20 Iconic So-Bad-They’re-Good Movies FSalinks

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.

20 ‘Sleepwalkers’ (1992)

Directed by Mick Garris

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.

19 ‘Pinocchio: A True Story’ (2021)

Directed by Vasiliy Rovenskiy

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.

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18 ‘Cool Cat Saves the Kids’ (2015)

Directed by Derek Savage

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 ventures 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 from 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.

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17 ‘The Wicker Man’ (2006)

Directed by Neil LaBute

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 annuls 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.

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16 ‘The Happening’ (2008)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

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.

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15 ‘Samurai Cop’ (1991)

Directed by Amir Shervan

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.

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14 ‘Sharknado’ (2013)

Directed by Anthony C. Ferrante

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.

13 ‘Cats’ (2019)

Directed by Tom Hooper

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 has made it one of the most notable so-bad-it’s-good movies in recent memory.

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12 ‘Battlefield Earth’ (2000)

Directed by Roger Christian

Also infamous for being one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, Battlefield Earth is one of the most maligned and hated science fiction films of all time, with its goofy performances, stilted visuals, and mindless world-building all playing a factor. The film takes place in the year 3000, with Earth and all of humanity having been enslaved by a species of powerful aliens known as the Psychlos, using the Earth to strip it of its resources. However, a lone renegade human named Tyler seems to have what it takes to save mankind.

Battlefield Earth doesn’t do too much outside of standard clichés and conventions for post-apocalyptic sci-fi worlds, yet it’s all in the execution and finer details that made the film a so-bad-it’s-good classic. The cinematography has a bunch of unnerving and disorienting Dutch angles, the performances feel like they used the worst take for every take, and it features some of the dumbest sci-fi costumes of all time. It all comes together to make a beautifully terrible experience, one where audiences notice more and more missteps and mistakes the more that they rewatch it.

11 ‘Batman & Robin’ (1997)

Directed by Joel Schumacher

The final installment in the Batman film series started by Tim Burton before Christopher Nolan‘s reboot pits the titular Dynamic Duo, portrayed by George Clooney and Chris O’Donnell, against Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), who may be too much for them to handle, thus requiring the aid of new ally Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone). The trio find themselves soon racing against the clock to stop the villains’ deadly and possibly even world-ending scheme before it’s too late.

Director Joel Schumacher was initially brought on to the franchise following Burton‘s departure to make the Caped Crusader’s movies more family-friendly, though even Adam West would agree that Batman & Robin took things several leaps too far. Clad in rubber suits with pronounced nipples and green leotards, respectable thespians are embarrassing themselves and making Schwarzenegger, spouting his incessant ice-related puns, look like Laurence Olivier. But bless this movie’s campy, neon-bright heart; it is an absolute joy to laugh at.

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10 ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’ (1997)

Directed by John R. Leonetti

After the cliffhanger at the end of Mortal Kombat, where Outworld Emperor Shao Kahn appears to conquer Earthrealm, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation picks up right where its predecessor left off and sees Liu Kang, Raiden, and the remaining champions of Earth fighting to repel Kahn’s invasion. However, the emperor proves himself to be much more powerful than our heroes realize, as they must begin to train and prepare for a battle that will decide the fate of the world.

The first Mortal Kombat was not especially good, but it had its highlights. Annihilation, on the other hand, is a black hole of cinematic garbage, which, ironically, makes it more memorable. The graphics look like they were pulled from a beta version of an early PlayStation project. The so-called screenplay is comically preposterous, with more focus being placed on throwing as many characters on-screen as possible before giving these characters anything of merit to do. The true highlight is the dialogue, which features some of the funniest and most awkward line readings in cinematic history.

9 ‘Mac and Me’ (1988)

Directed by Stewart Raffill

While there have been many blatant ripoff movies over the years that have towed the line of so-bad-it’s-good quality in attempts to cash in on another film’s success none are quite as infamous as Mac and Me. In what is an unabashed riff banking on the success of E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Mac and Me follows another young boy who fosters a friendship with a lost alien looking to return home. They soon embark on a wild quest against the government agents who want to perform tests on Mac to help return him to his family.

Mac and Me is the quintessential chaotic 80s family movie cash grab, with a much larger focus on strange effects, product placement, and rehashing previous ideas to create a wild and hilariously bad mess of a film. What has helped the film stand the test of time as a so-bad-it’s-good classic is just how wild and unbelievable it gets, from a policeman shooting a child to a dance party in a McDonald’s. It’s telling that one of the greatest legacies that the film has had is a notorious running gag between Paul Rudd and Conan O’Brien.

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8 ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’ (1978)

Directed by Steve Binder and David Acomba

Before Star Wars would become one of the biggest media franchises in history and even before the first sequel would be released, the first follow-up to the box office smash was The Star Wars Holiday Special, a strange and confusing fever dream of a holiday film. The film follows the cast of the original film, including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca, all coming together to celebrate Life Day, the future, intergalactic version of the Christmas Season.

Words can’t truly articulate the wild and strangely confusing nature of The Star Wars Holiday Special, with it not being a surprise that the film has been forcefully attempted to be forgotten with time. Especially when compared to the sci-fi world of the original, the Holiday Special’s focus and insistence on strange worldbuilding and awkward alien characters comes across as unnerving and maddening. Its infamy and status as a so-bad-it’s-good icon has only grown with Star Wars as a franchise, as even Disney themselves have poked fun at the film with comedy films like The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special.

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7 ‘Birdemic: Shock and Terror’ (2010)

Directed by James Nguyen

While many classic so-bad-it’s-good movies come from the earlier eras of film, harkening back to times of video stores and legends to be shared around before the internet, Birdemic: Shock and Terror is a so-bad-its-good legend that grew in the modern digital era of the internet. The film sees a small town under attack from a legion of dangerous killer birds, with a group of survivors fighting for survival in an attempt to find a way to stop this avian apocalypse.

It’s all about the unbelievably hilarious execution with Birdemic, as it isn’t simply a generic low-budget riff on The Birds, but instead makes the most incomprehensible and mind-numbingly hilarious decisions with its filmmaking. Small things like the abysmal microphone quality and complete lack of lighting to major issues like the “Birdemic” not starting until 40 minutes into its 90-minute runtime, the film is littered with these unexplainable choices. The film has amassed a massive cult following over the years, being considered one of the greatest so-bad-its-good movies of all time.

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6 ‘Freddy Got Fingered’ (2001)

Directed by Tom Green

Freddy Got Fingered is a wild exception to the standard notions of filmmaking, with its own existence and low quality being a punk rock statement about the state of Hollywood and 2000s comedies. Gord Brody (Tom Green) is an infantile 28-year-old cartoonist. He wishes to become a professional animator, a dream that he will surely achieve once he is done desecrating a deer corpse, composing music while hanging sausages from marionette strings, and allowing people to believe that his father abuses his brother, among other inanities.

Green is recognized as a shock humorist. Despite the unnerving premise, Freddy Got Fingered is meant to be a comedy, albeit one that was made to be intentionally terrible. The film is almost unparalleled in how random, surreal, and shocking it can be, as it accomplishes its goals as a comedy by being so terrible and shocking that the only reaction left is laughter. Any chuckle or positive emotion it may elicit can only reasonably be understood as the result of completely submitting to the madness as you watch it, which many have.

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5 ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ (1966)

Directed bvy Harold P. Warren

One of many largely forgotten films from a bygone era that was rediscovered and reclaimed as a so-bad-it’s-good masterpiece through the lens of mockery, Manos: The Hands of Fate is the quintessential so-bad-it’s-good horror film. The film follows a family who, after getting lost on the side of the road, find themselves stumbling across an underground devil-worshiping cult, eventually becoming the latest captive prisoners of their psychotic leader, The Master.

Just about everything that Manos does in its attempts to be a frightening horror film is done incorrectly, with shoddy pacing, stilted editing, and hilariously bad performances transforming the film into an unintentional masterpiece of comedy. After the film’s rediscovery and usage in Mystery Science Theater 3000, it would quickly amass a legendary status as one of the worst movies of all time, as well as one of the most unintentionally hilarious. The story surrounding Manos‘ production managed to be just as wild as the film itself, only further adding to the cult status and infamy of the film.

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4 ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ (1957)

Directed by Edward D. Wood Jr.

While the 1950s were filled with many hilarious low-budget sci-fi romps, Plan 9 From Outer Space stands above them all as the undeniable pinnacle and king of the trash. In an attempt to prevent humanity from creating a doomsday weapon that could obliterate the entire universe, aliens threaten them with a plan to raise an army of undead to wreak havoc on Earth. It soon becomes up to a ragtag group of humans, including the lines of a police lieutenant, a commercial pilot, and a colonel, to put a stop to the alien invasion.

Ed Wood is often cited as the worst filmmaker who ever lived. But what he lacked in talent and skill, he made up for with passion, which is all over Plan 9 From Outer Space, his magnum opus. The film has grown massive infamy in the decades since its release as one of the worst, yet simultaneously funniest sci-fi movies to ever be created. The direction, actors, script, and production values are pretty horrendous, yet Plan 9 From Outer Space is well-liked for the laughably misplaced love that was put into it.

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3 ‘Morbius’ (2022)

Directed by Daniel Espinosa

It’s no secret that superhero movies have been one of the most defining genres of filmmaking in the 2010s and even into the 2020s, yet it was only a matter of time before one would become a “so-bad-it’s-good” legend. Acting as a part of Sony’s expanded universe of Spider-Man villains, Morbius is an origin story for lesser-known vampire villain Michael Morbius, and how he used Bat DNA to cure his lifelong blood disorder. The process ends up transforming him into a vampiric monster, forcing him to hide away as a way to protect the world from his bloodlust.

Morbius follows the same tropes and conventions that were staples of the dark era of superhero movies in the 2000s, with its lackluster attempts at worldbuilding and failure of a central narrative reaching comical levels of failure. The internet was quick to mock Morbius at nearly every opportunity, going even so far with their sarcastic praise of the film that Sony awkwardly misread the room and re-released Morbius only for nobody to show up. Even as more and more superhero movie flops are released, none can live up to the energy and comical ineptitude of Morbius.

2 ‘Troll 2’ (1990)

Directed by Claudio Fragasso

There have been many so-bad-it’s-good horror movies throughout the ’80s and early ’90s that attained fame from their cheap effects and poor acting, yet Troll 2 is the go-to pinnacle of unintentional horror comedy. The film, marketed as a sequel to Troll, with a story that has nothing to do with that movie, focuses on the Waits family and some teenagers as they are preyed upon by vegetarian goblins (NOT trolls) who want to turn them into plants so that they can be eaten.

If it was not clear already, this movie is a mess. Every performance, every word spoken, every plot point, just to call out a few aspects, is overwhelmingly cheap and hammy, but those qualities are exactly why Troll 2 is adored. The film has become so iconic and beloved in its complete ineptitude and unintentional hilarity that it has somehow surpassed the legacy and recognition of the original Troll film that it failed to be a sequel to. If nothing else, the world is thankful to the film for gifting it the “Oh my God!” meme.

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1 ‘The Room’ (2003)

Directed by Tommy Wiseau

Well-to-do banker Johnny, played by Tommy Wiseau, who also wrote, produced, and directed this film, is engaged to Lisa, who, unbeknownst to Johnny, has arbitrarily grown tired of him and begins having an affair with his best friend, Mark. And well… there is Denny, the creepy neighbor kid, Lisa’s mother, who has breast cancer but does not seem at all ill, a football being tossed around, and… framed pictures of spoons?

The Room is a miracle of a movie, as it has quickly become the face and icon of ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ films as a whole. The acting is all over the place, various subplots go nowhere, multiple sex scenes stretch on endlessly, and all that is just the tip of the iceberg. Regardless, the film is so uniquely odd that it has become a legitimate cult classic among cinema enthusiasts, with awards-contending movies being made about the creation of The Room. Fans may never know the full story behind how Wiseau ever got The Room made, but many are genuinely grateful that it exists.

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