25 Movies So Bad They're Unmissable

Stepping Razor on 01-30-2010 09:12 PM

Too bad we can't have an awards show for awful movies that gets as much fanfare as the stuffy Oscar show. I'd watch that every time.

Mike M. on 01-30-2010 09:20 PM

Ha! Yeah The Howling 2. Incredibly bad and a classic example of "what the hell were they thinking?" after the brilliant "The Howling". Its reported that Sybil Danning ran out of the theater in tears because of the end.

cinemascribe on 01-30-2010 09:28 PM

Back in 1995 I was employed as a projectionist for Cobb theaters. We exhibited "Showgirls' and I was the one who assembled the print when it arrived late Thursday afternoon. That also meant I had to stay after hours and screen the movie film to assure that the film would not jump out of frame where the reels had been spliced together. Since one of the perks of being a theater employee is seeing free films, these screenings usually were attended by roughly half the staff (more depending on how anticipated the film was. When "Titanic" sailed into our theater a few years later, the entire staff showed up).

"Showgirls" was one of the more anticipated ones because it was rated NC-17. The entire staff arrived just one o'clock in the morning, I threaded the film , set the correct lens for aspect ratio, started the movie and joined them.

It was obvious that we were watching what (back in the day) would have been known as a Golden Turkey Award winner (or ,today, a Razzie winner) within the first twenty minutes when it became increasingly apparent that Elizabeth Berkeley was capable of two emotional states- hysterical anger or hysterical weeping- and nothing more .

But the moment when I realized that the film had breached "Ed Wood" levels of awful was when the two women sat at a table discussing which brand of dog food they favored as a snack back in the lean days of their careers. That entire scene has to be be my all time favorite eye-rolling "WTF" moment. For the first time ever, I understood what patrons of cinema must have felt when they paid money to see films like "Plan 9" or "The Main Event". If I hadn't been watching the film free of charge, I might have done something unspeakable (at the very least illegal) to the screen in protest.

After the film concluded ,one of my co-workers (a close friend) asked me for my opinion of the film. I smiled and said "Well, people are gonna be talking about it for a while" and left it at that. Good call including it here. No bad movie list should be without "Showgirls".

iakobos on 01-30-2010 09:38 PM

What! No Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I'm incensed.

MADDAZ on 01-30-2010 09:44 PM

What! No Mulholland Drive. Im even more incensed.

Patrick on 01-30-2010 09:53 PM

I have only seen a couple of these, but I can't imagine any of them can be worse than Clockwork Orange. I couldn't sit through that on Blu Ray when I picked it up the other day for $12.

Mr. Bo Ziffer on 01-30-2010 10:01 PM

Sadly, I have seen a lot of these on this list. Troll 2 and Plan 9 are probably my "favorites". But I have to disagree that "Batman and Robin" is in "so bad it's good" territory . . . it's just bad! Really bad! So bad, that they needed Chris Nolan to rejuvenate the series!

Chris B. on 01-30-2010 10:08 PM

wow. that Megalodon movie clip was hilarious.

saicam on 01-30-2010 10:11 PM

Wow all hilariously bad movies.
Notice how Manos the hands of fate translates to
Hands the hands of fate if you say it all in english?

inactive user on 01-30-2010 10:16 PM

These are the movies I live for. I thought the "Giant Claw" was amazing when I first saw it.

luke r. on 01-30-2010 10:23 PM

i love roadhouse. it's almost a cult classic in my house.

RamALamADingDong on 01-30-2010 11:10 PM

If there's anything I would add it's Super Mario Bros. It's an absolutely terrible adaptation. And whatever plot it does have doesn't make much sense. But it's such an incredibly fun movie to watch. My favorite line is "Sir, the Goombas are dancing again." Because really, how can the idea of seven foot tall goombas dancing not make you laugh?

Of all the movies on this list the only one I've seen is Plan 9 From Outer Space. I found that one so bad it's just plain awful. I couldn't find a single good thing about that movie, not even incidentally. I own Ghost Rider and Fantastic Four 2. I can watch Super Mario Bros. Heck, I can even name (just) three good things about Batman & Robin. But I just couldn't stand Plan 9. I can't even call it so bad it's good. The worst production values ever aside, it's just a mess every step of the way. Whatever story it may have had I forgot a minute after the movie ended. Bela Lugosi's scenes don't make sense, and the stand in's (who looks so much the exact opposite of Lugosi he might as well have been Shaq) scenes were even worse. The acting was unbearable. The dialogue was horrific, even compared to movies twenty years earlier. It was truly the worst movie I've ever seen.

cinemascribe on 01-30-2010 11:38 PM

Perusing this list again, I have to wonder why "Cruel Jaws" wasn't listed.

For those of you who have never heard of this infamous piece of schlock cinema, here's the low down: "Cruel Jaws" -which was promoted by it's producers as "Jaws 5" - is the project where the "filmmakers" shot a series of low budget scenes which are obvious knock-offs of Spielberg's flick (you know the drill: Summer town, upcoming regatta, killer shark, official warning ignored..etc etc) and then, instead of creating a mechanical shark and filming new attack sequences, they simply edited in actual clips from "Jaws", "Jaws 2" , the notoriously blatant Italian "Jaws" knock off "The Last Shark" (aka "Great White") another low budget shark flick known as "Deep Blood" and (I'm reasonably certain) "Tentacles". This champion among bad movies was directed by one of the most recognizable names in the history of trash cinema, Bruno Mattei.

I've included a link here to a funny clip from the film. In this one, two Mafia thugs try to put a hit on the shark, with unpleasant results.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrWeGV_b0mA&feature=related

Chad F. on 01-31-2010 12:01 AM

When I was in high school and junior college in the early 90s I was hooked on the "so bad they're good" thought pattern. Some that I loved off the top of my head that didn't make it were: Crazy Fat Ethel II, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama,Chopping Mall,anything Ed Wood related,Attack of the Killer Bimbos, and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Pratt on 01-31-2010 12:29 AM

Tokyo. Gore. Police.

Smartest Person Here on 01-31-2010 02:22 AM

I believe that for a movie to really fit onto this list, it had to originally try to be serious but became camp. For example, Showgirls and Road House are both meant to be serious, but their execution turned them into something else (although Road House is fun to watch). Other movies on here, like Black Gestapo or the one about the bed eating people, obviously were made as a goof, so they were not trying to be more than fun.

With that in mind, meant to be serious movies but turned into camp material, were is The Departed and The Prestige? :)

Replicant Lems on 01-31-2010 06:25 AM

C.H.U.D. has to be in this list.Super Mario Bros. is a great call too.The Happening might get on this list as time passes. Zoe Daschanel and Mark Wahlberg's performances are over the top awful

Doug G. on 01-31-2010 06:30 AM

I personally think that what Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoeven wanted was to see Jessie from Saved by the Bell naked. I can not think of another reason any producer would say "This sounds like a good idea to invest money." But this is also one of those films where you know what you are getting going in as you do with GI Joe or most of Jean Claude Van Damme's movies after Bloodsport.

Where are a couple of movies on the list from the past few years, Blair Witch 2, Devil's Rejects and Transformers 2.

iakobos on 01-31-2010 07:35 AM

I've seen four of the movies listed and would rank them in the following order for watch-ability.

Road House - Dumb romance plot but lots of fun watching Swayze and Elliot kick everyone's a$$ in the bar room brawls.
Batman and Robin - Bat-suit nipples was the least of this movie's problems.
Battlefield Earth - My expectations were so low it was actually pretty good. It ranks right in there with The Post Man.
Plan 9 from Outer Space - The flying pie pan, I mean saucer, visibly hanging from a string was the best part, I slept through the rest.

I watched a few trailers.
The Shark Attack:Magalodon trailer was pretty good.
So was the trailer for the Invasion of the Giant Spiders.
The Killer Bed was lame.
The Claw looked 100% goofy, as in it may be worth watching.

Tico P. From the Vault on 01-31-2010 08:04 AM

Howard the Duck is not even mentioned. George Lucas was involved in the project, and the film itself is proof George should be blacklisted from Hollywood.