There are a lot of bad movies out there, and most are bad in pretty predictable ways: they’re boring, uninspired, or forgettable. A movie has to be a special kind of bad to be “so bad it’s good.”
Where exactly is the line? Can a movie be so bad it’s good if it’s trying to be bad, or does it have to earnestly strive for greatness and fail miserably? Let’s look at a few examples and see if we can hash it out.
The Room (2003)
Watch The Room on AMC+
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. The mysterious Tommy Wiseau set out to make a great American epic (with him as writer, director, and star) and came up with The Room, a bizarre drama about infidelity, football, breast cancer, lingering shots of Wiseau’s bare ass, and whatever else passed through his mind. The final film makes only the loosest sort of sense; none of the actors seem to know who they are or why they’re here, and audiences have loved it for decades.
The Room is pure camp: Wisseau wanted to make a great work of art, but he couldn’t because neither he nor anybody he knew had the slightest idea how. But Wisseau did have money, and so we have The Room. It’s beautiful, it’s hideous, it’s probably playing at a midnight showing in a theater near you.
Super Mario Bros. (1993)
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2023’s animated Super Mario Bros. Movie adapted imagery and storylines from the classic game series and made well over a billion dollars at the box office. The live-action 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie caused chaos and deeply embarrassed everyone involved in it. The video game industry was pretty new at the time, and based on this movie, Hollywood didn’t have a clue how to approach it. So we get a Mario movie that starts with a meteorite falling to Earth 65 million years ago, a Yoshi who looks like an uglier version of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, and an audience who stayed far away.
Or at least, they did at the time. Super Mario Bros. was always bound to find an appreciative audience among fans of the strange and inexplicable, who still enjoy it to this day. And because of rights issues, you can’t stream it anywhere, which only adds to its cult status.
Mommie Dearest (1981)
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When I was looking at lists of great so-bad-they’re-good films, I was shocked by how few included Mommie Dearest, because it’s an all-timer. Purportedly the life story of actress Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest is an overwrought, directionless slog of a movie with zero sense of pacing or context. Oscar-winning actress Faye Dunaway hams it up to the rafters as Joan Crawford, screeching her way through sleazy scenes in the hope that “loud” and “good” are the same thing.
I honestly feel a little guilty mocking The Room, because it was made by amateurs who couldn’t be expected to make anything good. But Mommie Dearest was made by high-powered Hollywood insiders who should have known better. Until The Room came along, I’d say that Mommie Dearest was the so-bad-it’s-good cult classic to beat, and it still holds up — which is to say, it’s still a baffling mess — today.
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)
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Before Mommie Dearest, there was Plan 9 From Outer Space, ground zero for the so-bad-it’s-good phenomenon. Space aliens threaten to raise the dead, and it’s up to a ragtag group of all-American men in uniform to stop it.
Everything about Plan 9 is awful, from the sets and costumes to the writing and acting; it’s not the kind of sci-fi movie that tries to get the science right. But it’s endured because it’s obvious that writer-director Ed Wood thought he was making a work of staggering genius. It’s hard to completely hate a movie into which the creator poured so much passion, so audiences love it instead.
Battlefield Earth (2000)
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An important element to many of these so-bad-they’re-good films is earnestness, and there are few sorts of people more earnest than the deeply religious. Battlefield Earth is based on a novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Star John Travolta has long claimed that it’s just a sci-fi movie, but considering how deeply the Church of Scientology was involved with recruitment back then, it’s hard not to see it as an attempt at outreach.
Not that it worked. The movie is bad in the way that Plan 9 is bad, with costumes, acting, and cinematography so horrible you can’t help but watch transfixed. The story of humans fighting against alien overlords in the year 3000 barely breaks through the incompetence. But Battlefield Earth has a meaner edge to it, which is why it isn’t quite as legendary.
Batman & Robin (1997)
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Let’s leave behind unintentionally bad films and talk about a couple that are arguably in on the joke. Batman & Robin is a bad movie — it’s over-designed, gaudy, and deeply cheesy — but watching it, you get the idea that director Joel Schumacher was doing at least some of it on purpose, perhaps as an homage to the campy 1960s Batman show, perhaps because he thought it was funny to troll audiences who expected something more serious from the Dark Knight. Do you really make Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) say, “Allow me to break the ice” without knowing (and hoping) the audience will groan?
The Toxic Avenger (1984)
Watch The Toxic Avenger on Troma Now
It may not be quite right to call The Toxic Avenger “so bad it’s good.” It’s more like “so gross, disgusting, and shocking it’s good.” But gross, disgusting, and shocking was exactly what the filmmakers were going for, so can we not say that they met their goal?
I’m overthinking The Toxic Avenger, about a young man who gets superpowers after a toxic waste accident and lays waste to his enemies, all on a budget of about eight dollars. The movie caught on, inspiring sequels and even an animated show, showing how much of an appetite there is for ironic enjoyment of delightful garbage.
Enjoy your trash
A more polished Toxic Avenger remake came out this year, but it doesn’t have the charm of the original. Attempts to be “so bad it’s good” on purpose usually end up being…well, bad. But when a movie is so bad it’s good by accident, you’ve found something special.
And if you’d rather watch something that’s just plain good, we can recommend a few things. How about some movies that give autumn vibes, or new scary movies coming out just in time for Halloween?
