The 11 Truly Best “Worst” Movies
Within the next few weeks, the world will not only play host to the new Blu-Ray edition of Claudio Fragasso’s “Troll 2” – that infamously horrid and incredibly enjoyable Z-grade monster cheapie embraced by Alamo Drafthouses and angelheaded hipsters alike – but also a DVD edition of child actor Michael Paul Stephenson’s documentary “Best Worst Movie,” all about the making of “Troll 2” and its unexpected cult following. I’m glad we’re getting to see “Troll 2” in such a deluxe package; it kind of throws into stark relief that gap between the high-quality sound, crisp images, and in-depth extras usually associated with the Blu-Ray medium, and the crappy films pressed onto it.
Many people the world over feel that “Troll 2” is indeed the best worst movie ever made, what with its over-the-top bad acting, its protracted ESL dialogue, its unusual conceits (vegetarian monsters that turn you into plants before eating you, elements like supernatural hand grenades, baloney sandwiches and a young boy’s urine, all used to save lives), and its clunky, low-fi, low-tech filming technique. And while I do enjoy and defend “Troll 2,” I do feel that there are better worst movies in the world.
When you watch a bad movie, its often just a forgettable and sometimes even painful experience. But, as the initiated know, some movies can be so bad, they move into the realm of hugely entertaining. Experienced viewers can often reach a plane of acceptance, where they cease to see the story or characters onscreen, and begin forming complex external narratives involving the filmmakers and screenwriters and their earnest need to entertain audiences with the weird-ass object in front of them. And it is that earnestness that we lovers of B-movies latch onto. Pretty soon, you find yourself enjoying a bad film in spite of yourself, and actually being having a sincere love of a bad movie, making it a really good bad movie.
Here then, are the ten weirdest, most protracted, most earnest, and most enjoyable bad movies around. This was a tough list to whittle down to ten, as there are dozens of obscure bad movies highly loved and dearly protected by their respective audiences. I hope this list either includes some of your favorites, or, at the very least, introduces you to some new classics to add to your collection
11. “Rockula” (1990)
Directed by: Luca Bercovici
Ralph LaVie (Dean Cameron) is one unhappy vampire. He’s hundreds of years old, but is still, gulp, a virgin. His mother (Toni Basil) (!) is always bringing men home, which doesn’t make him feel any better. His best friends Chuck (Susan Tyrell) and Axman (Bo Diddley) offer him some solace, but he dreads his future of chastity. You see, thanks to some protracted curse, Ralph is destined, every 20 years, to fall in love with the reincarnated soul of his One True Love, only to have her bludgeoned to death by the reincarnation of a rival, wielding a hambone. Another broken heart, another tragic death, another 20 years of sexlessness. He’s been doing this for four centuries.
This time around, he meets the woman of his dreams in the form of Mona (Tawney Fere), who is a nightclub singer, and seems to be under the thumb of a surreal, Dragula-driving cemetery wonk played by Thomas Dolby (!). Thanks to the encouragement of his friends, Ralph decides to pursue Mona, and, in order to impress her, he forms a rock band called Rockula. Watching the vampire-themed vampire numbers is a mind-numbing experience.
And if you’re not screaming in delighted insanity at this point, “Rockula” throws in the added conceit of Ralph’s own alternate personality, which he talks to through mirrors. Oh yes, vampires can see their reflections in this film. Ralph’s mirror persona is, predictably, the opposite of him, and cavorts about through the looking glass, confidently making out with a string of hot women.
This is a weird, weird movie. It features some legit rock stars turning in some beatufully over-the-top performances, some odd songs (including a rap number), and Bo Diddley wearing a bee costume. Teetering on insanity, “Rockula” will stir in the bowels until you either digest it wholly, or regect it disgustingly.
10. “Shark Attack 3: Megalodon” (2002)
Directed by: David Worth
For the last decade, there has been a long string of winky, cheap animal-attack flicks to grace the lower shelves of video stores, or the wee hours of programming on The Sci-Fi Channel (I refuse to call it “SyFy”). And amongst all the Sharktapi and Boas fighting Pythons, all of the d-list celebrities who are cearly slumming for paychecks, the crown jewel – indeed the golden standard – is probably 2002’s “Shark Attack 3: Megalodon,” starring “Doctor Who’s” John Barrowman, and a shark that can eat entire rafts of people whole.
“Shark Attack 3” is almost not even notable; it features all the usual bad acting, strange dialogue and incredibly cheap special effects that are de rigueur for the genre. Anyone who has seen “Jaws” knows exactly what to expect; you need not have seen “Shark Attack” parts one or two. This is one of those films where you begin predicting, despite yourself, who is going to die next, and what ironic twist will be involved in their death.
But there’s something imminently watchable about “Shark Attack 3.” You may be predicting the story, but you’re still eager to see where it goes. It contains naughty words, a few bare breasts, and some beautifully cheap money shots of the shark. Director David Worth has made dozens of B films in his career from “Kickboxer” to “American Tigers” (where Cynthia Rothrock played herself) to “House at the End of the Drive,” so he knows what he’s doing when it comes to exploitation animal attacks. “Shark Attack 3” is cheesy and dumb and predictable and incredibly fun.
9. Godzilla vs. Any Other Monster (c. 1960 – c. 1995)
Directed by: Various Japanese Men
The first “Gojira” (1954, directed by Ishiro Honda) was an enormous worldwide hit, became a pop cultural marker, spawned the kaiju genre, and even, like so much Japanese entertainment at the time, served as a clever metaphor for the atomic bomb. It is well beloved by millions of people the world over (this critic included), either in its original Japanese form, or its 1956 American “Godzilla” form, with footage of Raymond Burr edited into it.
As a piece of cinema, though, it has to be admitted by even the most hardcore of fans, that “Gojira”/“Godzilla” is rather shabby. The science is unwieldy, the monster is cheap looking, and the film’s somber tone clashes seriously with the sheer goofy image a guy in a rubbery monster suit stomping around on a miniature Toho set (I always wanted to be the guy in that suit, didn’t you?).
And, what’s more, Godzilla became so popular, that sequels were inevitable, and the gigantic stompy, firebreathing monster somehow transformed into a hero figure that would defend Tokyo from other marauding stompy, firebreathing monsters. This is an odd idea, and, as thousands of late-night television viewers can attest, deliriously enjoyable. There’s almost a dream logic to some of the later “Godzilla” movies, and you find yourself kind of understanding why Godzilla is fighting a life-size robotic version of itself (as in 1974’s “Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla).
The crown jewel in the kaiju genre, though, is still 1968’s “Destroy All Monsters,” in which Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidra, and a host of others engage in a spectacular all-monster battle royale. This is probably the best fight in cinema history, and should not be missed.
8. “Jason X” (2001)
Directed by: James Isaac
The slasher genre is one that is often celebrated for its cheesiness and predictability. A great slasher film like “Halloween” or “Scream” can serve as a scary and moving mark of cinematic horror. A bad slasher film, though, can be just as enjoyable. Horror hounds the world off know the genuine thrill of a good kill and some well-placed nudity, despite the oddness of the setup, the fatuousness of the script, or the incompetence of the acting.
I feel the slasher genre reached its most ridiculous with 2001’s “Jason X,” the tenth film in the undying “Friday the 13th” series. Jason Voorhees, Crystal Lake’s very own teenager exterminator, has somehow survived the events of the previous film (“Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday”), and, thanks to some machinations by David Cronenberg, has found himself cryogenically frozen. He awakens 500 years in the future, aboard a spacecraft. From there, it’s back to the usual business of shoving various blunt and/or sharpened objects through the heads and abdomens of everyone in the vicinity, but with the surreal setting of a futuristic space-faring vessel.
Jason in space? …the Hell? And is that an android trying on nipples for the first time? And is that a space station that looks like a city skyline? Did Jason just freeze a woman’s face in liquid nitrogen? And, oh man, are those medical nanites going to reconstruct the immortal Jason with a spiffier physique and mask? “Jason X” seems to blend the most ridiculous elements of sci-fi, slashers, and superhero movies into a stew of gorgeously stupid entertainment.
The “X” is pronounced like the letter, by the way, and not the number ten.
7. “Dreamcatcher” (2003)
Directed by: Lawrence Kasdan
Oh gosh.
Story goes that Stephen King, when he wrote the novel Dreamcatcher, was doped up on painkillers following a traumatic bus accident. There was a scene in the book in which one of the characters was sitting on a closed toilet, trying to reach a just-out-of-arm’s-length toothpick that he had dropped. The character, Beaver, needs toothpicks to relax. And why does he need to relax? Because there’s a snake monster in the toilet beneath him. He cannot rise for fear for setting the monster free. Stephen King has said in interviews that he feels this is the central scene of his book, and the subsequent film based on it. Let’s write a book about fear and vulnerability. And where are you most vulnerable but when on the toilet? And how does one exploit this fear to its fullest? Put a monster in the toilet. Done and done.
What’s most baffling about “Dreamcatcher” is the amount of hugely talented people who were roped into making it. It starts with a book by King, which is often a good place to start a movie. The screenwriter is William Goldman, who wrote “Chaplin,” “Misery,” and “The Princess Bride.” The director is Lawrence Kasdan, who made “Wyatt Earp,” “The Big Chill,” and “Body Heat.” Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman. And I have a great deal of respect for Timothy Olyphant.
There’s a lot here, so follow closely: So we have a quartet of male friends (Olyphant, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis), who meet annually in a woodsy cabin to reminisce about their retarded pal Duddits. The four of them share an incredibly close bond, and spend a lot of the film repeating and re-repeating protracted in-jokes. Why are they so close? Well, it turns out that Duddits, when they were boys, imbued them all with psychic powers. They’re not exactly mind-readers, but they can all intuit feelings, find lost objects, etc. Yes, the premise is that a magic retard gave our heroes superpowers. One of the four friends, Jonesy, spends some of his time in a metaphorical memory library inside his own head. He get to see it literally, though, as he ambles through the Borges-like structure, filing his memories.
Oh, and while the four psychic friends are vacationing in their cabin, an alien spacecraft lands nearby. The aliens are also psychic. They reproduce by feeding you their eggs, and spewing, fully formed, out of your anus. How attractive and filmable. The alien mother possesses Jonesy , and speaks with a British accent. And the military is there, led by a sadistic Morgan Freeman with big crawly eyebrows. Pretty soon, we have to track down the psychic retard from before, now played by Donnie Wahlberg, and find out how to defeat the psychic aliens, who are bend on world domination.
At a thudding 136 minutes, “Dreamcatcher” plays like four different Stephen King stories all mashed haphazardly together. It’s a gloriously stupid and hubristic affair, sparked by the most unstable of ideas, and played to its logical extreme. There are few more spectacular train-wreck-like failures than “Dreamcatcher.” Each protracted twist is just another cackle of incredulity. Revisit this film.
6. “Butterfly” (1982)
Directed by: Matt Cimber
Ah, to be Pia Zadora. Her ultra-rich boyfriend was so enamored of her kewpie face and girlish good looks, that he insisted on producing film projects for her. She was young and naïve, and felt that she could easily pull of acting, even though her only acting credit to date was a bit part in “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” (1963). Many people give grief to Zadora for her performances in this film, and in “The Lonely Lady” (not to mention “Voyage of the Rock Aliens”), but she gives a performance that is so fierce and energetic, that I found it hard not to be wrapped up in the shrill, unseemly, oily sincerity of it.
Zadora plays Kady, a slutty desert belle, who arrives on the doorstep of a stoic local miner named Jess (a very good and very game Stacy Keach), claiming to be his daughter. He finds himself drawn to the flighty weirdness and forced flirtiness of her personality, and it’s not long before he starts ogling her undressing, and giving her inappropriate massages in the bath. Yes, dear readers, “Butterfly” is an incest thriller. Keach is hugely concerned with his attraction to this girl who is most likely his daughter, but events lead to some pretty unexpected places. Eventually there’s a trial.
Here is a film that deals with a taboo subject like incest, but in the most hokey and melodramatic fashion, a hokiness that is only compounded by Zadora’s passionately odd performance. Add to this a cameo by Orson Welles, and you’ve got yourself a camp classic with camp thatlasts for weeks.
5. “Santa Claus” (1959)
Directed by: René Cardona
This film should be familiar to fans of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” For those of you who haven’t seen the film without the comedy commentary, I encourage you to do so; you will discover a film that is so terrifyingly odd, that you will commit sins during the year, just to ensure that this horrifying Santa Claus does not visit you.
“Santa Claus,” is a Mexican children’s film that repurposes the myths of Santa for some pretty surreal ends. The film’s director is best known in Mexico and Cuba for directing various El Santo movies, “Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy,” “Night of the Bloody Apes,” and “Doctor of Doom.” The actor who plays Santa in this movie is José Elías Moreno, best known for playing scary heavies in gangster movies and mad scientists. His American equivalent would be, I suppose, John Malkovich. Or perhaps Robert Davi.
The film takes place in Santa’s floating crystal palace, which sits in the clouds above the North Pole. He has no elves, but a rainbow coalition of slave children from all over the world (the scene in which the children sing and dance to their native music is hilariously racist). Santa gives some of the most disturbingly lecherous looks to the children. These children use a series of bizarre spy devices to peer in on the children of Earth, and judge of they are worthy for gifts.
Santa, however, faces a challege this Christmas: Satan himself has dispatched a demon (professional dancer José Luis “Trotsky” Agurrie) to tempt the world’s children, and, when that doesn’t work, use magical spells to trip up Santa on his mission. Santa and Satan do indeed come into direct conflict, and do a real battle of wits. There are even close calls, where it looks like Santa will lose. This is not an ironic cutesy battle like when Jesus and Santa fight in “The Spirit of Christmas.” This is a frank abttle of good and evil.
There are robot reindeer, who cackle maniacally. There are dream sequences where dolls come to life. There are weepy moments of poor children praying for their drunken fathers. This film is like the nightmare you had on Christmas Eve after drinking too much red bull, and reading too many Jack Chick comics.
4. “Plan 9 from Outer Space” (1959)
Directed by: Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Thanks to National Lampoon, Edward D. Wood, Jr., for about a decade, enjoyed the title of Worst Director of All Time. His opus magnus, “Plan 9 from Outer Space” became a sought-after camp celebration, and a byword for horrid filmmaking. In 1994, Tim Burton directed a biopic about Ed Wood, and his work was introduced to a new generation. Sure, there were teams of people who watched “Plan 9” in order to laugh at it and dismiss it, but there were just as many of us who found Ed Wood to be a passionate and loving director who had a genuine interest in the films he was directing. Pretty soon, the earnest appreciators of Ed Wood became legion, and “Plan 9 from Outer Space” became a sincere and righteous classic for the ages.
We all know the film and its foibles. Bela Lugosi, who died during production, plays a dead scientist who was resurrected by space aliens bent on world domination. Tor Johnson, a mountainous wrestler, played a resurrected cop. TV horror hostess Vampira (a.k.a. Maila Nurmi) played the doctor’s zombie wife.
Yes, the day and night scenes shift unexpectedly between each other. Yes, the fly saucers are clearly off-the-rack models hanging from wires. Yes, the use of stock footage is clashing and obvious. The dialogue is ill-thought out, and delivered with a theatrical bombast (“Future events such as these will effect you in the future.”). The aliens are alternately fey and ingratiating. Plan 9 itself seems like an unlikely way to take over the world. But through all of this, you can actually get the feeling that Wood was making something he loved; something he felt was important.
Indeed, isn’t that what this list is all about? We lovers of bad film aren’t people with bad taste in movies. We are just more interested in the filmmaker’s sincerity. And no bad filmmaker was more sincere than Ed Wood.
3. “Showgirls” (1995)
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
“Showgirls,” like “Plan 9 from Outer Space” was often dismissed in popular culture as a punchline. In “Scream 2,” a character claimed that it was the scariest film of all time, and even Joe Eszterhas, the film’s own screenwriter (and greasy, overpaid pervert), made fun of it in a later screenplay. But those who mock and dismiss “Showgirls” as “just another bad film” are surely missing out on what is one of the most rewarding and hilarious camp experiences in cinematic history.
“Showgirls” is an amazing, amazing film. Joe Eszterhaus and his strange Martian women. Verhoeven’s unflagging faith in his finished product. The odd multi-dimensional dialogue. Gina Gershon’s cartoon panther woman. Elizabeth Berkeley’s fierce, Pia Zadora-esque performance. The bare-faced – almost bold – use of misogyny. The brutal, cold, masturbatory views of adult sexuality. The sheer overpowering cattiness (which makes it little wonder that this film has a huge queer following).
It’s a film that plays like the mutant, untalented child of “All About Eve” and the Russ Meyer canon, after being raised – Chauncey Gardner-style – on nothing but made-for-cable skin flicks and Douglas Sirk movies.
If you can track it down, be sure to read the essays in Paul Verhoeven’s coffee tale book that he released with the film back in 1995. There is no doubt in any of the actors’ or creators’ minds that they weren’t making the most mature and daring piece of cinema ever put to film (Well, I’m convinced that Gershon knew what ind of film she was making, and maybe Robert Davi, but everyone else was deadly earnest).
2. “Dangerous Men” (2005)
Directed by: John S. Rad
“Dangerous Men” started filming in 1984, and was halfway completed when, for reasons unknown, production stopped. Production resumed in 1994(?) and was largely completed. The film’s writer/director/producer/photographer/executive producer John S. Rad personally financed a theatrical run, and it played for two weeks in three arthouses around Los Angeles. I, I am proud to say, was one of the few who got to see “Dangerous Men” on the big screen during its theatrical run back in 2005.
The story of the film is impenetrable. A woman witnesses her fiancee being murdered by biker toughs. She then tries seducing the leader of the bikers in an extended ploy to kill him. She then goes on a crusade to kill all the dangerous men she encounters. There’s a weird, weird “comic” scene in which she forces a would-be rapist to strip at gunpoint, and run off into the desert in the buff. The film, oddly, stays with the stripped man for an undue amount of time, as he prances and whines to himself.
But then that story string is abandoned and new characters are introduced. The heroine’s heretofore unheard of brother begins tracking down a new villain by the name of Black Pepper.
How can I describe the surreal universe in which this film takes place? A bar’s exit seems to lead to a mountain pass. A woman clenches a knife in between her buttocks as a concealment measure. A fortysomthing belly dancer has a three-minute dance number. A cop flashes his badge, and it clearly says “Policeman Police.” The footage of the cop cars is from the 1960s, the background establishing shots are from 1984 (An L.A. Olympics billboard is clearly seen). One character has a calendar on his wall that says its 1994. The film quality is clunky and weird and poor.
And yet, like the best of bad movies, you can sense the joy and tenacity John S. Rad had in his heart that allowed him to complete such an oddball project. This film is not on home video and, when I saw it, did not have an entry on the usually thorough Internet Movie Database. If you live in Los Angeles, “Dangerous Men” does occasionally pop up as a midnight show at The Cinefamily (http://www.cinefamily.org). If you can, go.
1. “The Apple” (1980)
Directed by: Menahem Golan
Holy flying Christ, this is, in my humble opinion, the grandaddy of them all. An over-the-top, relatively big-budget, all-but-forgotten musical from 1980, a banner year for bad or weird-ass musicals (it also saw the release of “Xanadu,” “Can’t Stop the Music,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and “Forbidden Zone”). This is a film that will melt your face off and make your brain explode. But, like the cenobites from “Hellraiser,” will make you feel a sweet, almost sexual pleasure from every prick of pain.
From the Cannon canon, and directed by the man behind “Enter the Ninja,” “The Apple” is a sci-fi disco Bible musical for the ages. The film takes place in the far-flung future of 1994, when the world will be ruled by an evil corporation called BIM, run by the suavely satanic Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal). BIM controls the world using pop music, currently represented by Pandi and Dandi (Alan Love and Grace Kennedy). During a Eurovision-like song contest, BIM’s power is temporarily threatened by the loving sincerity of Alphie and Bibi (George Gilmour and Catherine Mary Stewart), a folk duet from Canada.
Mr. Boogalow quickly signs Bibi into the BIM fold, and Alphie flees to continue his own brand of whiny folk rock. It’s an Adam & Eve metaphor, don’t you see? There is a song about controlling others, a song about sex, and a song about taking speed. The music is loud and fast and professional… and oddly enjoyable. Soundtrack records were handed out at the 1980 premiere and, the story goes, audiences were so outraged by the film, that they hucked their records at the screen. I imagine those records are valuable collector’s items these days.
I don’t want to give away the ending, but there is a deus ex machina that is quite literal. Indeed, I’m heistant to share any more details of “The Apple” with you, as I feel it should be experienced as a whole, as freshly as possible. Please see this film.
Another note, when MGM put out their DVD of “The Apple,” they reportedly contacted Menahem Golan about possibly recording a commentary track, or perhaps just doing an interview. Golan claims not to have remembered directing it.
N.B. The personal love of certain great bad movies is, I understand, writ large in the hearts of its fans, and I cannot cover every single one of them. Below are other great worst movies that are all worth research and perhaps viewing. I include them as to not seem remiss.
“The Wicker Man” (2006)
“The Room”
“C Me Dance”
“Southland Tales”
“Gigli”
“Standing Ovation”
“Formula 51”
“Night of the Lepus”
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
“Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”
“Street Trash”
“Leprechaun 4: In Space”
“Elves”
“Teen Witch”
Witney Seibold encourages you to watch more movies. He himself works in a movie theater, where he runs a projector, sells popcorn, and tries to be genial to the customers. He reads a lot, and has impeccably good taste. When he’s not reviewing old, bad movies, he’s writing reviews of current movies on his personally maintained ‘blog, which can be accessed here: http://witneyman.wordpress.com/
