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New here, and I was wondering if anyone felt the way I do. I just recently watched Pieces (1982) which is considered a bad movie classic for being "so bad, it's good" and it bored me. I don't really like this type of film either, as I just find them really boring, and the screw ups that the filmmakers make I just get mild amusement from. The only films in this category I enjoy are Plan 9 from Outer Space, and The Room.
Examples that I don't like include Birdemic, Superman 4, Battlefield Earth, Night of the Demons, etc. and I am not including stuff like Chopping Mall, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, or TCM 2 which are all well made movies, that just happen to be really goofy. Calling Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 "so bad, it's good" is like calling the original Airplane "so bad, it's good". I think this can spawn interesting discussion as I don't see it often discussed.
All Sharknados. When you do something bad on purpose, it will be just bad without any charming.
Im happy that im not alone with this opinion. The sharknado movies were just a lazy attempt at milking Cash out of people by hopping on the "I watch this ironically" train
There's more of us. The reason Neil Breen is so great is because he's sincere in what he's doing. Self-awareness is the death of so bad, it's good.
Absolutely, bad on purpose doesn't make something so bad it's good.
There's gotta be heart behind it. That they tried and due to lack of budget or talent or both they didn't succeed. But they wanted to make a movie and they did it.
So bad it's good needs a certain sincerity you can't fake. Which is why Tommy Wiseau will never make another Room, or that Samurai cop 2 failed.
Yep. I've been comparing that trend to "ugly x-mas sweater parties" for years. As soon as companies and enterprising folks realized they could start deliberately making the tackiest sweaters imaginable every autumn the fun and authenticity of finding an ugly sweater to show off at those parties ended.
The fun was always in finding an earnest product/movie that just... didn't work for one reason or another. It was about the hunt and finding something "perfect" not the party itself. It's not fun if someone is winking at you from behind the cash register the whole time asking "don't you like how bad my bad movie is?" or "don't you love how ugly my ugly sweater design is?"
and the ugly christmas sweaters are almost always like the same design.... altered slightly for whatever the property or brand it is...
I forget who it was who said "When you try to be serious and you fail, that can be funny. When you try to be funny and you fail, it's just not funny."
not sure but that was why MST3k only riffed like one Comedy movie. It's hard to make jokes about something when the issue is "that joke wasn't funny."
That's how Bad Ben went, such a terrible horror movie that it became a comedy. But he began to lean into it and everything else has just been utter shit.
I felt like the first one was a genuine "so bad it's good", but then the second one was complete and utter garbage that screamed "please go on Twitter and use hashtags to talk about how bad we made this movie!! We're so naughty!!"
This right here. I think the first one strikes a good balance, but then they started forcing the concept and it fell flat
The bad movie that hits cult status happens when the creators don't see the cult status coming.
Reaching for the cult status almost always fails.
Did you know Rocky Horror Picture Show has a sequel? Shock Treatment. My point.
Asylum studios found a great formula of choosing a silly concept, then writing and recording seriously before adding some sillier stuff in post. It ends up with an odd disjointed feeling. I recommend Sinister Squad. It's basically suicide squad but instead of villains you have mentally unstable fairytale characters. I remember something about Alice having killed the queen of hearts and turned her kingdom into some government agency that is recruiting the squad? It's been a while and it felt like a fever dream.
Spot on. The Asylum is just doing what they do and on a shoestring (or knockoff Velcro) budget. I admire them as the heirs to Roger Corman. Every now and then they make a dent in the culture.
The difference is that sometimes the Corman movies were accidentally good. That never happened with The Asylum.
Idk man, was with my extended family for the holidays, and we rented the first one (from a rental shop iirc) when it came out on a whim without knowing anything about it, and everyone was dying laughing. And they are people who watch bad movies ironically (I am). So all about context. But fwiw, I never saw any sequels
Yeah those movies are incredibly boring
Watch the live sharknado riff tracks event. They did 1 2 +3 as a live audience event, it's the only way you can watch them.
I don't necessarily agree with that.
One of the examples that people constantly bring up is Starship Troopers. Totally bad acting and cringe-worthy dialogue. But it was totally on purpose and that's the point. It was kind of satirizing fascism, so it was totally appropriate that Verhoeven deliberately tried to evoke parallels to fascist propaganda. And it's not bad without any charming. it's actually a good movie.
Example #2: Flash Gordon. It's stupid as hell and campy as fuck. But goddamn, this movie rocks. It's fun and it's exciting, it has some great moments of tension, some great humor, and great characters. But by initial appearances, it just looks like some bad piece of crap.
I think that a "so bad it's good" movie has to fail at what it's trying to do but them accidentally be massively entertaining. If you try to make a shitty movie and it's shitty in the ways that you want but also awesome in the ways that you want, that's more along the lines of just "a good movie."
I think the rule is more like, "if you do something bad on purpose and it works, it isn't bad; it's good. If you do something bad on purpose and it doesn't work, then it might be so-bad-it's-good" but is probably just plain bad."
Neil Breen's last movie, Cade: The Tortured Crossing.
I miss the real (deserted) locations. The rented houses with plastic furniture. The stock footage. The insert shots with everyone speaking against the same sky backdrop. The sincere, demented passion and effort. Now he's just on a green screen, taking the piss out of himself and leaning into things way too hard.
Neil Breen is something else haha.
The disappointment in the Red Letter Media review about this very thing was palpable!
They pointed out how before you could tell he put thought and heart into it. Now he’s just not giving a damn and it really takes the enjoyment out of it. You want to make fun of it, but because it looks purposely bad. It just makes you depressed.
I haven't watched it, has he finally started to become self aware? From clips online I thought he was still oblivious
I dunno about self aware, but it's 100% green screen. It's very very lazy. It makes it feel super lame instead of at least delivering bad dialogue in a real location.
I can't believe you said that. How could you have said that. Why have you said that...
I hate bursting peoples neil breen bubble but there’s absolutely no way he isn’t self aware. Like it’s impossible
It's not that cut and dry.
To make the claim that he knows what he's doing is to ascribe Andy Kaufman levels of comedic genius to this man.
To Breen.
All of Neil Breen. I cannot be convinced that he doesn't know they are bad, as opposed to Wiseau that thought he was making an artsy film and failed (therefore somehow making it amazing).
I can't sit through a Breen movie but I've never enjoyed a movie going experience more than seeing The Room at a midnight showing.
The Room was bad in an entertaining way. Like you could see pieces of how an actual movie could be made but there was just completely incompetence. It felt like an actual movie that missed the mark hilariously.
With Breen, it just feels like someone is trying to make a bad movie and using that as an excuse to be lazy on everything. His movies feel more like they’d be called performance art experiments or something. And I think that just takes away from the “so bad it’s good” vibe.
I just watched Double Down for the first time recently and I kinda feel this. Though it is weird because there's definitely elements that show a knowledge of the craft, but misplaced knowledge. Like, he knows what a cutaway is but not how to use them. But at the same time it also doesn't fully feel like somebody who knows what to do and is making it on purpose. I think it is a strange middle-ground of he is kinda trying to actually make a movie, he's just also real lazy on a lot of it.
So bad they're bad films is usually because the film is boring.
A key factor to enjoying “so bad they’re good” movies is watching with a crowd. The Room is a fantastic experience if you see it in a theatrical setting.
It’s also why MST3K movies work because it’s a bunch of people riffing on the bad movies and making them funny.
Agreed. If you have people to make fun of it, it's usually a better experience, but it doesn't mean the movie isn't bad, though :)
I watched Twilight with the YMS commentary on and it was a blast lmao
Funny this thread should appear, I just watched Queen of the Damned (2002) the other day.
Early 2000s filmmaking at some of its most delirious and unhinged. It is so campy and dumb and silly and queer and cheesy and sexy that I have to believe this film has a cult following somewhere of people who absolutely love it.
And tbh…I get it! It’s a big piece of shit, but one I can easily see myself returning to on bad or sexy movie nights because it’s also just a lot of fun.
(RIP Aaliyah, you were so beautiful 💔)
Queen of the Damned had an absolutely unreal soundtrack, I think that alone carries it pretty far
Yeah, one of my all time favorites. Jonathan Davis from Korn wrote a few of the songs on there and performed them on his Alone I Play tour. Super good view on YouTube.
Didn’t he write and record them all for the movie with the oingo boingo dude? They just had to be re-recorded for the soundtrack because of some licensing issues with the record label
I thought he did the whole soundtrack. Wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong, though.
David Draiman, Chester Bennington, Wayne Static, Marilyn Manson. Awesomely fantastic album with Jon Davis.
I mean, you kinda answered yourself. It was edgy, cool and sexy, while blatantly ignoring all the bad parts from the book or Interview. The soundtrack was also so on the nose it enhanced all the edginess. 17 year old me LOVED it and Aaliyah was an instant crush.
It has been many years since I read Queen of the Damned, but give me an example?
All the vampires are monsters, tormented by their existence or both. They are glamorous on the surface but deeply flawed because they are, in fact, dead. Queen of the Damned 2002 mostly ignores that or plays it off as emo broodiness. Which, again, at 17 I fucking loved.
I had a crush on an emo girl in highschool and this was her favorite movie.
I will always remember this movie because when I was in college they had a big campus promo event that no one went to so I ended getting several boxes of plastic cups with the movie logo on them. Those cups lasted the rest of college and all my friends associated the movie with hanging at my dorm apartment because that logo was in everyone’s hand every time we hung out.
Queen of the Damned is terrible, but ABSOLUTELY has a cult of fans.
You can't underestimate how much mallgoths will cling to anything that is dark and edgy.
I‘m the cult following hello 🙋♀️ My partner and I almost never rewatch movies, but we‘ve seen this one about three times together because of the gloriously edgy, cheesy, sexy fun and the soundtrack that slaps.
The soundtrack is awesome, and both Stuart Townsend and Aaliyah were hot. That's good enough for me.
IMO, the Velocipastor.
Just because it’s meant to be bad, doesn’t mean it’s free from critique.
It's like 55 minutes long, which absolves it of any wrongdoing
Yeah and I think it did bad on purpose the right way, honestly
Absolves...pastor. I see what you did there
I think this is one that did bad on purpose genuinely right. I love this one, and the fact it's less than an hour redeems it even more
In my opinion it nails the comedy aspect most of the way through. Hard to see how it’s bad unless you think it’s genuinely attempting to make a compelling dramatic action film.
That's fair. I tend to prefer "intentionally bad movies" because they tend to be more like a spoof like Airplane! and that works for me way better, than a boring film with silly moments because of how bad it is.
There's a charm they have when it's actually done well, and not as a symptom of laziness. Same principle as satire, it sucks when it's just garbage and great when executed well.
This one I agree with for sure. Any movie that tries to make something like “nuns but they’re ninjas” funny in this day and age just doesn’t do it for me.
/looks at the novel I'm not writing because I'm browsing Reddit
Oh no
For me, it's typically movies that are trying to be bad that miss the mark. I think the "good" in "so bad it's good" comes from the genuine attempt and botched landing of a project. When you can feel the passion that went into a project but the sheer lack of talent that followed, it's the best.
Like when Napoleon Dynamite gave that girl that drawing of her.
A great example of this is The Room.
I love that movie. Lmao
I think it’s because it’s the difference between laughing at something and laughing with something
So bad that it’s good movies work because you are laughing at it, it’s a mockery of sorts, meanwhile you can’t do that with intentionally bad “so bad that it’s good” films because they want you to laugh with them, which misses the whole point
That’s the best way to say it actually! I agree 100%
It's the opposite for me. At least the wackiness of the intentionally bad films gives some entertainment value, where most genuine films that are bad are generally just so boring.
To each their own. I can see your point though. To me, I just love cringing at genuine attempts.
Bored, during Pieces? We must have watched entirely different movies 😅
I think Manos: Hands of Fate qualifies here - the story about what happened to the actor who played Torgo is very sad, and the movie itself is SO boring that even the Mystery Science Theater folks often failed to find anything to comment on.
The movie itself is nearly unwatchable. But the MST3K version is one of the best they've ever made.
*loved* `Manos`! I thought it was like a combination of a bunch of student films kind of slapped together. Dull as a "film with plot", but entertaining to watch.
Manos…..the….hands of fate
Hands: The Hands of Fate
I went down that rabbit hole. Very interesting. Thanks!!
"Battlefield Earth" always gives me a headache. Must be the crooked shots.
"The director seems aware that other better directors will sometimes tilt their cameras. He doesn't seem to have ever learned WHY." -Roger Ebert
Oh, Roger. We miss you.
Except for the calling of arms to ban slasher movies. That was a little much.
This is unwatchable.
It is SO freaking ugly. I can't bear the color palette.
Oh, yes. That comes a close second.
DO YOU WANT LUNCH?
Man-Animals
I've never heard this called "so bad it's good"
It's called a Dutch Angle, and it's only supposed to be used sparingly, for effect.
Barry Pepper hates that movie
I hate Dutch angles so fucking much
Well used they are interesting. The late John Frankenheimer knew how to use them well.
This is why I can barely stand to watch the first Thor movie. Dutch angles without discipline or meaning abound
Leonard Part 6.
This is a notoriously awful film, produced and starring Bill Cosby when he was at the height of his Cosby Show fame. I've never heard of anybody who likes this film, even ironically. People who have endured it always seem to say to others who are curious that it's so awful it can't even be enjoyed as a terrible film. It's just dull and obnoxious and boring.
I'm sure there are people who like it (Because everything is liked by somebody). I've just never seen or heard them.
I don't know if this is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for "overrated" (for lack of a better term) "So bad they're good" movies where a lot of people get enjoyment out of the badness, but you just can't stand it or get bored.