Movies come in all shapes and sizes. Not everyone has to be a mainstream blockbuster, nor should they all be arthouse dramas that only a few would appreciate. Whatever kind of film it may be, objectively assessing whether it is good, bad, or middle-of-the-road should be easy. At best, the flick is prime Oscar material, and at worst, it “wins big” at the Razzies.
But then there are those films that are difficult to pin down in terms of quality, meaning that they are unquestionably bad, yet are so fascinating in how awful they seem that audiences find themselves drawn to them despite their better judgment. There have been many such movies of particularly enthralling atrociousness that everyone cannot help but enjoy watching, with the most iconic becoming classics in their own right.
25
‘Sleepwalkers’ (1992)
Written by Stephen King (yes, THAT Stephen King), Sleepwalkers centers on a mother-son pair of shape-shifting psychic vampires that arrive in an unassuming Indiana town and a local girl who becomes privy to what they are after being targeted as their next victim. It soon becomes up to this young girl to do all that she can to put a stop to the dangerous and unpredictable never-ending murder spree from this supernatural duo.
While King’s horror stories always could unnerve and disturb audiences thanks to the powerful iconography and high creativity, the evil in Sleepwalkers goes beyond nightmares and is so strange it becomes hilarious. This supernatural horror flick is such a bonkers mixture of numerous strange elements like cat-fearing vampires, incest, and murder by corn cob stabbing that you have to wonder what King was thinking when he wrote it. One thing that is certain about Sleepwalkers is that it makes for an unforgettable and sidesplitting experience, not to mention the Stephen King movie’s infamously dumb kill.
24
‘Pinocchio: A True Story’ (2021)
Prominent fairy tale figure Pinocchio is given yet another retelling of his story in which he departs his father Jepetto’s home to explore the world with his horse companion Tibalt and comes across a traveling circus run by a shady ringleader. There, he falls for one of the performers, a human girl, prompting the living puppet boy to find a way to become human himself. Especially when the film was released in such close proximity to the amazing Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, the inherent unintentional comedy of this film shines that much brighter.
Animation as a medium is rife with hilarious low-budget cash-grabs made from all over the world, with this strange Russian adaptation of Pinocchio only being the tip of the iceberg for so-bad-it’s-good animation. It is so easy to think of Pinocchio: A True Story as a troll movie based on the ludicrous title, unbelievably lazy animation, and voice cast led by Pauly Shore and Jon Heder, who sound like they were inebriated when they recorded their equally bewildering lines. You will be laughing for days just hearing how the characters talk.
23
‘Cool Cat Saves the Kids’ (2015)
As far as low-budget amateur filmmaking of the 21st century goes, it’s difficult to find a more innocently unaware and unintentionally hilarious movie than Cool Cat Saves the Kids. The film follows the adventures of Cool Cat, a large talking orange cat who is friends with all of the kids in his neighborhood, except for the notorious Butch the Bully. After a couple of painful run-ins with the bully, Cool Cat finds himself learning a valuable lesson about bullying and what he can do to stop bullying of all kinds.
Cool Cat Saves the Kids has a similar energy to a crayon drawing done by a toddler, with its multitude of issues and mistakes only serving to add to its overall charm and wholesome energy. It feels less like a true feature film and instead has the visual style and energy of a YouTube video from the late 2000s. From awkward celebrity appearances by Vivica A. Fox and Erik Estrada, to the plot being a jumbled-together mixture of random, entirely unconnected story beats, it’s a wildly hilarious experience that needs to be seen to be believed.
22
‘Jason X’ (2001)
When a slasher franchise reaches a point of double-digit entries and sequels, it can be increasingly difficult to find an effective hook or originality without delving into complete absurdity and ridiculousness. This is exactly what occurs within sci-fi slasher Jason X, which takes Jason Vorhees into the reaches of futuristic space where he faces off against citizens of the future and the upgraded Uber Jason. The film has gained massive notoriety over the years for being one of the most absurdly stupid slasher films to ever exist and arguably the low point of the entire Friday the 13th series.
While previous entries in the series felt like they were at least attempting to have genuine scares and fear with their horror, Jason X almost feels like a comedy, given how laughably ineffective its horror is. The kills each prove to be more ridiculous and laughable than the last, as its story also stands out as one of the most moronic in slasher history. Jason X has stood as a shining symbol of idiotic slasher sequels, to the point where it stopped the onslaught of Friday the 13th sequels until the reboot in 2009.
21
‘The Wicker Man’ (2006)
Nicolas Cage has had a long and legendary career with as many undeniable masterpieces as there are infamous works of so-bad-they’re-good garbage. Easily the work that is most widely celebrated for its ineptitude is The Wicker Man, a modern remake of the folk horror classic that is in contention for the most pointless remakes of all time. The film sees Cage as a sheriff who travels to an isolated island community to investigate a young girl’s disappearance before uncovering a strange and mysterious conspiracy on the island.
The Wicker Man is the perfect example of how a select few individual “so-bad-they’re-good” moments can help propel a film into the annals of so-bad-they’re-good legends. The film is filled with these strange, absurd moments that certainly attempted to be scary, but only came across as laughably terrible. Sequences like having Cage using a firearm to steal someone’s bicycle, punching someone while dressed as a bear, or the legendary “Not the Bees” sequences have become memes in their own right, propelling the film’s notoriety among so-bad-they’re-good films.
20
‘Santa Claus Conquers the Martians’ (1964)
A wildly confusing combination of holiday storytelling and science fiction to create an absolute tonal mess from start to finish, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians has grown infamous thanks to its jarring story, minimal budget, and hilariously bad execution. The title is already hilarious enough to create confusion and bewilderment from the audience, yet its execution is the real treat that has made the film an icon of hilariously bad Christmas films for so many years.
The film’s massive notoriety and acclaim as a so-bad-it’s-good classic can also be attributed to its frequent appearances on prominent shows and programs about bad movies, including Mystery Science Theater 3000, Elvira’s Movie Macabre, and the Canned Film Festival. Through this continued examination and mockery, its legendary status as the go-to terribly bad holiday film became cemented in cinema history, as audiences throughout the ages continue to be baffled at the film where Santa doesn’t even end up conquering the Martians.
19
‘The Happening’ (2008)
Across the U.S., people are killing themselves in droves, seemingly affected by some kind of airborne plague. High school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) flees his city with family and friends during the height of the chaos and struggles to keep them alive while trying to figure out what is really happening. While similar science fiction horror premises have been successfully accomplished before and since The Happening, it’s the wild and confusing execution that helps the film achieve legendary status.
M. Night Shyamalan is an interesting filmmaker, to say the least, and The Happening embraces his director’s style quirks taken to their most farcical extremes. Off-putting performances and bizarre dialogue abound in this masterpiece of unintentional hilarity, topped with an absurd plot twist so haphazardly executed that it had to be misleading and a resolution just as baffling to boot. While Shyamalan has certainly returned to form with a number of exceptional thrillers in recent memory, The Happening is a strange and hilarious low point in his career.
18
‘Samurai Cop’ (1991)
When a rogue Yakuza faction called the Katana expands its operations by violently taking over the Los Angeles drug trade, the LAPD brings in Joe Marshall (Matt Hannon), a cop supposedly well-versed in Japanese culture, including the way of the sword. Joe is the only man fit to take on the Katana when he is flirting with nurses while his partner watches with hilarious expressions, that is.
Where to even begin with this one? From acting to writing to camera work and editing, Samurai Cop epitomizes amateur filmmaking at its most entertainingly abysmal. While the film is attempting to recreate the numerous macho action films of the ’80s and early ’90s, its amateur execution makes it an unintentional laugh riot from beginning to end, as it did next to nothing correctly. The only thing it did right was provide an ideal selection for a movie night with friends who are bored by complex drama and high-budget spectacles.
17
‘Sharknado’ (2013)
The poster child for cheap, over-the-top low-budget disaster films of the digital era, Sharknado very quickly made a name for itself because of the built-in absurdity and chaos of its premise, an absurdity that it largely leaned into after its release. The story is exactly in the title, following a group of survivors attempting to survive a massive Los Angeles hurricane that becomes much more dangerous after picking up a bunch of killer sharks, raining terror among the populace.
Sharknado is a unique circumstance when it comes to so-bad-it’s-good filmmaking, as it certainly leans into its negative aspects and over-the-top filmmaking much more than others, coming into question whether the joke works when it’s so aware of its own quality. While this ends up being a detrimental aspect of the numerous unfunny sequels that they created, the original film finds this perfect middle ground that made it such a big so-bad-it’s-good hit.
16
‘Cats’ (2019)
One of the biggest and most notable so-bad-its-good blockbuster disasters in recent memory, Cats takes the classic Broadway hit and transforms it into a nightmarish mess of CGI atrocities. The film attempts to adapt the sparse plot of the original, following the story of a band of Jellicle cats in their yearly competition to decide which among them will ascend to the Heaviside Layer. Each cat has their own time in the spotlight and signature number, all while a devilishly conniving Macavity is plotting in the shadows to take the glory for himself.
The visual design in Cats simply has to be seen to be believed, as the film’s attempt to remix the classic cat costumes into realistic human-cat hybrids using visual effects created dastardly, nightmarish results. It’s a visual choice that has massive unintentional comedic ramifications on the entire film, somehow finding a way to one-up itself constantly as the film goes on, and more nightmares are revealed to the audience. The massive campaign and hopes placed behind the film, combined with its nuclear failure, have made it one of the most notable so-bad-it’s-good movies in recent memory.