Bad movies that you genuinely enjoy

Cafe Society
101

I was going to mention this one myself. Other wonderful stuff: Steve Railsback screaming/crying every line (remember when he was considered a promising young actor?); Patrick Stewart’s first on-screen kiss, with Railsback; Britain has their own space program, complete with a space shuttle called Churchill; the first evidence of extraterrestial life is stored in the basement of a low-security office building in London, guarded by pudgy, doughnut-eating rent-a-cops; and a floating glob of blood that shapes itself into a replica of naked Mathilda May, complete with boobs (and this was pre-CGI).

The outer space scenes were very elegantly done, and I think this was the first film that attempted (not always successfully) to show that there is no “up” in space. Also, Lifeforce has one of the greatest film scores ever written. If my house was on fire, the only thing I’d try to save is my LP of the soundtrack, autographed by Henry Mancini.

102

Charles Dance sold it for me, with his pull-start cyborg penis. And the villainous mooks were inventive and genuinely creepy.

eta I just checked it out on IMDB, and Sandra Dickinson voiced Bitchin’ Betty: her what was Trillian, and married the Fifth Doctor, and mothered Georgia Moffat what married David Tennant.

103

Likewise, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls at 33%.

104

Vertical Limit
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. I thought this was HILARIOUS.
Demolition Man
Maximum Overdrive
Airplane 2
Loaded Weapon 1

105

Boondock Saints; 20% on RT, but 92% by audience.

106

Kung Pow: Enter The Fist is hilarious. It’s intentionally stupid, doesn’t take itself at all seriously, the villain randomly changes his name half-way through the film for no reason, and it perfectly takes the piss out of bad Kung Fu movies. One of my favourites.

Like almost everyone else on the SMBD, I also liked Hudson Hawk too. It didn’t change my life or anything, but I found it an enjoyable, slightly odd, and not as bad as people seem to think it is.

107

On Deadly Ground. This movie is dumb as fuck, and Michael Caine is in full “I’m just here for the paycheck” mode as an evil bolo tie wearing oilman.

But it’s also great unintentional comedy. How can you not love a movie that features R. Lee Ermey delivering the following dialogue about what a badass Steven Seagal is:

108

k-Pax got a 41/75 rating so I’m not sure that counts.

109

I intended to mention this.

110

It’s Pat!

Has me chuckling most of the way through.

111

In Starcrash, Christopher Plummer is just phoning it in for a quick paycheck, yet he still gives a better performance than the rest of the cast combined. According to imdb, his scenes were all filmed in a single day, and he got paid $30,000.00 (in 1978 dollars) for that one day’s work. As a capitalist, I heartily approve.

112

Not Another Teen Movie has a 28% on RT. I enjoyed for what it was-- a satire of teen movies. Compared to truly awful satires like Epic Movie, it was very good. The scene where the jerkass jock is dared to date the ugliest girl in school and picks the one with a ponytail and glasses, because they make her so much more unattractive than her albino hunchback classmate, was excellent.

Constantine has a 48%, and I have to admit, it has some deeply stupid moments. For instance, a cop puts herself in the position where a dodgy guy she has no reason to trust can drown her, if he gets the notion, with one hand. For me, the bad scenes are more than balanced by some cool ones, like an alkie priest tricked into killing himself with booze, a monster made of insects, my favorite portrayal of Satan, and a vision of Hell that struck me as original and creepy. Plus, the cop is Rachel Weisz, and Tilda Swinton plays a suspect angel. Plus plus, the film got Roger Ebert to write my favorite bad review.

Beat the Devil violates criteria with an RT of 67%, but I’m including it because for one thing, RT scores for old movies are typically inflated, IMO. For another, it was a bomb and the reviews at the time were pretty meh, from what I can tell. For a third, Bogey, the star, notoriously hated it. It’s one of my favorite old movies, just lunatic, with great little speeches, and an excellent cast, including, again, two lovely actresses: Gina Lollobrigida and Jennifer Jones. I can’t think of a single other movie I’ve seen either of them in, but I like them a lot in this.

Hoodwinked is a kid’s movie with an RT of 46%. It has admittedly second-rate animation, especially considering what Pixar and the Shrek franchise were up to at the time. On the good side, I thought it had good voice acting, particularly Patrick Warburton. Throw in a clever premise-- sort of a mashup of Rashomon, The Thin Man, and the Brothers Grimm-- and a funny, subversive script, and IMO it’s just one of those movies that wasn’t lucky with critics for whatever reason.

113

Starship Troopers – never before have I seen a movie so completely at odds with its source material. Veerhoeven’s philosophy is completely at odds with Heinlein’s (which isn’t the fascist image Veerhoeven presents). The science is abysmal and ludicrous in the movie, the opposite of Heinlein’s careful attention to detail. The military actions at all levels – command, strategy, and tactics in the film is absolutely ludicrous (again, in opposition to the book)(He has soldiers surrounding the Bugs in a circle and firing on them – which must have made for LOTS of Friendly Fire casualties on our side) I should have hated this film completely. But the special effects are gorgeous, and it’s amusing to watch a film in which everyone’s actions are so completely screwed up.

Sahara – Clive Cussler’s novels are a guilty pleasure. There are lots of them on audio at the local libraries, they’re fairly thick, and they make for good listening fodder for my daily commute. They are also over-the-top ludicrous. The first Cussler move adaptation, raise the Titanic, was actually too staid and tried to make itself seem plausible, and the result was a stodgy and too-slow action movie. Sahara embraced the looney plot and premise, and it certainly has movement and sweep. Fun to watch, if you put your brain on "hold’.
I loved Hoodwinked too, and don’t consider it a Bad Movie at all. They knew their animation was awful, but so did Jay Ward, who used the Mexican-based Gamma Productions to breathe life into Rocky and Bullwinkle. as in Ward’s case, they made up for their animation lack with very clever plotting and writing. One heckuva clever film.

This thing about Dan O’Bannon and his associates is that the get hold of an idea, hammer at it until they get it right, then keep on hammering until they get it wrong again. In this case, they did the sorta zombie movie Dead and Buried (which was awful), then eventually got it right with Return of the Living Dead, but then went on to make this fiasco, nominally based on Colin Wilson’s The Space Vampires. The Sexy Naked Chick was re-used from RotLD, but the zombie things look like bad puppets – which they were. The cool special effects that DID work were the lasers and stuff, which were highlighted at a traveling exhibit on special effects that I saw at the Boston Museum of Science, where they explained how they did them. The Naked Space Chick was the better effect, though.

114

Wow. That’s gotta be one of the largest spreads between those numbers. To be fair, I sort of see both opinions on that. It was a fun but very flawed movie.

115

Not Another Teen Movie only has 28%?? Talk about knee-jerk reviewing.

Finally THERE’S a movie I can say I genuinely enjoy on all levels and will defend. A lot of the ones mentioned (that got below 50%) I can say I like on some level, or will watch when it comes on…but I can’t honestly say it’s ‘good’. But NATM is good. Where else can you see Captain America with whip cream on his dick?

Ahh. Found another one. Superstar (32%) Wow, talk about some grumpy-gus reviewing to give Superstar 32%
Similar to the spirit of this thread…I see Blade Runner got 91%, but when it came out, it got mediocre reviews.

116

My comics, my kids, my cats and my computer.
If we did a thread about “Movies whose lead actor is never mentioned when discussing the film”, I’d include this one. (The Caine Mutiny would be another) Dramatically, Peter Firth, is the lead. Railsback is more or less along for the ride.

I see Lifeforce has a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s hilarious. I’m sure May’s breasts account for half of that.

That was the film where I knew that Bullock girl was going to be a big star.

117

Megaforce-A film so cheesy and full of holes it should have been filmed in Switzerland. A 0% on the Tomatometer, and an absolute hoot!

118

**Solarbabies

My Chauffeur

Better Off Dead**

119

I didn’t like ***Hudson Hawk ***at all, but I can understand why people would. It’s a complete failure, but it’s an INTERESTING failure. It’s a movie that has me thinking constantly, “Oh, that’s a sort of cool idea, and I see what they were going for, but… it just doesn’t quite work.”

The movie is FILLED with almost brilliant scenes that don’t quite work. Hence, I regard it as an awful movie that comes VERY close to being a great movie (if that makes any sense at all).
And for those who’ve never seen Brainsmasher (meaning pretty much everybody), it’s a terrible action-comedy by Andrew Dice Clay. I KNOW it’s terrible! ANd yet it cracked me up the two times I saw it. Go figure.

120

I agree with both of these.