So bad, so good: the best, worst films

Bad films can be an art form. Sometimes you feel like watching a challenging biopic or a depressing documentary, but other days you want nothing more than to turn off your brain and turn on a movie so bad you can hardly believe it would ever be greenlit has given. Oh, what a sweet force dares to be the worst.

“Miami Connection” (1987)

This indie martial arts film was a total flop upon its initial release and remained unseen for decades – until Drafthouse Films picked it up again in 2012. Inevitably, “Miami Connection” became an underground cult favorite. “The plot revolves around a taekwondo-themed synth-rock band called Dragon Sound and the group's gritty battle against an evil Florida empire of cocaine-dealing motorcycle ninjas,” said Zack Carlson on Wired. “Now you’re wondering why your eyebrows just rose when you read that sentence. Because it sounds bad? No. Because it sounds incredible.”

“Road House,” the story of a tough guy who is hired to clean up a noisy street bar, was recently remade with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role, replacing Patrick Swayze. But the new version fails to “capture the B-movie spirit of the original,” he said NPR. The 1989 action hit is still beloved for its colorful characters, aggressive violence and incessant punches to the face. “It's silly and satisfying, a straightforward take on sex and violence,” NPR added.

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This low-budget lark follows a family vacation to a small town called Nilbog (spelled backwards: Goblin), where they discover that the residents are man-eating monsters. The actors are all amateurs who do their best to deliver the lines as robotically as possible. (“Poor Darren Ewing is drawn out 'Oh dear God!' “Perhaps it is film’s most famous crime against acting,” he said SyFy.com.) Director Claudio Fragrasso and his Italian film crew barely spoke English and the American cast seemed noticeably confused. This film is not preceded by “Troll”; For some inexplicable reason a sequel is created. There are no trolls either.

Paul Verhoeven's erotic thriller is a chaotic adventure full of camp and sequins. The film follows the transformation of Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), a Las Vegas stripper looking for stardom who received a record 13 Razzie Awards nominations. Many children grew up watching the NC-17 melodrama on basic cable television floating bras were pulled over the topless actresses. The film has achieved cult status due to its “big budget but inherently trashy premise, quotable absurd dialogue, ridiculous characters…” [and] “Elaborate musical numbers,” said The guard.

Tommy Wiseau's The Room is perhaps the most infamous film on this list. In a true auteur feat, Wiseau wrote, directed and starred in the project, which “generated seemingly endless views at midnight screenings around the world, with fans quoting the film's garbled script from memory,” Vox said. To put it on an even higher pedestal: “It's one of the most important films of the decade,” said Ross Morin, a professor of film studies Weekly entertainment. “'The Room' is the 'Citizen Kane' of bad films.”

“2012” was released after an internet panic broke out over the alleged Mayan calendar end of the world Prediction date: December 21, 2012. Ultimately it was nonsense, but disaster master Roland Emmerich took that fear and ran with it. He directed an epic apocalypse blockbuster full of improbable moments like a tsunami that engulfs the entire planet and a limousine that drives through an active earthquake unscathed. “Like all the best disaster movies, it’s funniest at its most hysterical,” he said Roger Ebert. “This one ends the world, tramples on it, grinds it up and spits it out.”

The popularity of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical Cats has always been a mystery, but even more mysterious is why director Tom Hooper thought it would make a good film. Instead of putting standout actors Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench in cat costumes, Hooper used the use of spooky special effects to create “transmogrified CGI human-cat hybrids,” Hooper said The guard. The result is somewhere between a waking nightmare and an LSD trip, which many viewers welcomed. “Watching 'Cats' is like a descent into madness,” said a Collider Review.

Lindsay Lohan rose to fame as a child star and confidently vacillated between two roles in “The Parent Trap.” She then disappeared from the big screen for many years before eventually resurfacing and starring in Netflix holiday projects. 2022's Falling for Christmas was her first role in a major production in over a decade, and this year's March release — vaguely tied to St. Patrick's Day — continued that pattern. The film is so boring and unconvincing that it almost seems hallucinatory. “Irish Wish” is a “crypto-fascist work of art full of… dialogue that could only have been written by a maliciously programmed artificial intelligence,” he said vulture. Who wouldn't want to see that?

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So bad, so good: the best, worst films

“Miami Connection” (1987)

“Road House” (1989)

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So bad, so good: the best, worst films

“Miami Connection” (1987)

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