The Good, the Bad, and the So Bad They’re Good: Why We Love Bad Movies

Have you ever seen a movie so amazingly bad that instead of turning it off, you just couldn’t stop watching it? It may have been completely inept, but you couldn’t take your eyes off it until you reached the final frame. If so, then you may have just seen a “good bad movie.”

There are plenty of bad movies around, and there are more produced every year. But only some bad movies become “good bad movies.” What makes a bad movie so bad it’s good? It must be made with the sincere desire to make a good movie, so intentionally bad movies don’t count. And it must be inept in a way that is entertaining. Ideally, it should display a perfect combination of stunning ineptitude and misplaced sincerity, and leave you thinking “I can’t believe they actually made that!”

My love of “so bad they’re good” movies began many years ago when I read The Golden Turkey Awards which gave mocking “awards” to the worst movies ever made. That’s where I discovered the works of such directors as Ed Wood, who made “bad” but never boring movies. The book covers movies from the earliest days through the 1970s. The Bad Movie Bible will take you through more recent “good bad” movie offerings, from the 1980s through today.

You’ll find plenty of competing lists on the internet and there is much disagreement among bad film connoisseurs, but here are some titles that nearly everyone considers absolute “good bad” movie classics:

Valley of the Dolls starred big names like Patty Duke and raked in huge profits at the time of its release (1967), but was almost universally panned by critics as a terrible movie - and it’s “good bad” reputation has only grown with its legions of fans over the years. You can read all about the making of this cult classic bad film in the book Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!

Plan 9 from Outer Space, directed by Ed Wood. This is considered to be Wood’s great “anti-masterpiece.” It is a strange science-fiction epic featuring aliens who want to take over the world by bringing the dead back to life. It features Wood’s trademark cheap production values, weird performances by Bela Lugosi and others, and bizarre but memorable dialogue.

Reefer Madness is a 1930s low-budget “exploitation” movie dealing with the effects of marijuana on young people in an extremely sensationalistic manner.

Manos! The Hands of Fate – This ultra-low budget horror disaster, made on location in El Paso, was released and then quickly forgotten in the mid-1960s. It was rediscovered by, and became one of the most popular episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show any bad movie lover who grew up in the 1990s will remember. Every episode took a bad movie and “riffed” (made snarky comments) about it while the movie was running.

There are even some movies about bad movies, some of which are actually good:

The Disaster Artist with James Franco recounts the story of the making of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, one of the most well-known “good bad” movies of recent years.

Ed Wood is Tim Burton’s biopic of famous bad movie director Ed Wood’s life. It introduced a whole new generation to Ed Wood’s gloriously bad movies. It is most notable for Martin Landau’s performance as washed-up horror star Bela Lugosi, who collaborated with Wood on numerous films.

Best Worst Movie is a documentary about the making of the notoriously inept Troll 2, made by one of the amateur “stars” of the movie. The Italian-produced horror movie, which is not even really a sequel to the first Troll movie, is thought by many to actually be the worst film of all time.

And if you love bad movies, you shouldn’t forget to check out the Razzies every year. They “honor” all the worst movies of the previous year. The stars of the worst movies of the year often show up to the ceremony to humbly accept their awards.

 - by Michael K., West Windsor Branch