h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Troma films!

I have a particular fondness for "Class of Nuke'Em High" myself!

Paully

Starship Troopers. Utterly Cheesy, and laugh-out-loud bad acting. Also some Vietnam War undertones I'm told...

But I could (and have) watch it over and over again all day!

Does anyone know why I - and indeed many of us - love a film even though we know it's so blatently awful?

Because it's funny watching people refusing to let a complete and total lack of talent get in the way of a career choice?

Absolutely! And it's nice to sit down to a film and not have to take it seriously. A lot of people were disappointed with the Evil Dead films because they just coulnd't grasp the fact it was a mickey take

Starship Troopers is actually quite subversive if you watch it closely.

RF

Flash Gordon! Utter drivel, but I love it. "Flash, I love you! And we only have twelve hours left to save the Earth!" It's my guilty little secret.

"Gordon's alive!"

RF

Umm, it's "Flash, Flash I love you, but we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!".

Oh God, I'm going now.

I bow to your superior knowledge. Humbled, I will watch the film again to ensure future quotations are correct. Thanks for the excuse!

And what a soundtrack - Flash! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Saviour of the Universe!

I vote for the original "The Howling", 1981:

" ... a werewolf colony on the California coast, posing as a self-help haven led by a seemingly benevolent doctor (Patrick Macnee), and populated by a variety of "patients," from sexy, leather-clad sirens (among them Elisabeth Brooks) to an old coot (John Carradine) who's quite literally long in the tooth. When a TV reporter (Dee Wallace) arrives at the colony to recover from a recent trauma, the resident lycanthropes prepare for a howlin' good time."

I read negative reviews of this as a horror film, but I always thought of it as a parody. I mean, cans of "Wolf" brand chili on the shelves? And when the "infected" anchor lady decides to expose the werewolves by turning into one on air, we get a scene in a bar where two guys are watching the TV. One slurs, "Its true. She turned into a wolf and they shot her." The other guy says, "You're drunk." "Doesn't mean its not true."

braindead written by and directed by none other than peter jackson and fran walsh.
and of course who could forget the evil dead films, the medievil dead is the best.
and continuing the in the same vein, return of the living dead part two.

And we can't forget Bad Taste now, can we?

I've not seen Bad Taste.. but I love Braindead..

Poor Lionel

He got to be a hero, kill his overbearing zombie mother and find love! Really, that flesh-eating monkey solved all his problems.

Brain Candy by the canadian Kids in the Hall team...

I don't know if this qualifies, but my zombieflick - mad partner and I stayed up once to watch a zombie film called "The Dark", with Brion James and Neve Campbell, that had...no zombies. At all. Anywhere.

Personally, I hate the whole "so bad it's good" thing as, most of the time, it's blatantly untrue. Most bad films are exactly that - bad - and aren't worth watching. Other films mistaken for "bad" are, in fact, highly enjoyable, often-camp nonsense that has no pretentions to being anything else and is more than aware of how silly it is (someone mentioned Mike Hodge's "Flash Gordon", a great film that wears it's OTT-ness on it's sleeve as much as "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and which has been widely misunderstood as a "so bad it's good" film).

However,

I would nominate Ed Wood's "Plan Nine From Outer Space". This was a film made, in all seriousness, as a scary piece of science-fiction that fails on just about every level in it's intentions and yet remains enjoyable. I've watched it several times and it remains incredibly watchable for reasons I can't quite fathom. I suppose it's because the viewer usually stops watching it as a thriller and starts watching it as a succession of bad-lines, corny dialogue, preposterous philosophising and crummy action and it's hard not to enjoy it. I think if any film deserves the description of "so bad it's good" then Plan Nine does.