Best "so bad, it's good" movie and why?

Similar to the great, "Worst films and why?" thread, I thought this might also be a good idea.

We know these movies - they are the ones that get to a level of ... badness ... that they're elevated to being good. We've seen them, we've loved them. What are your favourites?

I'll get the ball rolling with The Room.

Everyone knows the cult following this has gained by being a bad movie in every sense of the word. It's such a fantastic unintentional comedy and made me laugh more than most actual comedy movies I've seen.

Yawns

Iron Sky

But that was the intention behind it so does it really count?

darkdubh

I Drink Your Blood.Early 70s schlockfest about a bunch of Manson Family type hippies who get infected with rabies and go on a rampage in a small town.Theres a hilariously fake looking severed head and a scene where they cook rats on a barbacue(real rats,not props),has to be seen to be believed.

Skerries

I think we can exclude The Room as we all know how bad this is

CPSW

Snakes on a Plane!

Over the top plot, cheesy one liners, Samuel L. Jackson.

What's not to love?!

Harry Palmr

Ah tricky genre this - I'll vote for The Concorde ... Airport '79 AKA Airport 80 - the Concorde depending where you saw it. The fact this film takes place in two different years maybe is a clue as to its coherent quality.

The fourth film in the Airport series (its not a franchise!) is clearly the bottom of the barrel being loudly scraped. Sylvia Kristel is a passenger and that's one of the highlights as is the sight of Alain Delon jinking a supersonic jet like a F1 driver going round Beckets as heat seeking missiles close in on the plane and yes he evades them with only most of the luggage lockers emptied on the passengers as an F-4 Phantom and two Mirages engage in battle. Then later the cargo doors blow open and the hull damage means an emergency landing on an Alpine plateau is the only option, Alain Delon by now is sweating buckets like Robert Hays in Airplane! Indeed if you'd seen Concorde before the Abrahams/Zucker film you'd wonder if the latter was actually any funnier. I haven't even mentioned the Greenpeace style balloon encounter, the Soviet peace mission gymnastics team and the laughable romantic entanglements involving a shady industrialist and a TV news reporter (who clearly has no nose for news)

Of course its not nearly as exciting as I make it sound but some terrible chroma-key special effects (a lot of films in the late 70s/early 80s suffered in this regard) add to the cheap enjoyment. Its the kind of entry on ones CV you'd hope everyone looks straight past.

TerrorFirmer

Some of my favorites. Movies that are so bad they manage to be good are possibly my favorite genre.

The Room - a multi-million dollar production that makes the worst episode of 'Eastenders' look like Citizen Cane.

Mac and Me - a shameless rip-off of ET and less-than-subtle commerical for McDonalds. Credit due for best wheelchair-off-a-cliff scene ever. The best part? The Alien trashes the house using powertools and drags the entire contents of the back garden into the house overnight and sticks them to the ceiling. Who gets the blame? Of course...the main character, who happens to be in a ****ing wheelchair!

For Your Height Only - a Philipino James Bond Spoof starring a 2ft tall midget in the title role. Has to be seen - and heard, given the hilarious dubbing - to be believed. Probably my favourite 'so bad its good' movie ever.

Miami Connection - an amateur rock band takes on a criminal gang of hoodlums in a movie where literally everyone knows martial arts and nobody has an ounce of acting ability.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii - a ludicrious 80's action fest in which not even direct shots to the chest can stop our secret agent heroes.

Gwynplaine

Con Air. Every time it's on I watch it. It's cringe the whole way through. It's terrible and brilliant at the same time.

Slattsy

Gotta be Top Gun.

Sp much cheese, so much gay, its probably my fav movie

Dair76

+1 for For Your Height Only. I saw it at the IFI Horrorthon (yeah, strange choice for a horror festival) a few years back, and it's one of the very few occasions a film has brought me to tears of laughter. Watch it!

Say Your Number

On Deadly Ground is f*cking hilarious

"What does it take to change the essence of a man"

Defiler Of The Coffin

Troll 2.

OH MY GOOOODDD! You don't piss on hospitality!

rockatansky

Under Siege

I also Cook...

The Mulk

I remember watching "The last Dragon" really enjoyed it but I'm sure it could make this list
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089461/

Bruce Leroy is the lead role as he searches for the master to teach him "The Glow".
I've read somewhere it was billed as Motown meets Kung Fu.

seamus

Has to be Commando. Someone on boards said before that you can watch Commando in the frame of mind that you're watching a parody of Commando. It's great.

bmorrissey

Samurai Cop, sooo good it is

sky88

Batman and Robin

its camp and the one liners are amazing

and well batman has nipples

Arghus

seamus wrote: »

Has to be Commando. Someone on boards said before that you can watch Commando in the frame of mind that you're watching a parody of Commando. It's great.

I'm going to step in here before someone else and try to defend Commando.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why someone would include it in a list of bad/great movies, I myself would have put it in that category for a long time, but the more I've watched it, the more I've started to come round to the idea that it isn't that Commando is so good because it is bad, but that Commando is so good that it's actually great.

Yeah it’s ludicrous, but if that is what makes it stray over to the "bad" side, you may as well toss every action movie ever made over there too. Every single action film is, at some level, complete illogical nonsense. And that's why we love them. I respect Commando because it's more up-front about this fact. It has a glorious purity that very few films manage. I also think the action itself is legitimately good- bombastic, huge, well-shot and edited flawlessly. The series of cuts that show Matrix getting suited and booted for the final showdown is really well put together, with an undeniable awesomeness that most action movies can only dream of.

I think it's often viewed as bad/great because it makes you laugh. But I think that's the aspect of the film what most distinguishes it from something truly "bad". The laughs are intentional, and they kill. Whatever effect the movie has on the viewer- amusement or entertainment, it's striving for those effects at the time it's going about doing it- it completely achieves what it sets out to do, and does it in style. So I think it transcends cheese and becomes a bona-fide good movie.

I'd contrast this with something like Con Air. No that's a "so bad, it's good" movie. There's definitely a lot of intentional comedy in there, but there's more unintentional laughs.

callaway92

sky88 wrote: »

Batman and Robin

its camp and the one liners are amazing

and well batman has nipples

Nah, that's just bad.

KiDulthood is usually my answer for this question!

darkdubh

Two words.Deadly Prey.Whats not to like about a film where someone is beaten to death with their own severed arm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQySDbFb97s

bnt

If you haven't seen The Gods Must Be Crazy, then ... I dunno. It has its problems, but also some high comedy. It starts as a kind of parody of The Lord of the Rings, in which a Bushman of the Kalahari agrees to travel to the end of the world to destroy the object that's tearing his society apart: a Coke bottle. The creatures he encounters along the way include a hapless naturalist and his cantankerous Land Rover, a pretty schoolteacher (whose voice got dubbed from Afrikaner to American), a band of guerillas, bemused animals, and incomprehensible bureaucracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GorHLQ-jLRQ

e_e

callaway92 wrote: »

Nah, that's just bad.

Chill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNaDZIrxh-0

ziedth

You got served is a real treat. I remember i watched the south park piss take before i saw the film.Much later i flicked it on one night half way through and i genuinely thought for like 5 min that it was a scary movie type parody it wad so cringey.

The room is also a great shout

donalfo

Equalizer 2000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocOCJUs4dJc

Mad Max on a turbo budget. Classic! Terrible!

robdonn

The Rock (1996)

Beefy78

The Rock, Con Air and Commando are not so bad they're good. They're just good (particularly the first two).

Come on lads.

Teddy Dalton

Jersey Shore Shark Attack.

Crooked Jack

Boondock Saints, particulalry for Irish viewers, is so bad it's actually great craic.
Sequel is just plain old rubbish though

Korvanica

How has Fatal Deviation not been mentioned ?
Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX4td1XCkP0

Full Movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPne3Wh0lqk

Beefy78 wrote: »

The Rock, Con Air and Commando are not so bad they're good. They're just good (particularly the first two).

Come on lads.

People seem to just be posting films they don't like.

pinksoir

Beefy78 wrote: »

The Rock, Con Air and Commando are not so bad they're good. They're just good (particularly the first two).

Come on lads.

I dunno, Commando is one of my all time favourites but it's unbelievably camp (Bennett), cheesy as hell (the deer at the start?), ridiculously lame and cheap (same bad guy extra killed over and over), and all sorts of other pejorative adjectives. However it all comes together to make one of the greatest and most memorable action movies of all time. Something the Expendablesntry to ape but can't. I think because, like the room, it wants to be a good movie. But fails, with spectacular results. Its the quintessential so bad it's good movie.

Tony EH

'Zombie Creeping Flesh', or 'Hell of the Living Dead', or 'Night of the Zombies', or 'Virus -L' inferno Dei Morti Viventi', or 'Cannibal Virus', or 'Zombie Inferno' or whatever you're having yourself.

I've never seen a film with so many titles.

ziedth

Crooked Jack wrote: »

Boondock Saints, particulalry for Irish viewers, is so bad it's actually great craic.
Sequel is just plain old rubbish though

I actually just plain old like The Boondock Saints. Even the sequel i enjoyed to a lesser extent. Actually, there is a documentary I think its called ovetnight about thr making of the first one and its really really entertaining. The writer/director (Troy Duffy?) Essentially has it all and pisses it all away making the film...

Edit: its on you tube

deadybai

The Happening get my vote. Some of the deaths were hilarious and the acting was top notch :pac:

check_six

Bonus Commando factoid: Bennet was in Mad Max 2 as the main psycho punk, no, not The Humungous, the other fella with the mohawk.

jh79

https://youtu.be/S1cnjEAZOjk

Pieces , with a tagline like that it has to be great, and it is.

jh79

https://youtu.be/I7nOmLUJSD0

Nightmare City - 1980

Fast zombies that can even fly a plane.

*NFSW Some minor nudity and gore in trailer

BuilderPlumber

jh79 wrote: »

https://youtu.be/S1cnjEAZOjk

Pieces , with a tagline like that it has to be great, and it is.

Wez

BuilderPlumber

check_six wrote: »

Bonus Commando factoid: Bennet was in Mad Max 2 as the main psycho punk, no, not The Humungous, the other fella with the mohawk.

Wez

BuilderPlumber

Cobra (1986 film with Stallone) comes to mind as a film I thought was bad but actually is quite enjoyable. I revisited this last evening and was pleasantly surprised. It is pitched between Mad Max, Dirty Harry and Rambo and while not as good as the first 2 franchises, it is certainly way better than the 3 Rambo sequels (the first Rambo is excellent). The slogan Crime is a Disease, Meet the Cure is cool and it was great to see Cobra do in a horrid ISIS-style murder cult. Clearly, there are scenes heavily borrowed from Dirty Harry, Mad Max and inevitably Rambo, but this is underrated and much more enjoyable than say Rambo 3 or any Chuck Norris film by a mile.

jh79

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

Cobra (1986 film with Stallone) comes to mind as a film I thought was bad but actually is quite enjoyable. I revisited this last evening and was pleasantly surprised. It is pitched between Mad Max, Dirty Harry and Rambo and while not as good as the first 2 franchises, it is certainly way better than the 3 Rambo sequels (the first Rambo is excellent). The slogan Crime is a Disease, Meet the Cure is cool and it was great to see Cobra do in a horrid ISIS-style murder cult. Clearly, there are scenes heavily borrowed from Dirty Harry, Mad Max and inevitably Rambo, but this is underrated and much more enjoyable than say Rambo 3 or any Chuck Norris film by a mile.

I've never seen it but supposedly this and Beverly Hills Cop share the same source material.

jh79

What does Wez mean?

Dair76

Wez is the character's name in The Road Warrior.

jh79

Dair76 wrote: »

Wez is the character's name in The Road Warrior.

I think BuilderPlumber may of quoted my post by mistake thought it was some sort of modern slang term!

MattB11

Pretty much any Van Damme film from the 90s

Robsweezie

Showgirls. It got a ****ty reaction from critics about the script and the acting but it wasn't particularly awful in my book, just nothing special. It relied almost completely on nudity.

NachoBusiness

Seen it for the first time a few weeks back in the Lighthouse.

Hilariously awful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-48J_x23ZE

Tony EH

WTF?

:eek:

Dair76

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a "so good, it's great" movie, tbf.

ScumLord

Ninja Terminator is hilariously bad. I can't really tell if it's serious or a piss take.

Birdemic is another but I think it's a straight out piss take.

Sugarlumps

Robsweezie wrote: »

Showgirls. It got a ****ty reaction from critics about the script and the acting but it wasn't particularly awful in my book, just nothing special. It relied almost completely on nudity.

Great **** material before porn became readily available. The fúck scene in the pool is hilariously over the top.

Arkaron

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Casshern, but THAT is a film that defies all conceivable notions of reason or logic, and it does it with a budget! Where is this from, you ask? Well, Japan of course.

This adaptation of a 1970s anime made no sense to me whatsoever. As I understood it when I saw it, the synopsis went something like that: around the end of the 21st century, the Eastern Confederation (read, the Japanese) wins a 50 year old war against Europa. They decide to form Eurasia, a tyranny based on the alleged superiority of the Japanese race. Some resistance groups subsist, like in an area called Zone. This is where protagonist Tetsuyo goes after enlisting in the army. Meanwhile, his father Dr Azuma works at home on a project that could save the human race, which is undergoing some kind of cellular degeneration (because of the war, I believe). He creates a sort of red pool made of “neo cells” where human body parts are floating.

So far “so good”, but then it all goes down the crapper: the son dies and his body is brought back home. For no apparent reason that I could decipher, a giant metal spike comes down from the sky and lands directly in the red pool. Then, as Tetsuo’s ghost says goodbye to his fiancée and loved ones, “android mutants” come out of the pool and start escaping from the medical facility. The army comes out all guns blazing, but some mutants still make it out alive, and kidnap Tetsuo’s mother. The very upset Dr Azuma then brings his son’s body to the pool, where he is resurrected as a superhuman whose muscles are so strong he needs a special outfit so that his skin doesn’t break under the pressure.

And then the mutants go in the mountains and find some kind of citadel that happens to be coming out of the earth itself. Inside, there’s a robot building factory, because why the hell not? The “neoroids” as they call themselves decide to wage war on humanity because they have been rejected about an hour ago. CUT. Their armies march on our cities, leaving us powerless. For some reason, they still need to kidnap Tetsuo’s fiancée’ s dad because his a robot expert. But the guy doesn’t want to cooperate so frack it, let’s just kill him! Several high flying battles ensue in a DBZ/Saint Seya style, and the story keeps jumping from one place to the next without any sense of coherence for the next hour and a half (including a WWII style war zone, another metal spike coming down from the sky – one’s never enough – and a huge final battle involving armies and super-powered heroes who must deal with Shakespearean dilemmas). That’s not even mentioning the epilogue that tries to make sense of it all as an allegory for war and society and stuff!

If you like dirty 1980s heavy metal, bad CGI and WTF plots, this is for you. I had a blast.