6. Batman and Robin (1997)
What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age. What killed the successful Batman franchise of the late eighties and nineties? Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin. It’s rare that a film is broadly acknowledged to be so bad that both the lead actor and director have apologized for it multiple times, but Batman and Robin is one such film. Having said that, it’s is not without its charm.
Schumacher seemed to be aiming for a continuation of the darker feel of Tim Burton’s Batman films, but the film is so ridiculously over the top that it can’t help being funny. The film’s main focus is on Batman trying to adjust to working with others, particularly Robin and Batgirl but that’s not what makes the film. What makes the film is the villains!
For some reason, Schumacher decided that the best way to amp the tension in the film was to add more villains, and that is how it ended up starring Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, Robert Swenson as Bane and an infamous performance from Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze. Also, the film has bat nipples, and that alone is worth the ticket price.
7. Street Fighter (1995)
Street Fighter is the second video game adaptation on this list, but undoubtedly the worst. It’s a total mess, borne of a video games publisher controlling a film production with very little idea of what they were doing. In fact, given that almost a third of the film’s total budget was spent on hiring Jean Claude Van Damme to play Colonel Guile and that filming was very rushed due to an imposed time constraint, it’s surprising the end product wasn’t worse.
There isn’t much that anyone could point to as being well executed in this movie, other than a couple of disposable soldiers in one of the opening scenes. There’s a flimsy plot, plenty of bad acting and sets that look like they might fall apart if one of the extras sneeze too hard. And yet there’s something strangely endearing about Street Fighter. It’s filled with cheesy one liners and shoehorned video game outfits, but it’s impossible not to get a laugh out of this movie.
8. Spider-man 3 (2007)
A bit more of a controversial choice for the third entry on this list as Spider-man 3 was initially seen as a huge disappointment by audiences who expected something closer to its predecessor, the excellent Spider-man 2. But after a few years passed and expectations died down Spider-man 3 was revealed for the superb piece of accidental comedy it is. Spider-man 3’s biggest problem is a confused plot with three major villains, two love interests and only one Spider-man to split his time between them all, and that’s not the only thing that makes the movie funny.
Apparently Sam Raimi, the film’s director, initially wanted to make a movie with Sandman as the sole villain, but was told by the studio to focus on Venom, an evil parasite who takes over the Spider-man suit and causes both Spider-man and his alter-ego Peter Parker to make a lot of morally gray decisions.
It sounds much more serious before you realise that these decisions include doing a Saturday Night Fever strut downtown and performing a bizarre tango at Peter’s ex’s workplace. Venom seems more focused on dancing than committing any serious evil, which gives the whole film an extremely fun, silly vibe. If expectations of a good superhero movie are put aside, this becomes one of the best heroic cinema flops.
9. Obsessed (2009)
Obsessed has to be one of the worst thrillers in existence. It stars Idris Elba, Ali Larter and a very bored looking Beyonce in what seems to be a bad adaptation of Fatal Attraction, despite the writer claiming the concept is totally original. But there’s something perversely wonderful about seeing a classic be totally screwed up by remake with a bad script, hilariously bad acting and a very strange sense of direction.
The weirdest part of the whole thing was the decision to never explain the villain, Lisa’s motives, or even give any hints to them. According to writer, David Loughery, this decision was to make her more menacing, but it only serves to make her utterly ridiculous.
On top of that, there is some of the most over-the-top acting in recent years. Even Idris Elba, who is generally accepted to be one of the best actors working today, flits between a natural persona and hammy screaming of bad and repetitive dialogue. Also, the film contains a character saying “Wake up, bitch.” to a woman in a drug-induced coma which has to be one of the most wonderfully dumb pieces of dialogue in of all the movies in this list.
10. The Room (2003)
Tommy Wiseau’s infamous movie, The Room, is widely acknowledged to be one of the worst films of all time, yet it was popular enough to spawn another movie about the making of it. The Disaster Artist charts the troubled production of The Room, which allegedly involved firing the entire crew twice and multiple actors quitting. That certainly accounts for some of the problems with the film, but by no means all of them.
Characters and subplots are introduced only to be never acknowledged again, including a rather memorable scene where breast cancer is treated with about as much gravitas as a spring cold. While other scenes are repeated almost word for word, even if they make no sense the first time (game of football in tuxedos, anyone?). To top it all off, all of Wiseau’s main character’s dialogue is all badly dubbed for no apparent reason.
Despite this comedy of errors, or more likely because of them, Wiseau’s film has become a classic piece of cinema trash which still fills out cinemas at cult screenings to this day. It may be an absolute mess, but it’s a hilarious one and probably the best so-bad-it’s-good film to boot.
Author Bio: Morgan is a freelance writer and filmmaker from Australia. Her work includes the short films, “The Machine” and “The Ferryman”, as well as her blog, Fistful of Glitter. In her free time she plays video games, bakes bread and hangs out with her cat, Alistair.