Rotten Films 101–My suggestions for bad movies that are fun to watch with your bad movie buff friends (Part 4)
The list below is NOT complete and I do not attempt to name every bad film—just the ones I’ve seen. I might add a fifth list later. And, if you can think of a movie that you feel I should add, let me know.
To be included on the list, the film has to be fun to watch due to its ineptness. Usually, watching these films with like-minded friends is a major plus! Boring films like The English Patient and The Conqueror are not eligible nor are most big-budget flops like John Carter or Heaven’s Gate unless they reach a certain level of awfulness. Also, while I have heard that the Turkish version of Star Wars is horrible, if I cannot find it subtitled or dubbed I will not include it on the list.
My first three lists gave you 120 bad but hilarious bad films. I thought there was no way I could ever expand the list, yet, amazingly, below are 40 more. I am currently working on list #5—as the number of terrible films is apparently limitless!
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- Killers From Space—Peter Graves is a government scientist who has been operated on by aliens intent on taking over the world. It sounds interesting but is instead very goofy and dumb. Just the sort of bad film I enjoy!
- Hillbillies in a Haunted House—Don’t you think the title says it all?!
- Track of the Moon Beast—Guy gets hit on the head by a meteorite and changes into a velociraptor!
- KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park—One of the funniest bad films I’ve ever seen and proof that the guys from KISS will do anything for a buck!
- Horror High–Dallas Cowboys running back Calvin Hill and quarterback Craig Morton and linebacker D.D. Lewis, as well as Pittsburg Steelers defensive tackle Joe Greene and Chuck Beatty appear in this abysmally bad film about a nerd run amok at the local high school.
- Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things—I love the title—too bad the film isn’t nearly as good!
- Godzilla Vs. the Smog Monster–Preachy ecology merged with an awful Godzilla film. The worst part about it is the annoying brat who loves Godzilla and cheers for him throughout this terrible film.
- Pocket Ninjas—Children are ninjas and beat up the baddie adults.
- Racket Girls—Nice title but it’s amazing that a film about female wrestlers ends up this dull and pointless!
- Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave—One of MANY films of the 1970s with Bruce Lee’s name in the title but no Bruce Lee in the film!
- King Kong Lives—At least the giant ape gives the viewers the finger—the only interesting part of this otherwise terrible man in gorilla suit epic.
- The Blond Captive—the Blonde in the title appears at the 68th minute in the film—otherwise it’s full of stock footage and obnoxious narration.
- King Solomon’s Mines (1985)—I actually spend money to see this awful Richard Chamberlain mess of a movie. The worst scene was him and Sharon Stone in a giant cannibal stewpot filled with obviously plastic vegetables.
- Deathless Devil—This Turkish turkey is available in English and features the masked hero, ‘Copperhead’, fighting against assorted baddies. It’s a lot like a Mexican luchador film—and is wonderfully bad.
- Kiara the Brave—An Indian-made CGI film featuring ancient computer graphics and the artwork for the film tries to make itself look like the Disney film, Brave.
- Just Another Romantic Wrestling Comedy—Awful and offensive. And, like many recent films, many of the reviews listed on IMDB are obviously by folks connected with the movie—and they give the film 10s! Considering it’s one of the lowest rated films in history, this sure took a lot of nerve!
- Pledge This!—One of Paris Hilton’s worst films—and that’s saying a lot.
- Epic Movie—While there are lots of crappy satire films like this one, this is probably the worst—though they’re all pretty dumb.
- Santa With Muscles—Hulk Hogan saves Christmas…
- The Fat Spy—Phyllis Diller stars in this god-awful spoof without a single laugh.
- Jack Frost—My vote for the creepiest Christmas film ever. Inattentive dad dies in car wreck and comes back as a creepy living snowman! Nightmare fodder instead of heartwarming.
- King Dinosaur—See real live lizards and alligators decorated up to look like dinosaurs as they literally tear each other apart for our entertainment. Badly made and sick.
- Santa Claus (1959)—This Mexican Santa film features not only the chubby fellow but Satan—which makes me wonder if the screenwriter was dyslexic.
- Fear Chamber—Possibly the worst film of the 1960s—and there were LOTS of bad films during this decade!
- Narcotic—Perhaps not as bad as Reefer Madness…or perhaps it is.
- Assassination of Trotsky—Horrible overacting by Richard Burton is actually pretty funny. When he gets a pickaxe in the skull, he bellows like a moose in heat!
- Test Tube Babies—Early exploitation trash—funny and badly made in every possible way.
- Angel, Angel Down We Go—Jennifer Jones must have really, really needed the money, as she appears in this LSD flick aimed solely at the drive-in theater crowd.
- Sin You Sinners—Features a stripper with a magic amulet who can control zombies. The stripper is the type that folks pay…to keep her clothes ON! Yech!
- First Yank in Tokyo—The most racist and silly American propaganda film of the WWII era. Many will be shocked at the idea of an obviously white American actor posing as a Japanese soldier—and he looks about as Japanese as a taco!
- Spitfire—Katharine Hepburn plays a backwoods hillbilly banshee!!!
- 1313 Cougar Cult—Like a porno film without nudity and with some of the worst CGI in film history.
- Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women—Again, the title just says it all.
- Blackwoods—Featuring bizarre camerawork that might just make you nauseous. If this doesn’t, the dialog certainly will!
- Zontar the Thing From Venus—Proof that John Agar (Shirley Temple’s first husband) was one horrific actor!
- Hitchhike to Hell—Despite pimps, prostitutes and brothels, the film is amazingly tame and a bit dull. The editing, it seems, was done by a Cocker Spaniel.
- Repossessed—Leslie Nielsen’s worst film ever. The song and dance number is excruciatingly bad.
- Saturn 3—An elderly Kirk Douglas hangs out on a space station with nubile Farrah Fawcett. Then, the perverted Harvey Keitel arrives…is killed and his black as tar soul then infests the robot—when then tries to rape poor Farrah. ‘Nuff said.
- Abbey—A blacksploitation version of The Exorcist with a budget of $4.58! It makes Blacula seem like an art film!
- Lisztomania—Ken Russell’s ‘reimagining’ of the life of Franz Liszt is indescribably bad. The ending features a Frankenstein version of Richard Wagner liquidating the Jews (using a machine gun guitar) as a spaceship with Liszt and his girlfriends descend from Heaven and destroy this Nazi menace. Offensive and stupid from start to finish.
Article by Lead Entertainment Writer & Film Critic, Martin Hafer