This week saw Twitter explode with Sharknado-related activity for a third time, many relishing the opportunity to joke about the film’s awfulness on social media.
But Sharknado and especially its sequels are examples of films that were always designed to be ‘so bad they’re good’, proudly boasting “hey, aren’t we just awful?”. They’re designed with a wink at the audience, fully aware of their own absurdity - and it’s a trick many of the most committed ‘bad movie’ fans can see right through.
Sharknado and its ilk - and there are dozens of silly shark films alone - are mere pretenders compared to the great crimes against quality cinema. There’s something much more fascinating and endearing about films that aren’t bad on purpose. They’re the ones with misguided ambition, deluded intentions and a near total lack of self-awareness. They’re films made with genuine conviction, but just happen to be utterly, hilariously devoid of merit on anything other than an ironic level.
There are just a few of those anti-classics: the ones that will remain beloved by bad movie aficionados long after Sharknado has stopped trending. Any others you’d add to the list?
Reefer Madness
Originally produced by a church group as a ‘warning’ about the dangers of ‘marijuana addiction’, Reefer Madness was then purchased by an exploitation filmmaker who re-edited the film with more provocative, commercially-friendly content. It’s hard to tell where each influence begins and ends: what viewers today see is a wildly hyperbolic anti-drugs film filled with obnoxious moralising, cheap genre thrills, and plenty of gloriously unintentional comedy.
Plan Nine from Outer Space
Ed Wood, often called the worst director of all time, always tried his best (if Tim Burton’s excellent biopic of the man is to be believed). Indeed, his cross-dressing drama Glen/Glenda was considered a relatively sensitive film about LGBT issues, despite the fact it was totally incompetent in terms of actual filmmaking. Plan Nine is Wood’s magnum opus of awfulness, though.
Sadly, its iconic star Bela Lugosi passed away during production. Only Ed Wood come up with a solution as ingenious as having a replacement actor cover their face with a cape for the incomplete scenes. As brilliant as it is appalling.
The Room
Oh hai! What can we say that hasn't been said before? Based on most accounts, it seems as if Tommy Wiseau set out to make a masterpiece, but sadly/thankfully seemed to lack even a basic understanding of how cinema works. Dreadful acting, baffling subplots, accidentally hilarious dialogue, insane melodrama and generally haphazard production: it’s not hard to see how this has cemented itself as a cult favourite. The behind the scenes stories totally live up to this one-of-a-kind disaster. Chip chip chip chip cheep cheep!
Check out the clip below, possibly - no, definitely the finest twenty seconds in the colourful history of bad filmmaking:
Manos: The Hands of Fate
There’s an odd sequence at the beginning of this infamously awful film, where the audience has to sit through entire minutes of a car driving through countryside. It’s a baffling introduction. Read up about it, however, and you'll find an explanation, albeit a bizarre one: the opening credits were meant to play on top of the shots. They’re simply not there, an early indicator of the sub-amateur, poorly made nonsense to follow.
Some of that nonsense is sublime though, like the memorable scene where ‘The Master’ threatens his servant Torgo by waving a stick at him for a while (about as intense as it sounds). As is often the way with films of this quality level, though, those highlights come amid endless scenes of dull, barely watchable rubbish. Watch the Mystery Science Theatre take on the film to keep yourself entertained between the good bits - and by good we mean really, really bad.
The Wicker Man (2006)
The ironic appeal of this hilariously misguided remake can be summed up thusly (read in the voice of Nicolas Cage): OH, NO! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAAGGHHH!
Mac and Me
Following the success of ET: The Extra Terrestrial, a number of bright sparks hit upon a brilliant idea: an unapologetic rip-off of Spielberg’s film, with a much lower budget, but absolutely full of the most shameless product placement ever put on screen. The result is a film that should not be let near even the most undemanding of children.
It’s hard to say which scene qualifies as the ‘worst’. The scene of a young, wheelchair-bound character falling off a cliff was certainly never intended to be anywhere near as funny as it is in action. But it’s the gratuitous McDonald’s dance scene that is perhaps most memorable. Surely this breaches some sort of legislation related to children and advertising? If not it should.
Troll 2
For many, the standard-bearer of bad movies. It has even spawned a documentary called Best Worst Movie that paid tribute to both the film and its fanbase (earning exponentially more critical acclaim than Troll 2 itself in the process). We'll let a clip do the talking here - although it's less talking and more very unconvincing screaming:
Bonus fun fact: there are no actual trolls in Troll 2, and instead features vegetarian goblins.
