So Bad It's Good/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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"There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased. There is a little immaturity stuck away in the crannies of even the most judicious of us, and we should treasure it."
—Roger Ebert, in his review of The Mummy (1999)

There are a lot of really bad movies out there. Some of them are watchable in their own twisted way. In fact, there are studios who make movies like this almost exclusively. Many of these have been saved through Ham and Cheese.

Ed Wood's films and Troll 2 are so extremely So Bad It's Good that they're beyond criticism. Seriously, critics can't say anything bad about them because the films just speak for themselves. They're so bad, they're works of art.

Of course this is a very subjective trope, but let's try not to argue, eh?

Examples of So Bad It's Good/Film include:

In-Universe Examples

  • In-Universe, the Springtime For Hitler play from The Producers, (a Trope Namer).
  • The whole concept is parodied in the French movie La Cité de la Peur (The City of Fear): the horror movie Red is Dead is a textbook example of So Bad It's Good and critics hate it with a passion. Then someone dressed up as Red 's serial killer starts hacking projectionists to bits with a hammer and a sickle, and it's instant glory. The star and publicist of the movie get to walk on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival.

Multi-Decade Examples

  • The Friday the 13th series eventually settles, and arguably, revels in this.
  • Nearly everything on the Syfy channel is this trope. And what a great channel it is, if you love that stuff.
  • Any trailer made by the Ghanan guys who made 2016 seems to fit this trope, with poor CGI graphics, hilarious images (a lion leaping into a woman's belly, a disembodied hammer smacking people in the head, a cat leaping out of the Grim Reaper's mouth etc.) and a wildly enthusiastic guy shouting the title of the respective film every five seconds.
  • Semi-Conscious Driving in the Real World is a video about driving around trucks shown in driving schools.
    • In that same vein, a film called "Seven Deadly Shipmates," a US Navy training film from the 70s, in which seven people do rather silly things (most of them, like removing air-caps from a breathing-mask manifold, rather inconsequential) that ultimately result in the sinking of a ship due to fire; other things, like stacking garbage in the middle of a passage-way, resulting in hilarious panicked-sailor pile-ups, seemed like very funny common sense issues to avoid (but it is the military, after all). They were still playing it in boot camp as recently as April 2009. Seriously, nobody saw that hatch open?
  • Starving Jesus is a film by two pastors trying to get people off the pews and into missions. It starts off by them picking fights with hotel receptionists and ends with one of the pastors sniping about how he thinks the other is sneaking food (they're supposed to be fasting). Generally not something that you want to introduce people to Christianity with. However, amazing to watch, the best part probably being the colonoscopy scene. Awesomeness ensues.
  • The oeuvre of Roger Corman generally falls into this category.
  • A great many educational films are so campy and badly made that they end up being just plain funny. There's one about electrical safety, with a Jerkass villain reminiscent of Beetlejuice called Electrojuice.
    • One home economics video where had the narrator saying, "Quiche. Pronounced...keesh" in a monotone. Also, possibly in the same film, the narrator says something about never touching pans in the oven with your bare hands and then proceeds to do so, going "Ouch. That's hot" again in a monotone.
    • In the same vein: a certain Spanish video, with the line, "This is my brother, Antonio. We call him 'Antonio'."
  • A couple of the James Bond films fall under this:
    • You Only Live Twice (1967). Blofeld's plot is to capture space pods in the middle of their missions (and this is shown with rather stupid-looking special effects). Bond is given a short training period to learn the ways of the Ninja before getting one of the dumbest looking disguises as a Japanese man (which didn't change that he still towers over everybody else). Even the villains weren't fooled. The film ends with a Battle Royale With Cheese in the famous hollowed out volcano lair, with dozens of ninjas fighting with traditional swords and shuriken against the assault rifle armed Mooks... and winning. The script was written by Roald Dahl.
    • Diamonds Are Forever (1971) has gay assassins, James Bond in a moon buggy with flailing arms, Blofeld dressed as a woman, and missiles exploding due to laser satellite with really cheap and dated effects.
    • Live and Let Die (1973). The sheer hilarity of watching Roger Moore as James Bond trying to infiltrate a soul food shack in 1970's Harlem has to be experienced. Yaphet Kotto turning into a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float and then exploding, the weird sub-plot/theme involving voodoo and the Baron Samedi and the ridiculous alligator pit escape. Paradoxically, it has what may arguably be the best Bond Theme of all the films (by Paul McCartney) and a fantastic boat chase scene.
    • Moonraker (1979). The movie where Roger Moore drives a gondola through Venice (complete with double-taking bird) and goes to space. Paradoxically however, it also has some of John Barry's best work, impressive visuals (even the space scenes) and the film itself being fun camp.
    • Octopussy (1983). Nothing else needs to be added, really. It doesn't cross into any worse category due to the surprisingly solid plotline under all the cheese.
    • A View to a Kill (1985). Duran Duran's hit opening and Christopher Walken's hammy performance as the Big Bad by and large make up for what's otherwise a schlock-laden production.
  • The films of Godfrey Ho, or any of his aliases, particularly his later masterworks Honor & Glory and Undefeatable, both starring Cynthia Rothrock. The latter film has become something of a sensation of late.
    • Godfrey Ho and his collaborators churned out so many Ninja films in the '80s and early '90s that there's even a trope named after them. While nigh all of them are notorious for their shoddy editing, cheap production values and at times sleazy undertones, they're by and large a sight to behold. Among the more infamous ones is Ninja Terminator, which featured knockoff robot messengers and a Garfield phone.
  • John Candy starred in quite a few movies with this trope during the '90s. Notable examples include Nothing but Trouble and Once Upon A Crime.
  • Anything by John Waters.
  • Andreas Schnaas's gore movies. They're fun because of their bad dubbed voices, horrible effects (the baby cut into half a la Kung Lao is a plastic doll!) and worse titles (Violent Shit, anyone?)
  • The original English language dubs of Godzilla movies achieved this status by accident.
  • The independent film studio Troma Entertainment specializes in films that are So Bad It's Good on purpose, the best known of which is The Toxic Avenger and its sequels.
  • Most of the movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 deserved this status as soon as they were made but gained new notoriety after being lampooned by Joel and the 'bots.
  • Many of Ed Wood's films qualify.
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Our Shells Tour. Don't know what it is? It's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles performing as a rock band. What makes it So Bad It's Good? This song:

We're the Tur-tles
You can count on us!

  • The Carry On franchise (31 films, 1958 - 1992), as described by film critic Penelope Gilliatt:

The usual charge to make against the Carry On films is to say that they could be so much better done. This is true enough. They look dreadful, they seem to be edited with a bacon slicer, the effects are perfunctory and the comic rhythm jerks along like a cat on a cold morning. But if all these things were more elegant I don't really think the films would be more enjoyable: the badness is part of the funniness.

  • The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel were both deliberate, and successful, attempts at So Bad It's Good.
  • One French website is entirely dedicated to "nanars", i.e. hilariously bad films. You can take a look.
  • Most things featured in The Smithee Awards are bad but have some entertainment value in their badness. (Long story short: a bunch of people look for bad B-movies, take bad moments from them and "nominate" them in categories like Inane Dialogue and Most Ludicrous Premise. Just read the damn website.) Some of the things on this page have "won" Smithee Awards.

1930s

1936

1950s

1953

1955

  • The 1955 film Picnic is one of the great unintentional comedies, embracing every cliche about The Fifties, highlighted by dialogue that's pure camp ("Neeeewoooolllaaah!"), a melodramatic score, and a middle-aged William Holden playing a supposed sexy drifter in his early 20s.

1956

  • The Conqueror (1956). All you need to hear is "John Wayne is Genghis Khan" to know that this is going to be hilarious.
    • "SaaaAAAyyyy'... you're beautiful in your wrath!"
    • Unfortunately, filming near a nuclear site lead to the death of many people involved, including John Wayne.

1957

  • The Giant Claw (1957) has decent acting (though not great) and acceptable dialogue, which prevent the all-dialogue scenes from being unbearable (though an inordinate number of things are compared to battleships), but the real draws are the terrible science and [File:lolclaw.png|one of the silliest-looking monsters of all time].

1959

"Inspector Clay is dead... murdered! And somebody's responsible!"

"Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots."
"Now you just hold on, buster."
"No, you hold on!"

    • Then there is this sequence:

"Well, let's go down and find out whose grave it is."
"How?"
"By going down and finding out!"

1960s

1961

  • The Phantom Planet (1961). Leonard Maltin called it a "fascinatingly terrible movie." With the stupid science, the bad special effects, and the absolutely terrible acting, it would be a hoot even without the bots. "Good thing there's so much gravity in space." That the main protagonist looks enough like dang ol' Boomhauer to be disturbing is the icing on the cake.
  • Danish monster movie Reptilicus (1961) boasts bad acting, horrible special effects (the monster is a giant hand-puppet who attacks with Silly String), and a laughably implausible plot. (A forest in the Arctic?)

1962

1964

  • The somewhat silly Russian fairy-tale movie Morozko ("Father Frost", or "Jack Frost" on Mystery Science Theater 3000) (1964). It aired every Christmas on Czechoslovak TV during the Communist era, over time becoming a cult classic. Not only did television stations continue to air it after the revolution, but a musical and a video game based on the movie were made. (The film was recently redubbed into Slovak, so that Slovak televisions don't have to air it in Czech.)
  • Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964), one of the stupidest films ever made. From the theme song to the ending credits... well, it's like a gruesome train accident or industrial disaster. You just can't look away. Apparently, the entire film was shot in a re-purposed aircraft hangar either on Long Island or environs. Oh...last but not least, the polar bear and the Martian robot must be seen to be believed.

Martian: The people of Earth do not realize that Santa Claus has been kidnapped by Martians.
Tom Servo: You do realize what you just said?

1966

  • Batman: The Movie (1966). Where to start? The Exploding Shark warded off by Anti Shark Repellent Bat spray, the over-the-top acting, the surreal dialogue, goofy effects and the bomb you just can't get rid of somedays... But it also has former Ms. America Lee Meriwether in a sexy catsuit and Batman driving a Lincoln Futura.
  • The Swinger, a 1966 vehicle for the vivacious Ann-Margret that reunites her with Bye Bye Birdie/Viva Las Vegas director George Sidney, is one of the earliest attempts at a "sexy" comedy. But it's so dated, sexist and kitschy it winds up being the rarest of cinematic beasts: a comedy that's only funny when it's not trying to be.

1967

1969

  • Hercules in New York (1969), Starring a 22 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first film role. He is, at best, marginally fluent in English and given a ridiculous amount of speaking lines. In addition, Zeus's lightning is bent rebar painted white, and Hur-ka-leez's fight with the "bear" is simply hilarious.
  • If the YouTube comments are any indication, the "educational" film Unarius The Arrival (1969), put out by Unarius Academy of Science (a space cult) is this. The sparkly special effects and goofy costumes of the then-cult leader Uriel (Ruth E. Norman) are fun to look at, the spaceships are actually kinda cool, and it's often hilariously cheesy. A great film to snark at that probably won't make you want to chew your own arm off to get away from.

1970s

1970

  • Beyond The Valley of the Dolls (1970). A Hollywood camp-fest about a band of female musicians, taken to the Nth power and waaay beyond. Infamously, Roger Ebert helped write the script.

"This is my happening, and it freaks me out!!"

    • Roger Ebert co-writing the script actually gave him some credibility in Hollywood - it showed that he could do at least part of the job that he criticized for a living.
  • Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1970), is known for being campy and embarrassing because it ruined the once promising careers of its four main stars, Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees. Many Beatles fans and purists just don't like hearing other people (badly) sing their idols songs.
    • The movie had so many teenyboppers thinking Frampton and the Bee Gees created Sgt. Pepper that Capitol Records re-released the Beatles' version with an affixed label "The Original Classic." The movie Yellow Submarine also made new rounds in syndication (with its on-screen credit "Starring Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band").

1972

  • A little-known gem from 1972 called "Blood Freak" is quite possibly the world's only anti-drug mutant-monster horror film with a Christian message. (I'll let you go back and read that again.) It's the saga of a Vietnam Vet who gets introduced to pot by a barely-legal cutie, gets instantly hooked, then starts a job at a local turkey farm where he is asked to eat some experimental turkey meat one day (for quality-control purposes). The hormones in the turkey meat react with the drugs in his system to turn him into a turkey-headed monster who goes on a three-block rampage, killing other addicts and drinking their blood (because, see, that's the only way he can get high now) -- but then at the end he is saved by Faith In Jesus. The production values themselves also make it look like the budget consisted of about twelve cents and a handful of pocket lint.
  • Night of the Lepus (1972), a film whose plot centers around Arizona being under attack by Giant Killer Bunny Rabbits. Yes, this is a real movie. Starring real actors, like Janet Leigh and Stuart Whitman (and De Forest Kelley), and made by real major studio MGM. It's all made even more surreal by the fact that the Giant Killer Bunny Rabbits are depicted by either (1) cute domesticated bunnies filmed in extreme close-up running around on scale-model sets, (2) hilariously awful-looking gore-smeared puppets, or (3) guys in tacky-looking bunny suits (for the attack scenes, naturally). In the end, it has to be seen to be believed.

1973

1974

  • The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974). Filled with Deranged Animation, Hitler as a dog, and such genius dialogue as "Jesus Christ, Lucifer's a faggot!", it must be seen to be believed. Also the first one (1972), with all the animal sex and the black stereotype crows.
  • Zardoz (1974). It represents the collision of high ideals and low abilities perfectly, and contains the line: "The gun is good - the penis is EVIL!" Also notable for featuring Sean Connery in a red diaper.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). It's often considered at the very least one of the worse James Bond films, thanks in part to its enormous amounts of Narm, campiness and ruining one an impressive car stunt with a cartoon whistle. The film manages to overcome some of those flaws in part thanks to Christopher Lee's performance, the campiness being entertaining and the catchy opening song.
  • Karateci Kiz (1974), also known as Karete Girl is a Turkish action film that's considered one of the more peculiar if bizarre entries in the vigilante and rape-revenge subgenres popular during the period. While hilariously over-the-top at points and increasingly insane in execution, the movie is more known these days for being the source of one of the worst death scenes ever filmed.

1975

  • Peter Bogdanovich's much reviled musical At Long Last Love (1975), realized without lip sync in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of classic musicals like Top Hat. It was an enormous box-office bomb and gained scathing reviews, yet some have re-evaluated it, at least as an example of this trope. It can be really funny to watch (marvel at the "vocal" stylings of Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd!).
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is a textbook deliberate case of this. The plot (such as it is) is very like Manos the Hands of Fate (probably unintentional, given "Manos"'s cliched plot and utter obscurity until Mystery Science Theater 3000 found it) with vast galloping amounts of homoerotica thrown in. The characters were, for the most part, based on those of the Bulgakov novel The Master and Margarita - itself a modern masterpiece, partly because all of its failed drama is deliberate.
    • Richard O'Brien intentionally made it this way, as a tribute to the campy sci-fi films of the 50s & 60s (as evidenced by the opening number Science Fiction, Double Feature)

1976

  • In the late seventies, John Candy starred in a drama-horror flick titled The Clown Murders (1976). The funny thing being that the villain in The Clown Murders is a guy in a clown mask and only appears a few minutes later on in the movie.
  • Overlords of the UFO (1976) is a rare So Bad It's Good documentary, though we do use that term lightly.

1977

1978

"I never thought it would be the bees. They were always our friends!"

1979

1980s

1980

  • The Apple (1980): A disco musical about the futuristic world of 1994 that's also an allegory for the Book of Revelation. Really, every single element of this movie will make you say "WTF?".
  • Galaxina (1980) arguably does this on purpose...when you make AVERY FRIKKIN' SCHREIBER a starship captain, you've already decided you aren't making the next Star Wars.
  • Flash Gordon (1980). The ratings prove it!
  • Hawk the Slayer (1980). "Classic" Fantasy "epic".
  • Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead (1980). Have you ever imagined something more ridiculous than a soldier deciding while there are zombies all over the place to put on a tutu and a bowler hat before singing "I'm singing in the rain"? Have you ever imagined somebody actually thinking "Yeah, no problem, let's put this in our movie!"?
  • Xanadu (1980): Olivia Newton-John is a muse who comes to visit a struggling artist (played by Michael Beck, whose career - by his own admittance - died a horrible death upon the film's release), and the two of them decide to make something timeless... a roller disco rink! Add the random-ass animated sequence and some really awesome music, and you have one of the funniest movies ever made. There's a reason it's become a cult classic.
    • And a One-Scene Wonder from Gene Kelly, showing that despite being in his eighties, he is still one of the best dancers in Hollywood.

1981

  • Heartbeeps (1981), a somewhat obscure 1981 movie about two robots - played by Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters - who fall in love and build a child (whose beeps and boops were provided by Jerry Garcia). And it's scored by John Williams. Watchable only for the gorgeous costumes, Stan Winston's Oscar-nominated makeup work, and the excellent soundtrack.
    • In its defense, some scenes are quite touching...
  • Heavy Metal (1981) is like a parody of those drawings that most of us guys used to draw in 5th grade of guns, dismemberment, and boobs. None of the characters act like human beings. The women are invariably naked or half-naked. The animation is all over the place. It has quite the cult following and one sweet soundtrack.
  • Dragonslayer (1981) was groundbreaking in its day. That doesn't stop it from being absolutely friggin' hilarious.
    • The part where the evil knight gives a (completely logical) rant about how stupidly credulous everyone's being about the wizard? And the wizard asks him to stab him if he truly thinks he's powerless? And when he does, the wizard keels over and dies? Priceless.

1982

  • The Beastmaster (1982).
  • One can only assume that Mystery Science Theater 3000 never attempted to riff on Dünyayi kurtaran adam (The Man Who Saves the World, a.k.a. Turkish Star Wars) (1982) because no running commentary could possibly make this movie any funnier.
    • There are no words that can adequately describe the horror of this film; after you recover from the numbing shock of it all you can do is laugh endlessly.
  • Grease 2 (1982) makes the first one look like Les Miserables by comparison. Among the changes: an inferior script, much less angst (and most of what is there qualifies as Wangst), far less actual sex, much more singing about sex. It's a good time!
  • Liquid Sky, a 1982 midnight movie involving aliens who feed on endorphins released from heroin and sex. It stars Margret, a cocaine-addicted fashion model who "kills with her cunt". The clothing and soundtrack is based off the trashiest parts of the early 80s, complete with glow in the dark makeup.
  • A certain Asian grindhouse gem of a movie called Ninja Wars (1982) is a fantastic example of this trope. The plot involves a prophecy: "He who wins the heart of Lady Ukyodaio [sic] will hold the world in his hands" and an evil Japanese warlord concocting an aphrodisiac using the famous SPIDER teakettle to further his aims. The movie then veers off wildly and confusingly every which way, including several fight scenes involving the Five Devil Monks, one of whom vomits acid to attack, a plan to put Ukyodaio's severed head on the hero's girlfriend's body to fulfill the prophesy, and more hilariously bad dubbing than you can shake a stick at. The movie ends With a Crucified Hero Shot in a rather confusing case of Faux Symbolism. The dubbing is universally terrible.
  • The Slumber Party Massacre, (1982) a hilariously cheesy slasher flick. It contains panty shots, nudity, gore, and more fake-outs than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and it was originally written by a feminist as a spoof of slasher flicks - but the directors filmed it straight. The result is unbelievably goofy.

1983

  • Lou Ferrigno as Hercules (1983). Apollo's chariot which was a sloppily constructed chariot wrapped in aluminum foil, Zeus's thunderbolts which were hand-drawn overlays with a cheesy sound effect, scenes where a tin crown falls to the floor and dents itself because it is too flimsy to bounce while a portentous voice-over intones "And the kingdom fell", all form the perfect background to the "acting" of Lou Ferrigno. The only time he was even the slightest bit believable was in one scene where Cassiopeia (played by the stunning Ingrid Anderson) drops her face veil and Lou stands there dumbfounded at her beauty. Truly So Bad Its Good.
  • Fantasy Mission Force (1983) is a completely incoherent mess that tries to be a war movie about a band of mercenaries trying to rescue Allied generals (including Abraham Lincoln) from the Axis, who took them to Canada. Just watch the restaurant scene. Jackie Chan himself gets about fifteen minutes of screen time as a minor character, who apparently wins at the end after all the main characters die. The movie includes such gems as sudden and inexplicable barbarian raiders, the Great American General Abraham Lincoln, and the deep and startling realization that a Chinese actor will never ever make a convincing Scotsman, even if you do dress him in a kilt. Watching the dubbed version just makes it all better.
  • Krull (1983). A critical and financial disaster that probably contains some of the best British actors available at the time. James Horner's film score is also highly regarded.
  • Pod People (1983). If all of humanity could love as Trumpy does, then there would be world peace. And many many potatoes.
  • The German movie Die unglaublichen Abenteuer des Guru Jakob (The Incredible Adventures of Jakob the Guru) (1983). Starring German ex-child star Tommi Ohrner as the High School Hustler (wannabe) Tommi and Israeli Zachi Noy, veteran of the soft-sex comedy film series Lemon Popsicle, as the titular Jakob Feierabend, who spent his time getting fired from various jobs and being rejected by girls, until he is mistaken for an Indian guru, like Baghwan, by the people of an Upper Bavarian village, who are looking for somebody to buy the old castle of the village, and soon unwillingly starts his own cult, with Tommi as his manager. Add porn star Sibylle Rauch as Ms. Fanservice and a Chinese restaurant owner for Chop Sockey kung fu action and Unfortunate Implications. It's like a mixture of slapstick, sex comedy, Bavarian Heimatfilm, youth movie and "let's pretend we warn people of the danger of strange sects"-film. Oh, and the repeatedly played song "Hey, ho, nochmal Schwein gehabt" (Hey, ho, got lucky again).
  • Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983); One of the funniest Conan the Barbarian rip-offs of its time, featuring the star of Space Mutiny, and an incomprehensible yet Crazy Awesome theme song:

Yor's world, he's the man!
Yor's world, he's the man!

1984

  • Conan The Destroyer (1984). Another action film of The Eighties. Featured the classic line "Fine magician you are! Go back to juggling apples!" and Pat Roach in a Halloween mask lifting Arnie on his shoulders and trying to pull his arms off. Also, Grace Jones in a Fur Bikini.
  • Body Rock. A 1984 break dancing movie about a guy named Chilly who finds fame and then forgets his friends, although it takes a few viewings to actually comprehend this. Features terrible dialogue, an ostensibly crackhead mother who doesn't care what her son does with his time, a random black child who inexplicably hangs out with 20 year olds and gives dancing lessons in the street, a gigantic boombox, rhinestones adorning the face of the male protagonist, a pleather trench coat with "Chilly" graffitied on the back, and a really frightening song.
  • The movie Runaway (1984) is a really bad movie set Twenty Minutes Into the Future involving Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons, Michael Crichton and acid spitting spider robots. How could you go wrong?
  • Sheena (1984), where Tanya Roberts stars as a Faux Action Girl who rides around Darkest Africa on a horse with zebra stripes painted on, while an implausible plot and bad special effects happen all around her. Roberts' nude scene compensates for her lack of acting skills.
  • Streets of Fire (1984). Willem Defoe looking like a vampire is the least of your worries in this film.
  • Mister T's Be Somebody...or Be Somebody's Fool (1984). Considering that in many ways T. is either the Anthropomorphic Personification or the patron saint of So Bad It's Good You better watch this, fool!

1985

1986

1987

  • The Italian masterpiece: "La croce dalle sette pietre" (The Seven Stones Cross) (1987), commonly known as: "L'uomo lupo contro la Camorra", which means "The Werewolf versus the Mafia" (Camorra is a specific, localized kind of Mafia). Yeah, that's right. It was (poorly) funded by exploiting a loophole in the Government policies, which financially encouraged those creative works highlighting the Mafia problem. The same guy was director, writer and protagonist actor, so you know exactly who to blame for this sequence and this one (the language is for the most part irrelevant).
    • The movie got a small but devoted group of amused fans, which caused the author to be regularly invited to a lot of trash movies conventions in Italy. His own "fans" then proceed to systematically and brutally mock his movie. Poor bastard.
  • Deadly Prey (1987). A Vietnam vet gets kidnapped by garbage men stripped down to his pants and has to survive being hunted by mercenaries. Rambo meets Running man minus any sort of budget.
    • Mike Danton cuts a man's arm of and beats him around the head with his own severed limb and then finishes by scalping him.
      • The best insults are directed and the evil female such as "kiss my ass", "Bitch". And a personal favorite "Fuck You!" before knocking her out cold with one hand.
  • Deathstalker II (1987) was an over-the-top parody of the first Deathstalker movie. You don't have to see Deathstalker to appreciate Deathstalker II; it's a great parody of adventurer movies with silly plots and premises, bad acting, and bizarre scenes that don't match up with the rest of the movie. But then they went and made a third just like the first, ignoring that the second existed.
    • The first Deathstalker (1983) belongs here too. Where else can you get a movie with an immortal guy being killed, a random fight scene in a brothel where everyone pauses to let Deathstalker and the immortal guy chat before going right back to fighting, and the witch who Deathstalker tells not to speak in riddles, although everything she says is perfectly understandable?
    • Deathstalker 4 (1991), also known as Troll 3. What kind of idiot tries to capitalize on Troll 2?
  • Ghost Fever (1987), starring Sherman Hemsley, is absolutely worth the search.
  • Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, also known as The Edge of Hell. It's a 1987 Canadian horror film that was filmed in seven days and went straight to video. Features Jon Mikl Thor as Triton, lead singer for a metal band, who fights Satan himself. Clad a cape, studded codpiece and tons of makeup and hairspray. Includes Muppet demons, cycloptic starfish creatures and the line:
  • Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) was made up from scenes from the original Silent Night Deadly Night and some of the most hilarious overacting of all time. The "Garbage Day" scene became an Internet meme.
  • Superman IV (1987). Terrible if you watch it with the mindset that it's a serious movie; hilarious if you watch it with the mindset that it's endearingly and unbelievably bad. See: Christopher Reeve's delivery of the line "Stop, don't do it, the people!". Incredibly obvious wires. Jon Cryer calling Superman "The Dude of Steel!". Superman's Rebuilding-the-Great-Wall-of-China-vision...
    • And all that without even mentioning the whole everybody-breathing-in-space thing...honestly. Space has an atmosphere, in this movie. You really haven't lived until you've seen Supes posing heroically against the star-spangled void, cape flapping madly.
      • Breathe in space? In their fight scene, Superman and Nuclear Man walk on space. They walk on an invisible floor in space. They step around each other, in space.
        • According to the book (yes, book not booklet) accompanying Superman: The Music 1978-1988 (with the complete scores from all four films plus music from the Ruby-Spears cartoon), the fight scene was supposed to be in the sky above Metropolis. If this isn't a Special Effects Failure...
    • Finally, the following lines:

Lex Luthor: You know what I can do with a single strand of Superman's hair?
Lenny Luthor: You can make a toupee that flies!

  • Surf Nazis Must Die (1987) has scary scary gangs consisting of about three twelve year olds, stock surfing film for padding, camp Nazis ... and it's terribly entertaining.

1988

  • Collision Course (1988). A buddy cop comedy that has Jay Leno teaming up with Pat "Mr Miyagi" Morita to restore a stolen car.
  • Dead Heat (1988) is the best 80s zombie buddy cop action horror comedy you will ever see. A cop investigating jewelry store heists (performed by zombies) is killed and brought back from the dead and has 12 hours before he melts into goo. His partner is Joe Piscopo, whose entire existence is dedicated to terrible one-liners. They Fight Crime. It also includes bad acting, obvious continuity errors, a plot that makes little sense and reanimated Chinese food.
  • Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988).
    • One hilarious quote from the movie: A tough biker has just crushed a Klown's tricycle. The Klown retaliates by putting on a pair of boxing gloves. "What are you gonna do, knock my block off?" And yes, the Klown does just that.
  • Mac and Me (1988) is a blatant ripoff of ET the Extraterrestrial which takes shamelessness to hitherto unexplored depths. If you thought Elliot feeding E.T. Reese's Pieces was unwarranted Product Placement...hoo boy. The aliens here require Coke to live! There's a Non Sequitur Scene scene of Mac and his human companions at McDonald's...with Ronald McDonald himself appearing! For more head slamming without risk of (further) brain damage, read the Something Awful review of this POS available on the link.
    • Ron would later go on to win the Worst Newcomer Razzie for 1988 (as "Himself").
  • Space Mutiny (1988). Special effects lifted wholesale from the original Battlestar Galactica, and a host of goofy nicknames for protagonist David Ryder ("We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese!")

1989

Haley: "AHHHH! HE TOUCHED MY BREAST!"

    • It's an awesome film, just because it features Fred Savage from The Wonder Years and Jenny Lewis (of the band Rilo Kiley). You can't not love it at least a little.
      • There was a radio interview with Rilo Kiley where the host brought up The Wizard. Jenny Lewis's reaction was the kind of, "Oh" you make when you've just been caught farting. The rest of the interview went downhill from there.

1990s

1990

  • Back in the 90s Archie Comics made a Made for TV movie based on the cartoon named Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again (1990). One of the scenes features a middle aged Jughead attempting to dance to hiphop. It's as awkward as you'd expect.
  • The Pakistani movie International Guerrillas (1990). It shows the story of three Pakistani guys who, after seeing how one of their relatives is killed by the police during the demonstrations against Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, decided to go and murder the famous writer. The movie becomes a cat and mouse game, with the guerrillas being always a few seconds too late, allowing Rushdie to run away while they are stuck fighting his armies of thugs. With some (hilariously bad) Bollywood dance segments in between. And a bunch of cut and paste action sequences (more like copy and paste, since all the sequences play at least three times before moving on to the following one). Finally, Rushdie catches the protagonists, but suddenly a literal Deus Ex Machina (a flying Ku'ran, symbolizing Allah) appears to save the 'heroes' and kill Rushdie with some Dramatic Thunder. All in glorious VHS quality. It has to be seen to be believed.
    • Watch the final scene here. Words, there are none.
  • Rockula (1990). A vampire is cursed to experience the death of his true love (by ham bone) every 20 or so years. His mom is a nymphomaniac cougar. He courts his true love by becoming a rock star vampire. So wrong, and yet so right.
    • Good lord, man! It's a ham bone wielded by a Pirate with a rhinestone pegleg! It's all an Excuse Plot to string together a bunch of music videos amid the Cliché Storm, with a large dose of Our Vampires Are Different for spice.
      • The vampire in question also has a Vitriolic Best Buds relationship with his independent reflection (who may or may not be the ghost of Elvis). His mother is played by Toni Basil (of Hey Mickey fame), the girlfriend's manager is played by Thomas Dolby (yes, that one) who sells new-age coffins in his day job (and his advertisements are pure comedy genius) and it includes the unforgettable sight of Bo Diddley in skintight neon-yellow spandex.
  • "Time Barbarians" (1990). What a terrible gem. At one point, the main character pimp slaps the villain with the villain's dismembered hand. Yeah.
  • Troll 2 (1990) is considered a cinematic masterpiece by some, due to how hilariously bad it is. It features vegetarian monsters that turn people into lumpy green Jello (a plant-based version, apparently) so they can eat them. The monsters appear to be dwarves running around in cheap Halloween masks (actually designed, along with the costumes, by '70s erotica actress Laura Gemser). There is a sex scene that has to be seen to be believed (and then may require multiple viewings). The line, "You can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!" is included and is meant literally. Also, there are no trolls in the movie. Not a single one.

"Oh my GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!"
"Nilbog! It's Goblin spelled backwards!"

  • Xtro II: The Second Encounter is a low-budget 1990 Canadian film that shamelessly rips off Alien. Poor special effects, over-the-top acting, and a melodramatic score somehow combine to make Narm Charm rather than straight-up Narm. Extra amusing for anyone who's ever watched The X-Files, as among the cast is a very young Nicholas Lea, who would go on to play recurring bad guy Alex Krycek. The Totally Radical dialogue and Eighties Hair just make it even funnier.

1991

1992

1993

  • Deadfall, a trashy 1993 noir/comedy film that would be terrible if not for Nicolas Cage's hilarious overacting. His delicious Ham and Cheese performance is considered to be among his best performances not to be taken seriously. See here and here to see just how bad the acting is.
  • The 1993 Made for TV Movie The Man from Left Field. A bunch of poor kids looking for a baseball coach find Burt Reynolds, a Mysterious Figure who has gotten Easy Amnesia and forgotten everything but his Good Solid Values. Since it's three times as long as your typical Very Special Episode, they compensate by having three Very Special Storylines. One kid is teased by the obligatory rich rival team about his working-class father, cuing an Author Filibuster from Burt about how Money doesn't matter as much as Values. Another kid is abused at home (his alcoholic father beats him with his fists, which somehow results in the kid getting lash marks on his back) so Burt kicks the dad's butt. The token black kid loses his grandfather to Soap Opera Disease, which is somehow resolved by Burt saving the kid from drowning (no, you read that right). In the midst of all this, the film achingly struggles to be "cute" and there's also a lame Token Romance with Reba McEntire thrown in for good measure, even though the film seems to be aimed at ten-year-old boys (the kids have no girls on their team). Finally, the scene where Burt regains his memories has to be seen to be believed.
  • RoboCop 3 (1993) is quite substandard when compared to its previous entries, but when taken by itself, the film is hilarious. A Japanese competitor of OCP's sends over robot ninjas to stop Robocop, a 9-year old girl uses a computer terminal to hack an ED-209 unit and there's Special Effect Failure galore. Add to that unintentionally funny moments (including Robo commandeering a pimp's car (complete with reaction shot), a man's suicide is played for comedy, a children's tricycle being used for barricade material, Robocop flying in on a jetpack and two robots who simultaneously cut each other's heads off) and script howlers ("Come and get me, Mr. Robocop!", "Oh my God, Johnson, our stocks have dropped to nothing!", "You got a ghost cop? A vampire cop?" and Robo's immortal line "Don't count on it, chum!"), along with a score that makes these moments epic, and you've got the perfect storm for SBIG. And Jill Hennessy as eye candy.
  • Super Mario Bros (1993). An infamous "adaptation" of the hit video game for the NES. It's a punchline of the gaming world and a pioneer of the awful video-game-to-movie trend. It doesn't keep it from having absolutely insane scenes featuring Dennis Hopper, though.
  • Edgar Wright, director of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz, did quite a few little amateur films when he was younger. A notable one is Dead Right (1993), a cop movie that parodies and homages Dirty Harry (the main character is nicknamed "Dirty Barry"), among other movies. The movie itself is schizophrenic, switching between, as Wright describes it, "sub-Zucker Brothers nonsense" with random humor, a cop movie parody, and a splatter film.
    • Notable scenes include the killer, wearing a bright orange raincoat, hiding from a woman by simply pressing up against a doorway (she walks straight past him despite his being in plain sight with no camouflage); Detective Barry Stern being assaulted by a cat; a very lengthy, gory (if food colouring counts as gore) fight scene where Barry and an MI5 undercover agent (who looks like "every sound-man" according to Frost) decimate a gang of "box-monsters" (all in the killer's gang; the killer kills people who buy Weetabix, so he's a cereal killer); and a scene of almighty Fourth Wall breaking where the murderer kills Edgar Wright himself.

1994

  • Double Dragon (1994) would be a tremendous case of Video Game Movies Suck, only this one sucks in such an energetic and flamboyant way as to be hilarious and stylish. Despite its backstory being set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, the film often subverts the expected gritty aesthetic and goes for some of the most colorful, goofy, and oftentimes disproportionately elaborate visuals ever in an action film, from goofy costumes to nice cameos by actual Double Dragon arcade cabinets. The finale has a hilarious scene that looks essentially like a bunch of dressed-up circus performers engaged in a mass-melee, and the fact that the stars have genuine martial arts talent even extends the ordeal into Crazy Awesome territory.
  • The Hong Kong movie Future Cops (1994). What the Hell, Casting Agency? with Hong Kong pop singers, every character is a Captain Ersatz of Street Fighter characters, silly humors, messed up character alignments like the above movie and a lot of wacky nonsensical scenes just doesn't even begin with this movie that takes itself even less seriously than Street Fighter above. Certainly this movie lives on the further end of 'Bad' of So Bad It's Good compared to that movie above. However, some still consider it a good movie for some senseless laughs.
  • The American remake of Godzilla (1994) is laughably bad to the point of hilarity.
  • The Shadow (1994).
  • Street Fighter (1994) is the epitome of this trope. While normally this movie would be another case of Video Game Movies Suck, it casts Raul Julia—who, dying of cancer, asked his children to choose his final film role—as M. Bison. Raul plays it as a crazy over the top villain with such memorable lines as "For you, the day Bison graced your village is the most important day of your life. But for me...it was Tuesday," and "A Bison dollar. It's worth five British pounds... For that is the exchange rate the Bank of England will set once I kidnap their Queen!" For God's sake, he has a chandelier made out of human bones and he wonders why people think he's a villain?
    • One of M. Bison's lines was a Screw Attack.com movie quote of the week, done by The Angry Video Game Nerd: "FOR I BEHELD SATAN AS HE FELL FROM HEAVEN LIKE LIGHTNING!"
      • There's also just a whiff of Stealth Parody about the script, especially with regard to Guile's gung-ho motivational speech.
    • "QUICK! CHANGE THE CHANNEL!"
  • Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four (1994) is as notorious for its quality as it is for its very existence, as the film is one of the more bizarre cases of Executive Meddling in action.[2] But even with a low budget and strange circumstances, it more than makes up for it with Narm Charm and by being surprisingly faithful to the source material, ironically proving itself to be an improvement over later adaptations that were actually released. While there was an initial attempt to make sure the movie would never see the light of day, it lives on in tape copies and later on, online.

1995

1996

  • Jingle All the Way (1996), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The "Turbo Man" stuff is particularly hilariously bad, but Ah-nold is a pretty good comedic Straight Man.
  • Kazaam, a 1996 movie about a rapping genie that's released by a kid. Some of the scenes are strange and extremely creepy. And Shaq's god-awful rapping skills. "Let's Green Eggs and Ham it" indeed.
  • Space Jam (1996). Something about Michael Jordan's super-mellow attempts at acting whilst surrounded by the biggest hams of Looney Tunes.
    • The part where Daffy kisses his own, Warner Bros.-emblazoned arse suggests they knew the film was blatant marketing fodder for all the attached Merchandise-Driven. Cemented by the point later on, where Bugs and Daffy complain that they don't get any royalties.
  • Space Marines, a 1996 film with warp effects stolen from Babylon 5, a grenade blast that launches a mook like a rocket and space pirates with eye patches and AK-47s. Has John Pyper-Ferguson of Caprica as an over the top villain looking like a confederate officer with a handlebar mustache, goatee and a habit of recording himself then playing it back. Glorious.
  • Twister (1996) is a goldmine of misplayed drama to the point of so-bad-it's-goodness. The iconic flying cows, bad dialogue, and the inexplicable slurping sound the tornadoes make when they retract back into the clouds.

1998

  • 1998's Wild Things. It was billed as a thriller, but it plays like a spoof. In addition to some truly horribly staged scenes and awful dialogue, it has some exceptional scenery chewing from Denise Richards and Kevin Bacon. Only Bill Murray seemed to be aware that the movie was meant to be tongue in cheek. The film's twist ending, though not too difficult to either see coming or figure out once revealed, was fully explained with supplemental scenes in the end credits that fill in the gaps.
    • It also has a great story buried under bad writing and mediocre acting. It's like watching a movie of a Carl Hiaasen novel, certainly more than the Film of the Book of Strip Tease.

1999

  • Baseketball (1999).
  • Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999). C'mon, you know it is. A ridiculously offensive blind person stereotype is able to "see" after having sex with a stereotypical black guy? And then saying "You're black?! I knew it."
  • The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999). A dolled-up sequel to a horror classic, made over two decades after said movie came out in order to cash in on the success of Scream and other teen horror films in the late '90s. While it doesn't hold a candle to the original in terms of quality or tension, it makes up for this with buckets of blood (no pun intended) and every late-'90s Teen Drama/horror cliche in the books.
  • The first The Omega Code (1999) also qualifies, with Casper Van Dien and Micheal Ironside in addition to Micheal York. Their performances are so fun to watch. Its also rather subtle for being a End Times film (until the end). It's a bad flim, but an enjoyable one.

2000s

  • The DVD compilation Sleazy Slashers (2000-2001, DVD released in 2004) has four movies, each of which fall into this trope. Maybe not Backwoods, though.
  • Noboru Iguchi's films are Japanese exploitation action shlock, with young girls and lots of gore.
    • The Machine Girl (2008). Gatling Gun Arm attached to a schoolgirl, Ninjas that look like Football players, and 1970s violence despite being a 2008 movie, and a Drill Bra. What makes this so hilarious, is its genre is listed Action/Adventure. A lot of schlocky movies are hard to watch because of padding. This film replaces padding with High-Pressure Blood.
    • Robo Geisha (2009) is just so ridiculous, it's hilarious. (Trailer)

2000

  • Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) makes no sense, has nothing to do with the original, has unlikable characters and a ton of unanswered questions. However, there's something oddly... charming about it. Many critics claim it might have been a good movie if it had not been intended as a sequel to anything; as in, it was an okay movie, but a bad sequel.
  • Duets (2000) can't make up its mind between being a corny but endearing spoof of karaoke and the people who take it seriously, and being a drama. To paraphrase Seanbaby, it is to karaoke fans what Over the Top (1987) was to arm wrestling fans: a brutal and lasting reminder of why you shouldn't make movies about those people.
  • Dungeons and Dragons (2000).
  • The film Killjoy (2000) is a prime example of this. A killer clown offers drugs to "gangstas" in an effort to entice them into the back of his magical ice cream truck so he can kill them when they are transported to an abandoned warehouse. The special effects are laughable, the acting is terrible, the plot is ludicrous, and the whole film is so bad it is awesome.
  • Max Knight: Ultra Spy (2000). From unintelligible hacker speak to a climax filmed using a Half Life mod, the movie is completely terrible and completely awesome at the same time.
  • Ready to Rumble (2000), a movie made to capitalize on the Professional Wrestling phenomenon of the late '90s thanks to the WWF's Attitude Era, was produced with their competition! WCW used this to try to regain their popularity after Mick Foley put their fans' asses in the WWF's seats, and boy did it bomb! The only redeeming qualities about this movie is the unintentional humor and future WCW Champion David Arquette attempting the Spear.
  • The Japanese film Versus (2000) is like this as far as its acting, plot, and setting go. The action scenes, however, are spectacular. Another hallmark of it being So Bad It's Good is that the commentary features the director, the producer, and three of the actors, and they were probably all drunk when they recorded it. Japanese B movies seem to have an incredible ability to take a really silly premise, fill it with gore then play everything without a hint of irony.

2001

  • Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) qualifies intentionally. It's a movie about how Jesus returns to Earth to fight lesbian vampires that are immune to sunlight. With the help of an overweight Mexican wrestler. And it's got a few musical numbers. Also the only movie in which you'll hear someone say, "We're running low on skin. I suggest we harvest another lesbian!"
  • Pootie Tang (2001). Perhaps the single greatest concentration of stupid in any one film since the introduction of sound. It's also hilarious.
    • Stupid doesn't begin to describe it. There is one scene where the main character's father is killed in the steel mill where he works... by a gorilla. Or should we say, a man in a gorilla costume. No explanation, just a Gorilla runs in and starts killing him. It is described as "the third Gorilla-related death at that Steel mill". Him screaming "Gorilla!" while he's being killed has to be heard to be believed.
  • Star Ballz (2001), a parody of Star Wars is probably the worst animated porn film ever made, but it is incredibly hilarious. The dubbing is bad, the animation is bad, the dialogue is... astounding but it is absolutely hilarious. Especially since you can make a brain-killing drinking game by naming all the references to popular movies and anime of the time.
  • The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001) is one of those rare intentional examples of this trope, an Affectionate Parody of the worst of the worst B-movies of the '50s and '60s, with nonsensical dialogue, wooden acting, and plenty of Special Effect Failure.
    • AND IT IS GLORIOUS!
  • Freddy Got Fingered is a highly intentional example that parodies the trashy and stupid nature of its fellow 2000s comedies...and goes way too far in the process.

2002

  • Bloody Mallory (2002) is a French "horror" flick about a woman trying to save the pope from demons. She does such with a transvestite, a government agent and a mute telepathic girl who has a mind battle with one of the enemies, complete with over the top music and intense staring. Mallory's dead demon husband shows up here and the entire English dub is on par with the Godzilla dubs.
  • Crocodile 2: Death Swamp (2002) should definitely count. The deaths are completely predictable for the Genre Savvy. Also, there were several laugh out loud moments. For instance, the pilot dying; the lawyer screaming "I have shoes! I'm more afraid of than you!" before being eaten; the Crocodile jumping at least 50 meters out of the water to latch onto a helicopter and drag it down so it explodes; and the finale with the line "LIGHT UP MY LIFE, MOTHERFUCKER". No, it doesn't make sense in context either.
  • The Gag Dub movie Kung Pow: Enter The Fist (2002) is so profoundly, mind-bogglingly idiotic it's hilarious with the right mindset. Others will just hate it.
  • You want a real Christian preaching MST3Kable film? Look no further than Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (2002). This movie truly has it all: acting and dialogue so awkward and bad you wonder if the writers, actors and the director were somehow deprived of human contact and think people actually act like that; Udo Kier playing a character that does nothing but follow the Big Bad around wearing a Black Cloak and sounding like he had just left the Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge soundstage; R. Lee Ermey playing the President of the United States (sadly only doing so for 5 minutes before getting offed by the Big Bad); and best of all, Michael "Basil Exposition" York playing the Antichrist as a Large Ham of truly planetary proportions.
  • The Scorpion King (2002). Probably the most cliché-laden movie in history, but still watchable.
  • Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002) is most notable for featuring some of the most stupidly hilarious special effects and an infamously cheesy line from a pre-Doctor Who John Barrowman, among other silly things.
  • The Syfy original film Vampires: Los Muertos (2002) starring Bon Jovi as a surfer/vampire slayer. He tries to stop a vampire takeover with the help of a naive teenage boy, a half-turned woman, a priest Or is he? and a big black guy with a machine gun. What more do you want?!

2003

  • The Core (2003). As Roger Ebert puts it: "I have such an unreasonable affection for this movie, indeed, that it is only by slapping myself alongside the head and drinking black coffee that I can restrain myself from recommending it."
  • Fatal Deviation (2003) is without a doubt the most incredibly awesome Irish martial arts movie to ever exist. See for yourself!.
  • Netforce (2003) features the most horrible technical jargon and computer mumbo-jumbo a script writer can come up with while maintaining a high degree of Critical Research Failure of how computers, the internet and hacking works. And just like a big rig collision on the information superway, it's impossible to look away!
  • The Room (2003), which is supposedly "the best worst movie ever made", dubbed by one Entertainment Weekly reviewer "the Citizen Kane of bad movies." The Onion explains it here. The Room supposedly has more than just a bad plot and bad acting - its full of failed drama and has terrible focus and transitions. It not clear if the director did so on purpose.

"You're tearing me APART, Lisa!"

    • Tommy Wiseau, the films creator (director-writer-producer-star and main advertiser) claims it was intentional; an actor from the film says instead that Wiseau was very sincere. Many find it easier to believe the actor, especially as it was originally advertised as a serious melodrama.
  • Depending on who you ask, Colombian animated disaster Bolívar el héroe (2003) can be this, as the narmtastic plot, the irregular voice acting (being surprisingly competent for the main character but terrible for everybody else), and the hilariously incompetent and Off-Model animation makes for the kind of film you watch with your MST-inclined friends with beer and snacks.

2004

  • The first Alien vs. Predator movie (2004). Alien and Predator going World Wrestling Federation on one another? Priceless. (It's worth mentioning that the commentary for Alien vs. Predator is genuinely entertaining, which is more than can be said for the movie.) Even worse (thus better) was the sequel (2007).
  • Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) is several orders of magnitude worse than the original film, and all the more enjoyable for it (at least until L.J. opens his mouth). Sienna Guillory helped.
  • Torque (2004) - a movie for those who thought The Fast and the Furious was too highbrow and grounded in reality. Hypnotically stupid. That Ice Cube is the best actor in the entire movie (by far) is just gravy.
    • Crystal meth, bike fights, and motorcycles that move so fast, they can ignite gasoline from DRIVING OVER IT. To put it in a word: "retardalicious".
  • The Van Helsing movie (2004). Big Bad Dracula is over-acted; the only guy who gets any action is the sidekick; and there's a Frankensteinsicle. Plus, an automatic crossbow. Stephen Sommers' other writing tends towards this trope.

2005

  • Absolute Zero (2005) is like The Day After Tomorrow but even worse. Think new Ice Age in Miami.
  • You though Spy Kids 3D was bad? Well, that one was peanuts compared to The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (2005), starring a pre-Twilight Taylor Lautner. Based on Rodriguez's son's dreams, it contains cookie giants, bad CG slime, a planet named "Drool," The Dragon being George Lopez as a giant evil light bulb, and the Narmtacular line "I'm King of the Ocean."
  • The 2005 Syfy channel original movie Alien Apocalypse, starring Bruce Campbell. Astronauts return to Earth after 40 years in suspended animation to find it conquered by alien termites who have enslaved humanity to... harvest wood? Cue La Résistance, cheesy special effects, Dr. Ivan kicking ass, bad acting, and lots of green ichor.
  • Wes Craven's Cursed. Kinda tragic, considering it was supposed to be to werewolf movies what Scream was to slasher movies...
  • DeVour (2005), starring Jensen Ackles, is known as a hot, yet entertaining, mess.
  • Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005): It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Spectacularly cheesy plot? Beautifully bad acting and effects? ZOMBIE RAVES?
  • Lifetime's original movie Cyberseduction: His Secret Life is a hilariously funny movie about a horny teen addicted to softcore porn; sadly, Lifetime intended it to be a completely serious anti-porn Scare'Em Straight Edutainment movie, portraying the teen as a troubled victim of such media. Which nobody learned a thing from, except that badly-made propaganda can be rather funny and counterproductive. In fact, this may be the type of movie you'd watch with friends at a party before you intend to show actual porn, because it will make you feel a lot less guilty for doing so.

2006

  • Black Sheep (2006) has some hammy acting, a cheesy plot, and horri-awesome special affects that, separately, would make it a very bad movie. But, all together, they make something that is pure campy and self-aware B-Movie fun.
  • The Marine (2006), starring John Cena, has a pretty generic action plot and decent special effects. It could probably be considered So Okay It's Average were it not for the hilarious acting of Cena and Robert Patrick (who is fully aware what kind of movie he is in and earns his pay) as the crime boss. The supporting cast is equally hilarious and the dialogue?

Giant Mook (blows up a police car with a bazooka and is met with disbelieving stares from his comrades): What? Too much?

    • Special mention goes out to the scene where the Big Bad threatens at gunpoint the hostage who's currently piloting the helicopter they're both sitting in hundreds of feet above the street. (note that the reason she's flying it, is because he doesn't know how)
  • Troma is responsible for Poultrygeist: Night of the Living Chicken (2006), a movie that combines So Bad It's Good, Crosses the Line Twice and possible brain damage for the viewer.
  • Shadow Man (2006), produced, written by and starring Steven Seagal. The movie is a hilarious patchwork of badly shot exposition, cheaply done action scenes, over-the-top terrible acting and the ineffable Seagal himself, playing himself. Himself as an ultra-sexy, uber-badass, martial artist, special agent, MacGyver-esque business genius. Naturally. Not one to share the limelight, he decided against hiring decent actors. It's awesome!
  • Snakes on a Plane (2006). The premise itself attracted a massive internet following based on its So Bad It's Good-ness, leading the makers to reshoot certain scenes to make them even more outlandish. Notable additions include a snake slithering out of the toilet bowl to latch onto the expected area of a man using the facilities, and Samuel L. Jackson's (in)famous line "I have had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane!".
  • The remake of The Wicker Man (2006), starring Nicolas Cage. As far as some viewers are concerned, it was the best comedy of the year.

2007

  • Dragon Wars, also known as D-War. (2007) Lots of convoluted Korean mythology, plot holes as far as the eye can see. It's unintentionally hilarious.
  • Flight Of The Living Dead (2007). Snakes on a Plane with zombies instead of snakes, and without high production values and any shred of self-awareness.
  • The Grindhouse movies (2007), Planet Terror and Death Proof, were generally regarded as So Bad It's Good by critics. Death Proof was actually criticized a bit for not being stupid enough. The director Quentin Tarantino has a different opinion: he doesn't believe in so bad it's good.
  • Stan Lee's Harpies (2007): Bad acting, ridiculous plot, and the cheesiest special effects in town. It screams "TV movie".
    • The Romanians of several centuries ago in the film somehow speak American-accented English.
  • Ben 10 Race Against Time (2007): The TV show was cliche enough but as a live action flick, it fall flat on its Fridge Logic face. At least it had some decent SFX. And then there's Lee Majors as Grandpa Max.

2008

  • Babylon A.D. (2008) is notable for Vin Diesel dragging a shrieking, flailing, judgmental pseudo-Messiah across post-apocalyptic Russia, only to find out she's pregnant with psychic babies. Yeah.. It has one of the most poorly explained/edited Gainax Endings this side of Japan, but it's still an entertaining Vin-Diesel-punches-people movie.
  • The 2008 film Doomsday. Scottish cannibal ninja strippers? Check. Malcolm McDowell as the nutty king of Medieval Land (for about five minutes)? Check. Auto-targeting machine gun turrets vaporizing a cute widdle bunny-wunny? Check. If there was ever, ever a film crying out for the MST3K treatment, THIS IS THE ONE.
    • It could also be argued as a deliberately over-the-top Refuge in Cool.
    • Also contributing to the effect is the crippling multiple-genre-disorder Doomsday suffers from: Epidemic Movie --> Search-and-Rescue Team Movie --> Dystopian Apocalypse Movie --> Zombie Movie --> Swords & Sorcery Movie --> Car-Racing Movie --> It's-All-A-Government-Conspiracy Movie, and that's not even the half of it.
    • The movie was taking 28 Days Later, Escape from New York, Damnation Alley, and Mad Max 2, putting them in a blender and seeing what happened. Apparently, the lead character was essentially supposed to be a female version of Snake Plissken.
  • If you watch The Happening (2008) as a comedy rather than a horror film, then it's one of the best movies ever made. As one person put it: "Never before has a movie made people dying so hilarious."
    • "What?! No!"
  • 100 Million B.C. (2008), a Sci-Fi original movie, is so bad that it's funny. Complete with cheesy acting and special effects. The sound of time travel was the same sound effect of a Pokeball opening!
  • The 2008 remake of the 1980 slasher flick Prom Night is hilariously bad. First off, it's a slasher flick rated PG-13. As if that wasn't bad enough, the movie plays out almost every possible applicable cliché, but in a tremendously boring way. The plot is lousy, the acting is bad, even for this genre, the suspense is as exciting as watching grass grow, and the teenage melodrama bullshit is pathetic.
    • Also, it tried really, really hard to jump-scare the audience with bedroom decor. Lamp DUN!
  • Frank Miller's directorial debut The Spirit (2008) is by all rights, a terrible film. However, Miller dials the cheesiness up to such ludicrous levels that one can't help but be at least slightly entertained by it.

"This is for Sand! This is for me! And this...is for MUFFIN!"

    • Samuel L. Jackson plays The Octopus as over-the top as possible. It's a significant surprise when he appears for the first time, you expect a menacing character...and then he whacks The Spirit over the head with a toilet while explaining that toilet humor is always funny.
  • Tokyo Gore Police (2008), a movie about a virus that has people getting limbs cut off and growing back weaponised, includes gun barrels coming out of someone's eye sockets, a stripper with her legs replaced by the top and bottom of a crocodile mouth with vagina in between, a cannon penis, an amputee gimp that walks on four swords placed on each of her stumps. There is lots of blood-colored water. Everywhere.

2009

  • C Me Dance (2009). It's so unbelievable, most people think the trailer is a fake one or at least a Stealth Parody until they discover otherwise. At first it just seems like your run-of-the-mill shitty cancer story, but then the cancer patient is the Messiah and then this makes the devil angry so then it turns into a horror movie, except Satan doesn't do anything. He buggers off to nurse his hurt feelings because the lead calls him a "loser." And the tagline is "A Dance That Shines Through Darkness." It has more to do with Christianity than dancing, though...
  • An intentional example is Dead Snow (2009), a Norwegian zombie/splatter-movie about a group of students on a camping trip in northern Norway who encounter a battalion of zombiefied Nazi soldiers. Writer/director Tommy Wirkola is a huge fan of classic horror b-movies such as Evil Dead, and Dead Snow is something of a tribute.
    • A lot of critics made the mistake of thinking it was meant to be a serious film, unfortunately. Given how over-the-top the gore factor is, one wonders how they could have thought that, but as a result even some of the reviews are hilarious.
    • There is a brief argument about whether one of the characters, a Jew, would come back as one of the Nazi zombies...
  • Dragonball Evolution (2009) is possibly the most over the top film ever made, yet it sucks so hard it's just funny to watch to see what they got wrong. In fact, this movie is So Bad It's Good only when you don't see it as Dragon Ball.
    • This movie is So Bad It's Good even by some critics' standards (at least those who knew not to take the film seriously). For example, Alfonso Duralde of MSNBC, who generally doesn't like anything save very few exceptions, said the movie was "both entertainingly ridiculous and ridiculously entertaining."
  • G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009). It looked like they just stuck their arm in the Trope Bag, and then tried to make the cheesiest version possible of everything they pulled out. (Defrosting Ice Queen, Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja, Everything's Better with Spinning, Powered Armor, Slave Mooks, Grey Goo, Guns Are Worthless, Dark Chick...)
  • Ninja Assassin (2009): A glorious example of martial arts cinema, complete with Ludicrous Gibs, nonsensical backstories about warring ninja clans, overdramatic angst, a fight in a laundromat that ends with a girl's severed head in a washing machine, and immortal dialogue such as:

"Plants don't have hearts."
"Everything has a heart."
"I don't."

  • ThanksKilling (2009) is intentionally terrible. It was clearly made by someone that loves the classic slashers, but was wondering the same thing everyone else was: "Why isn't there a Thanksgiving slasher?" The acting sucks, the plot sucks, the special effects suck, but that turkey killer is a riot to watch.
  • Ultraviolet (2006). A worldwide vampire epidemic where they never mention the word "vampire". Plus they walk around in the daylight. And when she meets up with the bad guy, he gives her a very swishy, "Oh, it is on" before the big final battle. And there's a giant Nestle Wonderball full of vampire ninjas. And the Mama Bear turned up to 11. The coolness of the gravity belt and Violet's arsenal [and her fiber optic hairdos] offset it enough, maybe.

2010s

  • The Death Race Direct to DVD sequels (2010, 2012) are pretty bad, with laughable fight choreography, rampant sexism for the sake of sexism, and shameless male Fanservice. And the plot? Like Danny Trejo says in the third film: "Fuck logic!"

2010

  • Only a trailer has been released, but the film "2016" (2010) looks to embody this. The plot appears to revolve around two Xenomorphs who arrive in the African nation of Ghana, where they throw cars on women, kick babies into the sky, and perform kung-fu kicks on innocent pedestrians, while a guy keeps yelling, "Twenty Sixteen!" every five seconds. Oh yeah, and the T-800 shows up for some reason. The whole thing appears to have been made on a budget of ten dollars, and filmed on a street in Ghana. See it for yourself here
  • Birdemic (2010) is so awkward and inept, it's charming.

2011

  • The Kunoichi: Lady Ninja (2011) is about a bunch of women becoming ninja to get revenge for the sacking of their village with the help of a one-eyed samurai, or something like that.
    • One thing makes it awesome: one of the women had some kind of power that related to her virginity, so when she and the samurai were trapped, she told him to bang her so that blood from her torn hymen would fall on his sword and save them.

2012

2013

  • Birdemic 2: the Resurrection (2013) succeeds in surpassing Birdemic in being somehow even more inept and insane, despite technically having better camerawork. All the while rehashing many of the same elements of the first film.

2015

  • Jupiter Ascending (2015) may be the best thing the Wachowskis may have ever done not titled The Matrix or Speed Racer. A film with intentions of serious Space Opera filled with characters that are Deviant ART-level OCs, where between the legitimately fantastic space sequences there are plot threads like bees recognizing royalty, and an angel-winged werewolf being the bodyguard of the heroine (crush included). It's so batshit it goes back into awesome.
  1. ↑ Ironically, the Americans never participated in the real 1980 Olympics due to boycotting the Soviet Union at the time.
  2. ↑ The movie, unknown to its cast and crew, was never intended to be released and was created largely so that the producers could keep hold over licensing rights.
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