Iron master – things I learned from this movie,- 1. when you see a red hot glowing sword shaped item that just flowed out of a bad stock footage volcano, it will be too hot to pick up. Hitting it with a rock will cool it down (take that physics).
    2. You can melt iron by putting it in a leather bag and hanging it over a campfire (take that 911 truthers… Ok not really), but seriously the movie has cavemen making swords that way like 4 times.

    Transporter 2 – things I learned – when a jet crashes into the ocean at cruising speed, it will break up. However the 2 unrestrained passengers inside can escape by swimming out the hole left by the tail breaking off, and will be completely uninjured.

    Other good ones are Sinbad of the 7 seas (the Lou Ferrigno version), Ator the fighting eagle.

  51. -“Hudson Hawk”

    This movie was so bad it nearly killed Bruce Willis’ career. I love it, though I’m not entirely sure why, and still quote it quite frequently. Notable for the only good performance of David Caruso’s life (because he doesn’t say a goddamn word).

    -“Iron Fist Pillage”

    Cappadonna from the Wu-Tang Clan re-dubbed the entire audio track from a 70’s kung-fu flick so that all the Chinese actors sound like straight-up gangstas. Possibly one of the most brilliant things every conceived by humanity.

    Now that we’ve done bad movies we love, how about good (or, simply, popular) movies that we hate? I need an excuse to talk endless amounts of shit about “Moulin Rouge.”

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