A movie doesn’t have to be great to be enjoyable. There are many guilty pleasures with little substance that offer enjoyment, intentional, or unintentional. An extreme example of this is the"So Bad It’s Good" classic - movies likeThe Room(2003),Plan 9 from Outer Space(1959), orManos: The Hands of Fate(1966). These movies are so awful, and so completely unaware of their own awfulness, that audiences can’t help but find enjoyment in their absurdity. On one hand, the appeal is one’s ability to mock these films for their incompetence. On the other, many are made with such misplaced confidence and passion that they become endearing - we love them because their makersbelievedthey were good andwent for it: the movie itself is horrible, but its earnestness is genuinely touching.
A “So Bad It’s Good” movie can inspire fervent cult devotion. Fans will go to conventions, attend screenings, and develop hyper-specific etiquettes and languages based on the films. But no matter how beloved, no matter how entertaining or obliquely meaningful, no one is arguing thatThe Room, for example, is secretly a masterpiece. Whether you laughwithit for its naive passion, oratit for its overwhelming stupidity, you aren’t about to cite it as an example of great filmmaking.
There are certain films that have garnered “So Bad It’s Good” reputations that aren’t actually bad at all. A couple are genuinely great. How they got this reputation varies: some were written off as schlock before deeper meaning could be garnered from their intentionally campy aesthetics. Others were hurt by bad timing and bad press. In many cases, audiences found themselves loving the movies, but couldn’t understand why. Without critical or theoretical frameworks to unpack why these films worked, they decided they didn’t: they wereenjoyablybad. This isn’t the movie’s fault - it’s the product of a film community unwilling to look past a short-sighted view of what cinema can and ought to do. Here are five films frequently dismissed as enjoyably bad that ought to be reconsidered for their cinematic accomplishments.
The only film on this list to receive critical acclaim upon its initial release, Sam Raimi’s debut feature is the rare item with a reputation both for horror mastery and unintentional humor. Especially as audiences have become desensitized to movie violence (largely from films inspired by this one), it is not uncommon for a modern horror fan to look at this cult oddity based on reputation alone, only to come away puzzled. What wasStephen King going on about? The acting is wooden, the effects are ridiculous, and the audience can practically feel the production’s pennies being pinched. This sort of viewer overlooks the effective storytelling and tight structure usually absent from themindless schlockthey regardThe Evil Deadas - but they touch on something true: the movieischeap, the actingiscorny, the storyisclichéd, and much of what once passed for scary plays as unintentionally (?) funny.
Now that it’s lost its shock value,The Evil Deadremains great in another way: it is the ultimate in low budget movie craftiness that creates superb cinematic spectacle. Ultimately, Raimi doesn’t care if the movie makes you scream or laugh (the young filmmaker cut his teeth on recreations of the Three Stooges gags - the slapstick a modern viewer mistakes for unintentional humor is in the movie’s DNA). All he asks is that audiences settle into a dark room and enter his world - from there he promises to show you something you’ve never seen before, a phantasmagorical freak-out with some of the most physical camerawork anywhere, big budget or small.
Of course,The Evil Dead’s charm has a lot to do with its small budget: the filmmakers clearly went into the woods with a camera, some lights, and a makeup kit, and had to get as creative as possible to bring the flick’s world to life. When the camera moves, it doesn’t simply invoke a supernatural presence (which itdoes, brilliantly): it bears the weight of a couple of wunderkinds taping a camera to a board to get that effect. In other words, the movie’s scrappiness emphasizes the fact that itisa movie - a series of tricks, movements, and images meant to transcend reality (and entertain the hell out of you in the process). Rather than taking the audience out of the film, this invests them further in what these kids are creating. It carries the energy of sheer cinematic craft, divorced from Hollywood excess.
Related:Evil Dead Rise Secures R-Rating for Violence and Gore
4Ishtar (1987)
To call this movie’s reputation “so bad it’s good” is kind:Ishtaris popularly regarded as one of the worst movies of all time, a testament to Hollywood’s habit of overspending on stinkers. The film tanked at the box office and ended Elaine May’s directorial career after only four films. In a famous Far Side comic, cartoonist Gary Larson depicted Hell’s Video Store, stocked with nothing butIshtaron VHS. The thing is,Ishtarisn’t bad at all. It’s unquestionably May’s worst film as director, but that’s not saying much giventhe quality of her work. There are many inspired bits, and while the movie buckles somewhat under the weight of its tongue-in-cheek action sequences, they are competently constructed and necessary for its satirical punch. So why the reputation as laughably bad?
May once quipped that if everyone who hatedIshtarhad seen it, she would be a very rich woman. This holds true for Gary Larson: he hadn’t seen the film when he made that panel, basing it on reputation alone. When he finally saw it,he issued an apology. This bizarre reputation is an example of ego clashing in the studios. Columbia changed administrations during production, and the new head had a contemptuous relationship with producer and star Warren Beatty. This caused the studio to leak negative coverage to the press, with an emphasis on the film’s ballooning budget. By the time it was released, most critics were more concerned with what the movie cost than with what that cost had created. Beatty made it out embarrassed, but unscathed; May’s career was ruined.
Separated from that word of mouth,Ishtarshines. The film is simultaneously a broad comedy in the vein of Crosby and Hope, but it uses this as a framework for scathing satire against American Imperialism, Celebrity Culture, and the calamitous intersection of both in Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It is frequently awkward and clunky, but this reinforces the incompetence of its ambitious “heroes.” The film has since been reevaluated by major filmmakers, such as Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese, and its reputation has gradually transformed from “so bad” to “so bad its good” to “actually so good.”
3Hausu (1977)
This Japanese cult oddity has been cited as the strangest movie of all time. It certainly deserves this reputation - the tone of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s feature debut is difficult to pin down. On one hand, it’s a horror movie with a familiar premise: teenagers stay in an old mansion and face a supernatural force. But the film is not “scary” in any traditional sense. It is populated by ghosts, severed heads, and lakes of blood; yet these are all presented as childish fantasy, more akin to the colorful whimsy ofBeetlejuice(1988) than the frigid dread ofThe Haunting(1963). The film seems to be projected from the mind of an imaginative young girl (the script was co-written by Obayashi’s pre-teen daughter, Chigumi); but the movie contains content inappropriate for children. Added to these contradictory tones is an absurdist style full of ridiculous music, jarring cuts, overacting, and non-sequiturs. Who is this movie for, if not a crowd able to enjoy its incoherence, ironically?
While old-hat critical snobbery goes against whatHausuis about, anyone willing to contend with its chaos will find an innovative, meticulously crafted film - albeit one with an “anything goes” ethos. Obayashi uses his background in kinetic commercials and avant-garde film to bring the fantasies and anxieties of young children to exuberant life. Where other horror films focus on semi-rational, menacing threats, Obayashi focuses on the irrational fears that plague children. For no real reason, a child may find a clock or piano scary. Rather than dismiss these fears, the kaleidoscopicHaususummons them.
The film is worthy of serious cinematic consideration for its aesthetic form alone - but Obayashi is interested in complex ideas that ground the story, even if they go over most viewers' heads. The youthful protagonists caught in a generational curse, symbolize a generational gap and resentment fermenting in Japan. There was an immense dissonance between the generation that lived through the nuclear tragedy and the generation that grew up in Japan’s post-war economic miracle. The innocent materialism of the younger generation was resented by the older generation, while their haunted need for control negatively impacted the youth. Obayashi’s aesthetics take the youth’s side, full of flash, glamour, and historical ignorance, with the ghosts of the past infiltrating that hyperactive joy. From a formal and theoretical perspective,Hausustands as a shining example of theme and aesthetics; wed into an innovative film form - its results are just so bizarre that many are unwilling to see its greatness.
2Starship Troopers (1997)
While director Paul Verhoeven’s box office flopShowgirlsis a famous example of a critical disaster reevaluated by some as a masterpiece, the intentionality of that film is still largely debated. However, a different critically-derided camp fest by the Dutch madman has proven itself overtime as a deceptively brilliant comedy: the intergalactic war epic,Starship Troopers. Watching the film today, it’s not hard to see why it was so poorly received. The script is cliché; the characters are two-dimensional, and the film seems fond of fascist aesthetics. These criticisms are (mostly) legitimate: on one hand,Starship Troopersreally is a brainless, trashy space opera without much apparent artistry in the mechanics of its storytelling. It’s entertaining as it is campy - but it isn’t exactly good.
Perhaps - but that criticism of its fascist aesthetics indicates what is so brilliant about the film:Starship Troopersis one of the most effective satires of propaganda, military culture, and fascism available in popular entertainment. While the novel on which it is based is a philosophical defense of the military state, Verhoeven and screenwriter Edward Neumeier imbed the story with biting commentary. “War makes fascists of us all,“the director said. “Basically the political undercurrent of the film is that these heroes and heroines are living in a fascist utopia – but they are not even aware of it! They think this is normal. And somehow you are seduced to follow them, and at the same time, made aware that they might be fascists.”
Starship Troopersimagines a world in which Earth is in an all-out intergalactic war with a hive-mind species, and only members of the army are elevated from the status of “civilian” to citizen with voting rights. All the actors are beautiful, caught up in shallow teen drama as they learn the values of teamwork; and the movie’s surface presents all of this as good and moral. The only problem is,Starship Troopersis interspersed with interactive propaganda; the characters are dressed like Nazis, and the whole enterprise is carefully modeled after the Nazi propaganda filmThe Triumph of the Will(1935). This accuses the media’s popular narratives - from heteronormative teen romance to the military logistics necessary for freedom - of harboring propaganda: they are tools of manipulation that can be utilized by a totalitarian state. The attentive viewer will even notice that the war began with Earths illegal colonization of bug territory - the narrative of bug aggression and mercilessness is therefore untrustworthy, fueled by de-emphasized political agendas.Starship Troopersallows the fascist aesthetic to make the argument for - and ultimately against - itself. In this beautiful future, everyone is beautiful, intelligent, socially responsible, and perfect - but all any of it is good for iskilling bugs.
Related:Starship Troopers TV Show Pitch Shared by Original Star Casper Van Dien
1The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Boasting the longest running theatrical release of all time,The Rocky Horror Picture Showisone of the biggest cult films ever. Similar to other camp classics likeThe Room(2003) andPlan 9 from Outer Space(1959), the ultra-weird flick has accrued a fanatical fan base who attend showings in costume and interact with the screen. For this reason, Roger Ebert’s 1976 review dismissed the film as a social phenomenon rather than a movie. Divorced from its following (the argument goes),The Rocky Horror Picture Showis little more than a frenzied, incoherent midnight movie.
There is no denying that, in addition to being an overt homage to sci-fi and horror B-movies,The Rocky Horror Picture Showis itself a loud, proud, fiercely self-aware midnight movie. But it isn’t that self-awareness that elevates it. If self-awareness was all it took to make a purposefully bad film good,Sharknado(2013) would be a five-star masterpiece at the front of this list.The Rocky Horror Picture Showisn’t great because it “knows what it is” - it’s because “what it is” is a formally inventive, imaginatively constructed ode to the themes of transgression, corruption, and hedonism that run through the exploitation films it lampoons. Those films offer the audience the pleasure of these lewd delights in the form of an exterior fantastical force that threatens the status quo - before ultimately vanquishing that force and upholding the status quo (you gotta appease the sensors, those prudes). These films thus become ostensibly “moral,” despite the basis of their appeal in the strange.The Rocky Horror Picture Show, on the other hand, is true to is queer, punk nature: the ultra-weird wins, and we are glad for it.
Those who accuse the film of shoddy craft make their assessment in the first fifteen minutes. The opening number and marriage ceremony contain many technical flaws, such as boom mics dipping into the frame and poor exposure - but this is part of a structural game the movie plays, closely tied to its themes. As the story gets weirder and weirder, the filmmaking increases in quality and spectacle, until we arrive at an ending that is as bonkers as it is visually sublime. This aestheticizes the movie’s celebration of the sensory and bizarre over the rote status-quo. When flocks of fans stream into the midnight showings to let their freak-out in tandem with the screen, it is not because they have reclaimed a bad movie - it is because the movie has succeeded in welcoming the ghouls and oddballs to join in its time warp, again and again and again.
