Something does not need to have any redeeming qualities to strike your fancy and be worth watching more than once. Junk food is more popular than bean salad.
So what is your favourite “B-movie”, defined as you wish?. A guilty or indulgent pleasure, a hidden gem, maybe a ludicrously exploitative or plotless pastiche you have seen more than once (though not necessarily recently) but can’t turn your head away from?
I loved Amazon Women On The Moon. Great humour, amazing cast, sui generis and with enough of a passable parody of a B-movie that you are forgiven for thinking that it does not really meet the criterion. Still, it only gets 60% on Rotten Tomaters, and it does feature Sybil Danning.
The 1982 film The Beastmaster with Marc Singer and Rip Torn.
When I was a child in the 80s it was shown so often on HBO that people joked that HBO stood for “Hey, Beastmaster’s On”. There was a similar joke about TBS that TBS stood for “The Beastmaster Station” because they aired it constantly as well.
I’m a sucker for any of AIP’s Beach Party movies. The jokes and romance are lame, but the music and dancing is always a gas. When I was a kid, those films were the only place I could see “live” performances by Dick Dale, Little Stevie Wonder, The Pyramids, or The Beach Boys.
Video Pirate (commenting on the FBI warning): “Oh, I’m soooo scaaaaared.”
Beach party movies are cool, but I have a thing for cheesy SF flicks like Journey to the Seventh Planet and Zontar, the Thing from Venus. Toho productions with American “guest stars” like Nick Adams and Raymond Burr hold a special place in my heart.
My all-time favorite superhero movie: Zorro, The Gay Blade!
The cable TV watcher’s prayer: “Oh Lord, please don’t let it be Beastmaster again!”
My choice, Vanishing Point, or maybe Dirty Mary Crazy Larry.
On the other hand, you really can’t beat gems like Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and They Saved Hitler’s Brain.
I realized that I just haven’t seen (or, at least, am able to remember) many B-movies. I’ll go with Kentucky Fried Movie – the first film by the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team, and directed by a young John Landis – with the caveats that (a) I haven’t seen it in years, so I don’t know how well it has held up, and (b) I fully recognize that it’s exceptionally politically incorrect by today’s standards.
But, when I was in college, and just after, it was definitely a guilty pleasure, and hilarious as hell.
Not counting ones that only qualify due to Riffed versions…
Probably Dead Alive by Peter Jackson, though while it’s absolutely a B-Movie, it’s quality of doing a lot with a little kind of transcends that. Similarly, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, but they aren’t always defined as B movies, which is a fuzzy category.
I -enjoy- the Evil Dead movies more, but they’re slightly compromised by not fully playing it “straight” the way Dead Alive mostly does.
They Live - stands up very well in relevance, fight sequences, tongueness-in-cheek, and plenty of reasons to re-watch it periodically.
Since director John Carpenter was already known for The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China [another B fave and contender], its probably more of an off-kilter A Movie, given a B for subject matter.
The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra
Spoof of B-horror/SF movies. Quite funny.
One of my biggest guilty pleasure movies is The Cutting Edge, a 90s rom-com where an uptight ice queen figure skater is forced to work with a lowly hockey player.
It’s got some great banter, good chemistry between the leads, and features some classic tropes. I’m a sucker for love that transcends class boundaries.
“Toe pick!” <3
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)
I think it’s worse than Plan 9… ., but I love it.
Let’s add Two Lane Blacktop for the trifecta.
Just one? Oh, okay, I’ll pick Dinosaurus! A young boy befriends a caveman and they ride a brontosaurus. And a T-Rex battles a steam shovel. What more could anyone want?
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
Homicidal alien clowns descend in a flying circus tent to turn humans into cotton candy. It’s absurd, creepy, and hilariously inventive—what’s not to love?
I remember They Live mainly because it starred “Rowdy Roddy Piper”. So how could it possibly be a terrible movie?