good bad movies
because some of the best movies are bad movies.
(No longer obsessive-compulsively ranked, as nobody got time for that)
(No longer obsessive-compulsively ranked, as nobody got time for that)
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- DirectorHung-Chuen LauStarsEddie ChanYung-Chang ChinPak-Kwong HoA woman becomes possessed and dies after a monster is released from an antique vase she had purchased. Twelve years later the monster is re-awakened. First he possesses the family's dog, before moving on to the woman's nephew.One of my favorite moviegoing experiences was seeing the great "Devil Fetus" at the Alamo Drafthouse. This tasteless Chinese shocker begins with a newly married woman buying an enchanted bottle, from which emerges a seductive evil spirit. After a number of too-long scenes of her canoodling with this gross genie, she is caught en flagrante by her hubbie, and both quickly perish. But though the woman is dead, within her grows the titular devil fetus, bearing the spirit of the genie, and it soon emerges to wreak havoc upon her grieving family.
So, why is it bad?
It's nasty, dude. "Mo Tai" is a movie that knows no bounds of good taste. Right off the bat, there are the sex scenes between the young woman and the incubus, which has claws and peeling purple flesh. A later scene finds another young couple making out on a balcony, and up comes the family dog, which starts lapping busily at her crotch, and is not prevented from doing so. Also, I don't know if you heard, but the movie is about a cannibalistic demon fetus.
And the effects? The movie culminates in a wizard's duel in which the full power of hokey 80's visual effects are brought to bear upon your defenseless eyeballs.
Why is it not so bad?
Huh. Well, the cons sound a lot like pros, if you ask me. - DirectorJ. Robert WagonerStarsRudy Ray MooreCarol SpeedJimmy LynchRudy Ray Moore's fourth in a series of cult favorites finds him playing an ex-cop called back into action to stop an angel dust producer. The angel dust hallucinations alone are well worth the price of admission!THE prototypical bad blaxploitation movie. Say you have a friend who wouldn't understand what "Black Dynamite" is parodying? Show him this first. If his brain is not broken by the experience (no guarantees), he'll be ready.
Why is it bad?
The, uh, acting? Producer/star Rudy Ray Moore first appears as a flamboyant DJ, demanding ceaselessly that dancer put their weight down and boogie ever harder. He starts off at 11, and he never brings the intensity down. His set is interrupted when his nephew, an up and coming basketball player played by "Brisco County Jr" star Julius Carry, overdoses on pcp. The supporting players by and large adopt the monotone and downcast gaze of unseasoned actors, and Moore's dynamicism blows them off the screen - DirectorDon CoscarelliStarsReggie BannisterA. Michael BaldwinBill ThornburyMike and Reggie continue to hunt the mysterious Tall Man, discovering along the way that the invasion has already begun.So, hold up. I don't really think that the Phantasm movies as bad, per se. As of this writing I'm eagerly awaiting part 5. Part I is a strange and striking work of otherworldly horror that Coscarelli put together for roughly the price of a song; it's rough, and the it-was-all-a-dream-or-was-it? ending is a cliche, but I'm omitting from this list; consider it good-good, not good-bad. Part I possesses an eerie dream logic; parts II and III take that unearthly quality, dial it to 11, and spike it with a winningly silly self-awareness.
- DirectorDon CoscarelliStarsJames Le GrosReggie BannisterAngus ScrimmMike, now released from a psychiatric hospital, meets with Reggie, and discover his dreams (the events of the original film) are real, and they both journey to find and stop the evil Tall Man from his grim work.
- DirectorMike HodgesStarsSam J. JonesMelody AndersonMax von SydowA football player and his friends travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyranny of Ming the Merciless to save Earth.Not really a bad movie so much as a movie that knows that it's camp, and plays the part to perfection.
- DirectorPanos CosmatosStarsEva BourneMichael J RogersScott HylandsDespite being under heavy sedation, a young woman tries to make her way out of the Arboria Institute, a secluded, quasifuturistic commune.
- DirectorNgai Choi LamStarsSiu-Wong FanMei Sheng FanKa-Kui HoRiki-Oh, a young man who has superhuman strength, is incarcerated in a private prison, where inmates are treated like slaves. He is forced to use his unstoppable form of martial arts to destroy the corrupt officials and their lackeys.Insanely gory wuxia madness
- DirectorRusty CundieffStarsClarence Williams IIICorbin BernsenJoe TorryA funeral director tells four strange tales of horror with an African American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business.Is "Tales from the Hood" shooting for true profundity, or is it intentionallly a big goofy spectacle? It's hard to say: that so-bad-it's-good magic is hard to capture in a bottle, arising more often from painfully earnest intentions than from any above-it-all pranksterism (like those parodies of 50's scifi? dreadful). But there are just SO many bits here that couldn't have been imagined as being scary by, y'know, anyone, ever, and there are sundry bewilderments of a more fundamental sort as well. Take the segment that features one Crazy K, which begins as a barefaced ripoff, Clockwork Orange in the hood, then undermines what little point it might have been making by faking us out and going the route of "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge". There is no point and no moral to the story, just a big wtf. Accordingly it is the most earnest segment of the anthology that is the weakest, lacking as it is in this anarchic spirit. I'm thinking of the segment about the little boy and the monster, which is an unsubtle parable about child abuse. Even here, there's a bit of that wild magic, when the abusive stepdad, played by a cold-as-ice David Alan Grier (believe it), is reduced to rubber by the boy's lame superpowers. The other two segments are spectacular. Some white cops kill a black lawyer, who comes back as a magic zombie and kills them in ways that... Boy, there is not an adjective I know that will complete that sentence. Here's the play-by-play. Duane Whitaker pisses on his grave, so the zombie lawyer grabs him by the balls and pulls him screaming into the ground (a tribute to Peter Jackson's "Braindead", aight? everybody take a shot!). Michael Massee and Wings Hauser look on in horror as Whitaker meets his grisly end, and Hauser unloads his gun at the zombie lawyer's headstone for some reason before they beat a hasty retreat in their cop car. Somehow, though moving at a zombie shuffle, zombie lawyer catches up with the car and he pulls off Wings Hauser's head. Then he levitates some heroin needles and pins Michael Massee to a mural in a Jesus Christ pose. There is then a POV shot of a needle flying into Massee's mouth (clarification: not from the point of view of the needle, but from the point of view of Massee's uvula). Then Massee melts into paint and becomes part of the mural. Of course! It all makes so much sense! But hey, anybody: why is there a bottle of glowing green liquid inside the zombie lawyer when he gets ripped open? This was a little detail I didn't understand. As for the other segment, let me merely say this: I would watch a feature length movie starring Corbin Bernsen as a racist gubernatorial candidate menaced by little black claymation dolls. If all I can get is 20-minutes of that, then I can ask for no more. Hypothetical readers, as I type these words, tears of gratitude spill down my face. I am not kidding you. I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout-out to the great Clarence Williams III, who plays the hissing undertaker who relates these tales from the hood to three bored gangsters.
- DirectorTommy WiseauStarsTommy WiseauJuliette DanielleGreg SesteroIn San Francisco, an amiable banker's seemingly perfect life is turned upside down when his deceitful fiancée embarks on an affair with his best friend.A staggering work of heart-breaking delusion.
- DirectorClaudio FragassoStarsMichael Paul StephensonGeorge HardyMargo PreyA vacationing family discovers that the entire town they're visiting is inhabited by goblins, disguised as humans, who plan to eat them.
- DirectorMario BavaStarsJohn Phillip LawMarisa MellMichel PiccoliA master thief and his sensual lover pull off heist after heist, all while an envious coalition of cops and gangsters is gunning for them.When I was young (and a fool) I hated this movie. This lameness I must now recant. Diabolik is awesome. John Philip Law is a murderous thief who steals *beep* to appease his vain, greedy slut of a girlfriend. They live in a cave with de stijl decor and *beep* all the time on a bed covered in money. I know! The cop pursuing him is a worthless klutz of the first order, and Diabolik tries to kill him time and again, going so far as to blow up a train. Cut to the cop diving into a river. Awesomeness!
How could I have not liked this movie? Maybe it was just too soon after September 11th. - DirectorDon BartonArnold StevensStarsMarshall GrauerWade PopwellPaul GallowayA mad scientist transforms himself into an aquatic killer.Mesmerizingly awful Creature from the Black Lagoon riff in which a mad scientist (prone to voiceovers of such standards as "They say that I am insane? They are the one's who are insane!" after a long spiel about creating a new race of fish-people) uses radioactive aerosol to drive the fish of the everglades into an invasion of mainland Florida. Also, he changes himself into a man fish and schemes to create a comely woman fish with whom to mate. The human-fish dating scene is not exactly thriving, however, and his experiments to mutate screechy little blondes into blushing ichthyous brides tend to go horribly wrong. I think we can all relate. There's some nice underwater photography (mostly stock footage) and a weird weepy hippie folk song about sargasso weed and our fish brothers.
- DirectorNobuhiko ÔbayashiStarsKimiko IkegamiMiki JinboKumiko ÔbaA schoolgirl and six of her classmates travel to her aunt's country home, which turns out to be haunted.
- DirectorMenahem GolanStarsCatherine Mary StewartGeorge GilmourGrace KennedyIn 1994, a young couple enters the world of the music industry, and subsequently the world of drugs.A sleazy, stupid musical with horrible lyrics, this is a lot more fun than it has any right to be. The story concerns a pair of young musician lovers (their wretched tv audition song "Love, the Universal Melody" is easily the most boring, stupid song ever written) who are seduced by a demonic record company which offers them success in exchange for their very souls. At this crisis point they are separated tragically by the folly of womanhood; he realizes that the contract is a terrible Faustian bargain, but she wants to be on MTV (a story as old as that of Juliet and her Romeo). This scene gives us the upbeat title number, coaxing her to sign the contract (in reality eating an Edenic apple, which imparts not knowledge of good and evil but sequined clothes and bouffant hair). Oh, this song is a winner, with the improbable line "Its an natural, natural, natural desire/ to meet an actual, actual, actual vampiire." Embittered and left alone, the hero is seduced by the devil's henchwoman in a kaleidoscopic orgy wherein the henchwoman sings "I'm coming/Coming for you." At the end some fakeass Jesus figure leads all the hippies who don't watch MTV over the rainbow, and that's the end
- DirectorDanny BoyleStarsCameron DiazEwan McGregorHolly HunterUpon being fired, a desperate guy kidnaps a daughter of his former boss. Two angels are sent to Earth to check if love is possible in this case.
- DirectorHarold P. WarrenStarsTom NeymanJohn ReynoldsDiane AdelsonA family gets lost on the road and stumbles upon a hidden, underground, devil-worshiping cult led by the fearsome Master and his servant Torgo.
- DirectorWilliam GirdlerStarsChristopher GeorgeAndrew PrineRichard JaeckelAn eighteen-foot-tall grizzly bear terrorizes a state park, leaving it up to a Park Ranger to save the day.This "Jaws" clone trades Martha's Vineyard for the Rockies, and the Great White for the great bear. It is also one of director Girdler's blander offerings: hardly a good movie, but with all the stolen story beats it never strays too far from the point of reason. That is until the finale, where the bear is
SPOILER
obliterated with a rocket launcher.
I'll let that sink in. And maybe it won't; the logical mind tells you "Hmm, a rocket launcher? Just the sort of thing to kill a bear." You monster. Well, you don't get it, man. I submit to you that the rocket launcher is a violation of the unspoken compact between movie and audience. The rocket launcher isn't Chekov's rocket launcher, a logical element that has been satisfyingly set up and paid off. It's Girdler saying "Okay, the bear has killed enough. We have an hour and a half of footage. Time to end things." and the crew packing up and going home, except the editor, who splices in some stock explosion footage to show us that the bear blowed up real good. - DirectorWilliam GirdlerStarsCarol SpeedWilliam MarshallTerry CarterA marriage counselor becomes possessed by a demon of sexuality when her father-in-law, an archaeologist and an exorcist, accidentally frees it while in Africa.Hey, William Girdler again! This picture, which he did for American International, never reaches the delirious heights of his later films, but there are moments to enjoy. The scariest scene finds Abby being scanned by a 70's era MRI. Nothing happens, there isn't even any scary music, but no way am I going into a room with one of those things.
- DirectorWilliam GirdlerStarsTony CurtisSusan StrasbergMichael AnsaraA psychic's girlfriend finds out that a lump on her back is a growing reincarnation of a 400-year-old demonic Native American spirit.Why, look who it is! William Girdler!
Not only that, but this is the second time he ripped off The Exorcist! - DirectorWilliam GirdlerStarsChristopher GeorgeLeslie NielsenLynda Day GeorgeA battle for survival ensues after a group of hikers encounters a chemically imbalanced forest.It's Girdler --Girdler!-- Girdler again!
- DirectorLamberto BavaStarsMichael SopkiwValentine MonnierGianni GarkoA marine biologist, a dolphin trainer, a research scientist, and a local sheriff try to hunt down a large sea monster, a shark/octopus hybrid, that is devouring swimmers and fishermen off a south Florida coast.Probably my favorite episode of MST3K.
This is the patient-zero of Scifi Channel Original Movies, unless there is a previous European-made film in which eee-vil scientists attempt world domination by creating an unholy merging of shark and octopus. No doubt it is nigh unwatchable without the mst3k treatment. On that note excuse a bit of silly quoting. "Squad number two, come in, over!" "We done been et, over." "They'll be number two soon enough." "Get your flame throwers out, get your stick of Juicy Fruit." "Deploy the Country Time pink lemonade!" "I don't need Neil Young around anyhow." "Southern man, gonna eat your head..." Ah, but these all come from the climactic showdown. So here's another from near the beginning. "Just because you can edit doesn't mean you should." Words to live by, those. - DirectorCharles BandStarsTim ThomersonHelen HuntMichael StefaniA gruff bounty hunter travels back in time to 1980s Los Angeles to stop a twisted criminal who can transform people into zombie-like creatures.
- DirectorIshirô HondaStarsKenji SaharaYumi ShirakawaAkihiko HirataA mining engineer investigates the deaths of his colleagues, discovering prehistoric nymphs and a creature capable of flying - and wrecking havoc - at supersonic speeds.
- DirectorWoo-sang ParkY.K. KimStarsY.K. KimVincent HirschJoseph DiamandA martial arts rock band goes up against a band of motorcycle ninjas who have tightened their grip on Florida's narcotics trade.Dragon Sound is a band composed of five orphan college boys of diverse backgrounds. They get a gig as house band at a nightclub, where they entertain crowds with songs about how they will always be friends. But there's trouble in paradise. One band mate's girlfriend has just joined the band, let's call her Yoko, and her brother is coming around the club with his biker gang to sell cocaine and beat up Yoko's boyfriend. Also, the band that worked at the club before Dragon Sound got the gig want their hides, and have taken this complaint to their neighborhood evil ninja dojo. "They're all black belts in tae kwon do. And they're bad," the rival band leader warns the sensei as he calls in the hit. Some of that tae kwon do has apparently rubbed off on the club owner, who is not a significant character but nonetheless gets a fight scene where he beats up his old house band when they resort to threats to get him to take them back. There follows a melee of clumsily choreographed fight scenes, where time and again a villainous biker or ninja will run toward a hero with a raised weapon, only to pause helpfully a foot or two away to give the hero a chance to kick them in the face. No place is safe for Dragon Sound (except I guess the beach, where they go to leer at girls in bikinis). Bikers accost them when they're driving their convertible through a trainyard. When the cops arrive on the scene after the combatants have gone, one cop says "We've got to get these gangs out of central Florida." Stay in northern or southern Florida where you belong, gangsters. But when Yoko's brother and his henchmen kidnap Dragon Sound's John-Oates-lookalike guitarist, Dragon Sound decides to go on the offensive, beating up the gang and killing Yoko's brother. Yoko is pretty understanding on this score, thankfully. The ninjas, however, are out for blood, and ambush Dragon Sound as the band is on the way to meet the estranged father of one of their members (yes, everyone else in the band seems a little hurt to learn that he's not actually an orphan).
- DirectorMichael RissiStarsJoe EstevezVivian SchillingGregg ThomsenFour teenagers are killed in a car accident. Two of the teenagers refuse to go with "The Grim Reaper" and a race between life and death ensues!