It’s a very weird balance to strike in Hollywood, but every once in a while a gem pops out in the most unusual of places. A movie gets made that should fail for every reason conceivable – bad acting, bad effects, bad story – but somehow manages to be so bad that it becomes an instant classic and an actual enjoyable experience to watch. While most of the time that’s very much an unintentional side effect of a perfect storm of incompetence, we’re seeing more and more movies that are doubling down and taking the risk of trying to purposefully make a movie good by making it bad. Confused? Keep on reading and you’ll see what I mean.
The Room
Having your movie called the Citizen Kane of bad movies sounds like it’s not a compliment, but it’s actually one of the biggest compliments you can give a man. Tommy Wiseau has managed to make a movie so bad he was instantly immortalized for it and let there be no doubt about it: The Room truly is a bad movie. The movie is pretty much an hour-and-a-half long meme and an endless source of speculation how a movie could end up so bad.
Troll 2
I’m not sure why exactly, but Troll 2 somehow managed to be worse than its predecessor. Well, it was actually supposed to be a standalone movie with Goblins in it – the movie has literally no trolls – but the distribution company decided otherwise. If you want to know why all the lines are delivered horribly bad in this movie, it’s because only one of the actors on set was actually fluent in English.
Kung Fury
Kung Fury is one of the few movies to be so bad it’s good on purpose, which puts it in a weird spot on this list. Everything is definitely bad and tacky in this movie, but it works so well and it’s all so intentional that it’s hard to not see the masterpiece that this movie really is. A sequel should be coming in the next years so keep your eyes out for that, as I’m sure we’ll be confused for the whole ride again.
Sharknado
This bad SyFy movie somehow hit that sweet spot of having a story so completely bonkers that audiences went in with 0 expectations and it kind of ended up being hilariously absurd. In fact, there’s been a total of six Sharknado movies made over the years, but I think that means they’re stopping now. Heck, even Star Wars should’ve quit after six movies.
Birdemic
An eco-propaganda movie disguised as a low budget horror, and boy is it low budget. This story about birds going completely bananas and turning into kamikaze planes does nothing right, which obviously means it somehow manages to do everything right. Apart from the preachy last act of the movie where they link the birds’ behaviour to global warming, it’s actually a fun experience. Fun and traumatizing.
Samurai Cop
If there was ever a genre that lended itself perfectly to iconic bad movies, it’s the “buff dude” action movie from the 80s. Samurai Cop was an early 90s effort at creating a testosterone-fueled adventure of justice with a splash of vengeance, but boy does it fall flat on its face. And as we all know, watching something fall flat on its face is utterly hilarious. Unlike Kung Fury though, it wasn’t trying to be.
