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| Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls |
The filmmakers needed to be aiming high -- no intentionally campy movie like Snakes on a Plane can qualify. There needs to have been noble intentions, which makes the fall that much harder and profound.
The movie needs to be entertaining in its awfulness.
For instance, Battlefield: Earth is definitely one of the worst movies I've seen, but it's also a colossal bore. There's nothing "fun" about its awfulness, hence it doesn't make my list.
We need bad movies, to keep Hollywood humble and to help us appreciate a quality film when we see one. But I also think there's something great about seeing a truly terrible film redeemed by a cult of fans that see something special, albeit ludicrously funny, about these failures that make them worth re-watching.
All of the films that follow are spectacles that you will have a ball watching with your friends. A few years back some friends and I had our own regular "bad movie club" where we reveled in the ineptitude. Some of these gems made the cut. Others I discovered on my own.
10) Catwoman (2004) - Halle Berry famously proved she was a good sport by accepting her Razzie for this terrible and unnecessary comic book movie. But unfortunately for her she's never really been able to remove it's stench from her resume. The film is unbearably cheesy, with endless feline puns packed into its running time. Berry is beyond wooden in the lead role, as is Benjamin Bratt (remember him?) as her love interest. But somehow Sharon Stone comes across even worse as the least imposing villain the genre has probably ever seen.
9) Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991) - The original film in this bizarre sci-fi series was not exactly a cinematic triumph, but its sequel has become a poster-child for production ineptitude. Boasting some of the worst special effects of its (or any) era, this terribly acted, incoherent mess is probably best enjoyed will partaking in some kind of mood-altering substance. If you enjoy pointing out the wires actors are swinging from during action scenes, this is the movie for you.
8) Obsessed (2009) - Originally this film was marketed as a kind of urban Fatal Attraction, but once audiences caught wind of the absurdly over-the-top nature of this melodrama they realized it was really a campy tribute to the diva appeal of Beyonce and our culture's never-ending fascination with seeing two attractive women fight. Idris Elba somehow walks away unscathed even though he is the victim of an attempted date rape in the film. "You want crazy...I'll show you crazy!"
7) Red Dawn (1984) - I haven't watched this one in years, and yet even recalling the premise makes me laugh. Communist infiltrators from Russia and Cuba team up to invade the United States simultaneously. They successfully takeover the mainland and only a band of high school kids (The Wolverines), whose survivalist parents have trained them in guerrilla combat, are able to mount a resistance. The film features a
"who's who" of '80s heartthrobs giving horrendous performances. And it has the stars of Dirty Dancing performing an assisted suicide. Seriously.
6) I Know Who Killed Me (2007) - Released at the beginning of Lindsay Lohan's long descent into irrelevance, this grotesque horror film hoped to titillate audiences by casting the former Mean Girls star as a stripper. But the ex-child star was already a raspy-voiced burnout by this time and you can only laugh when she literally has a sex scene while her partner's mother listens downstairs and her prosthetic leg is slumped against the side of the wall -- trust me it all makes sense in the context of the movie. Sort of.
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| Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando |
5) Pet Semetary (1989) - The most wonderfully awful horror movie I've seen is a blast to watch with an audience or group of friends. I've never read Stephen King's source material, which I hope was much more subtle and nuanced, but this film about a haunted graveyard for discarded pets (and sometimes people) which brings them back to life as mutated murderers is a riot. Despite repeated warnings not to bury anything or anyone in pet cemetery, the incredible stupid lead actor in this film won't listen to reason. His idiocy provides endless laughs.
4) Commando (1985) - Of all the overblown, silly 1980s action films -- this may be the best. Or it is, at least, the most amusing one made by a major Hollywood studio. Arnold Schwarzenegger has distanced himself over the years from this flick which is stock full of priceless one liners delivered with deadpan perfection by the ex-California governor. The nutty plot is about Arnold's daughter (a young Alyssa Milano) being kidnapped so they can force his character to commit an assassination. This is no Taken though folks, the opening credits alone are a case study in unintentional hilarity.
3) Miami Connection (1987) - This long lost, low budget and mind-blowing piece of garbage has been rediscovered and resurrected by hipsters, and we're all the better for it. This strange (and poorly dubbed) martial arts film is about a multicultural rock band, made up largely of "orphans",which ostensibly moonlights as crime fighters. They clash against a vicious drug cartel while periodically performing songs about the value of friendship and then searching for their birth parents. "Oh my God" it's awesomely horrendous.
2) Showgirls (1995) - This is a tough one, because, for me, The Room and Showgirls are probably equal in my esteem. I think Showgirls gets the runner-up spot because one could make the case, based on its skilled director's oeuvre, that quite a lot of this film is intentionally bad for satirical purposes. That said, for pure wall-to-wall insanity it's hard to beat this epic about a Las Vegas stripper's rise and fall. The abrupt shifts in tone, the unbridled misogyny, Elizabeth Berkeley's histrionic performance -- there are so many pleasures to this mess I don't know where to begin. It contains the most laughable sex scene I've seen and priceless, drinking game worthy dialogue like: "Everybody got AIDS and shit."
1) The Room (2003) - ...And yet, it can't hold a candle to Tommy Wiseau's now infamous vanity project The Room. It is a film that really has to be seen to be believed. It has so many technical errors, inexplicable acting choices and clumsy incomprehensible plotting, it's as if an alien who has been observing human life for a while tried to write and direct a movie. Now a midnight movie staple, the maker and stars of this film appear to have embraced its status as the reigning worst movie of all time. It's not really about anything and yet it's also about everything. I don't want to deprive anyone the experience of seeing it for the first time, so I'll leave it at that. Just prepare for a lot of male posterior nudity.
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