The 100+ Worst Movies of All Time: So Bad It’s Good!

The 100 So Bad It’s Good Worst Movies of All Time, in no order.

Weirdly, there’s a huge fondness for really bad movies, almost as much as for the good ‘uns. (Of course I don’t approve of laughing at movies, but…)

Worst Movies (1.) ‘MOON MONSTERS LAUNCH ATTACK AGAINST EARTH! How can science meet the menace of astral assassins? New Science Fiction Thrills! Incredible! Unbelievable! Told The Untamed Way! Adventures Into The Future in New TRU-3 Dimension’. Director Phil Tucker attempted suicide after Robot Monster (1953) was critically savaged. He put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger, and missed. But it was his suicide note that saved his life.

Worst Movies (2.) Ed Wood and his legendary sci-fi-horror film Plan 9 from Outer Space were posthumously awarded Golden Turkey Awards for Worst Director Ever and Worst Film Ever.

Worst Movies (3.) Ed Wood, notorious director of Plan 9 from Outer Space, comes up with a double so-bad-it’s-good whammy with his equally hysterically inept 1953 melodrama about transvestism, Glen or Glenda.

Worst Movies (4.) Blues is right. The 1984 Oxford Blues is likely to give you them. The young Rob Lowe makes an unlikely Oxford student but he is effectively slimy.

Worst Movies (5.) ‘Her clothes torn away, screaming in terror!’ Curt Siodmak’s 1951 horror movie Bride of the Gorilla is a bizarre but entertaining so-bad-it’s-good shocker.

Worst Movies (6.) Slave Girls [Prehistoric Women] (1967): ‘Beaten into submission… turned into slaves… man at the mercy of a Kingdom of Prehistoric Women!’

Worst Movies (7.) Lesley-Anne Down enjoys a huge but ill-starred star role as the resolute archaeologist Erica Baron in the infamous 1981 so-bad-it’s-good movie Sphinx.

Worst Movies (8.) Congo: Tim Curry deserves a special Oscar, perhaps a gold-plated banana, for monkeying about so valiantly.

Worst Movies (9.) The 1997 monster-movie thriller Anaconda is sublimely ridiculous.

Worst Movies (10.) Sean Connery looks embarrassed and mumbles away in Scottish like he’s reading his gas bill as arch-villain Sir August de Wynter, in The Avengers.

Worst Movies (11.) Godzilla (1954) is quite a bad movie, but it plays as good fun with lots of laughs, helped by the cheap, hilarious special effects (Godzilla is played by an actor in a rubber suit!) and zany music.

Worst Movies (12.) Land of the Pharaohs is very, very bad, but great, camp fun for collectors of terrible movies and those who like to laugh at them.

Worst Movies (13.) Boat Trip: Cuba Gooding Jr and Roger Moore have a bad trip.

Worst Movies (14.) Timeline: A major production goes down in flames with a listless hash of Michael Crichton’s clever time-travelling story.

Worst Movies (15.) Gigli: It’s turkey time, gobble, gobble. The sexier that Ben and J-Lo attempt to be, the funnier it gets.

Worst Movies (16.) Exposed (1983) is a cult item of the so-bad-it’s-good school. It is intriguing to watch these big names on an off day.

Worst Movies (17.) Joan Fontaine works hard to make The Witches (1966) credible but it’s largely her ever more distraught-looking hair that does most of the acting. It’s a classic example of hair acting.

Worst Movies (18.) The hysterical 1936 exploiter Reefer Madness is a is an all-time turkey, warning against the danger of the weed – just one drag of marijuana and you are a raving addict!

Worst Movies (19.) Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956) is one of the great bad movies with dreadful special effects. It includes a priceless scene on the alien planet where a car can been driving past.

Worst Movies (20.) Irwin Allen’s 1978 horror thriller The Swarm is a particularly silly disaster movie that is a hoot to watch.

Worst Movies (21.) Jaws: The Revenge: Michael Caine recalls: ‘I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.’

Worst Movies (22.) The Hand (1981): please don’t give this one a hand!

Worst Movies (23.) Probably Michael Caine isn’t too delighted about the preposterous 1980 action adventure chiller The Island.

Worst Movies (24.) The Island of Dr Moreau: Marlon Brando is a sight to give anyone sore eyes as the evil Dr Moreau.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (25.) Kylie Minogue strips off, swears and does a bit of acting in her ill-fated movie début The Delinquents

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (26.) Wendigo: Basically, there’s too much Wendi and too little go.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (27.) King Cobra (1999): Basically, this snake is a turkey.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (28.) The 2000 film Python is a really atrocious horror movie, wasting Casper Van Dien, Robert Englund and Wil Wheaton.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (29.): Trog is a laughably poor horror yarn in which, in spectacularly unlikely casting, Joan Crawford plays a scientist investigating some ancient monkey business.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (30.): The hilariously dreadful old 1961 British horror movie Konga stars Michael Gough as a crazy botanist.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (31.): It’s Joan Collins versus giant insects in the hilarious Empire of the Ants (1977).

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (32.): The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967). Shirley Eaton recalled: ‘I did enjoy being the wicked lady Sumuru in two rather bad films’.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (33.): Dan Milner’s incredibly bad 1957 monster movie From Hell It Came is a step beyond incredible, but it is hellishly funny in its insanely campy way.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (34.): Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) is overladen with loads of laughs that make it unmissable ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ campy cult classic B-movie entertainment.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (35.): Voodoo Woman: enjoys an enviable reputation as one of the cinema’s worst films.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (36.): The She-Creature: The evil beast has rubbery skin, stringy hair, claws on its stomach, a tail, wings and a mighty chest. It’s a man in a rubber suit!

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (37.) Invasion of the Saucer Men: ‘I expected to be frightened on my wedding night, but nothing like this.’

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (38.): The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955): The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955) is a Z grade psychotronic cult film, and enjoyable on that laughable level.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (39): The Disembodied was strictly just a support filler for 1957 double bills but now is a little bit of campy fun.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (40): (1957): The cult 1957 horror movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf is renowned, or perhaps infamous, as the film that started the Fifties teen horror cycle.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (41): Curse of the Faceless Man (1958): ‘Entombed for eons – turned to stone – seeking women, women, women!’

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (42): Day the World Ended (1955): ‘It was a pretty smooth movie,’ recalls Roger Corman.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (43): The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955): An extra-terrestrial beast that looks like a coffee percolator and, in fact, has two eyes descends on the American South-West desert.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (44): Blood of Dracula (1957): ‘Warning! Can You Take It? Fiendish! Frenzied! Frightening! It Will Haunt You For Days Afterwards!’

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (45): I Was a Teenage Frankenstein: Whit Bissell plays the mad Professor Frankenstein, a university lecturer with an alligator pit under his house!

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (46): Curse of Simba: ‘The weather really botched things up and sort of depressed everybody.’

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (47): Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster features neither Dr Frankenstein nor Frankenstein’s monster…

 

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (48.): Dennis Hopper plays Napoleon in Irwin Allen’s 1957 bizarre débâcle The Story of Mankind.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (49.): Good Burger is the movie that cleared the London film critics preview theatre back in 1997.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (50.): The Meg… bad fun with Jason Statham.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (51.): Shark Attack… bad fun with Casper Van Dien

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (52): Leeches! (2003): ‘They Will Bleed You Dry…’

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (53): Clips from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon are popular on the internet because of its unconvincing special effects, its size-changing shark, and its crazy dialogue.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (54): Three women break jail and head for a Louisiana swamp to find a stash of stolen diamonds, in Roger Corman’s Swamp Women (1956).

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (55): The 1941 black and white thriller Swamp Woman stars prominent burlesque striptease artist Ann Corio, driven out of New York and into Hollywood by Mayor La Guardia.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (56): A radioactive rock on the bottom of the sea mutates the ocean life into a monster in the laughable 1955 Z grade psychotronic cult film The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (57): Killer Frogs (as well as a few snakes, turtles and lizards) are rampaging on a remote island in the American Deep South. It’s so difficult to have a quiet getaway trip these days!

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (58): The exotically awful 1973 British horror movie curiosity Psychomania stars Nicky Henson as a motorbike gang leader who discovers the secret of rising from the dead.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (59): ‘Savage! Primitive! Untamed!’ The infamous low-budget 1958 American film The Wild Women of Wongo is a rare so-bad-it’s-good treat.

Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (60): Jane and the Lost City runs more like a Carry On movie than in an Indiana Jones clone.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (61): Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). Roger Corman’s first film as producer was made in just six days for only $12,000.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (62): Night of the Lepus. ‘How many eyes does horror have? How many times will terror strike?’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (63): Britain’s very first 3D feature film Four Dimensions of Greta features the gorgeous Miss Skoog in 3D, plus Robin Askwith, plus Riff Raff!

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (64): Cult of the Cobra: ‘Can a woman’s beauty be changed to a thing of terror?’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (65): Paul Newman, took out a newspaper ad in America to ask people not to watch the biblical epic The Silver Chalice, his first film, in which he plays Basil.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (66): The Deadly Mantis: Yes, it’s a hilariously feeble monster insect woken up by an earthquake at the North Pole.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (67): The spectacularly creaky 1957 sci-fi adventure film The Land Unknown is infamous for its men in dinosaur suits, pathetic puppets and lizards standing in for dinosaurs.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (68): The Leech Woman: She drained MEN of their loves and lives!’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (69): Cool It Carol. ‘Oversexed and Under Age! She Raises More Than Eyebrows!’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (70): Tower of Evil [Horror on Snape Island]: Jill Haworth recalls: ‘I remember my character stumbles upon five dead bodies and I had to say with a straight face, “Oh the police aren’t going to like this”.’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (71): Horror Hospital: Antony Balch’s mix of sexploitation comedy and mad doctor sci-fi horror is an eye-opener.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (72): Curse of Simba: Its ‘African’ outdoor sequences were filmed in London’s Regent’s Park and it uses stock footage of African fauna extensively.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (73): Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968). Roger Corman asked Peter Bogdanovich: ‘Would you shoot some footage with some women? AIP won’t buy it unless we stick some women in it.’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (74): Alex Cox called Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) ‘an act of cinematic cannibalism’.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (75): Freddie Francis’s twisted, sick 1970 British horror movie Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly [aka Girly] is The Addams Family without the laughs.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (76): Goodbye Gemini (1970) ended up listed as a video nasty. Judy Geeson and Martin Potter play Chelsea teenage sister and brother twins up to their pretty necks in a pretty offensive plot.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (77): Oliver Stone’s 2004 classical adventure epic Alexander is certainly brave and ambitious but it is also turgid and laughable.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (78): Target Earth (1954) was filmed in just seven days including outdoor shooting in empty streets in the early morning before traffic in Los Angeles, though the film is set in Chicago.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (79): The 1986 comedy Howard the Duck won four Razzie awards for Worst Picture, Screenplay, New Star and Visual Effects.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (80): The 1960 exploitation adventure movie Virgin Sacrifice is ‘A new kind of Jungle Drama. Actually filmed in Guatemala and featuring members of the savage Vicuni Indian tribe!’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (81): John Carradine is typecast yet again as a mad doctor scientist in the very silly 1957 Sci-Fi chiller The Unearthly, with characters created by Edward D Wood Jr.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (82): Beginning of the End (1957) is hilariously bad and very amusing in places.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (83): Zombies of Mora Tau is cheap and cheerful for those who like their horrors with unintentional laughs.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (84): The Giant Claw lands in the So Bad It’s Good collection, because, with its daft giant bird monster, it is quite bad enough to be funny.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (85): ‘Super-quake tilts the earth!’ in The Night the World Exploded

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (86): The Man who Turned to Stone: ‘Incredible revelations from the blackest chapters of unholy medicine!’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (87): Oliver Hellman’s 1977 giant octopus/ killer whale horror thriller Tentacles [Tentacoli] is Italy’s daft, cheap-looking riposte to Jaws.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (88): The Monster and the Girl (1941). A white slavery ring forces a girl (Ellen Drew) into prostitution, her brother is unjustly executed, and mad scientist (George Zucco) transplants his brain into a gorilla’s body!

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (89): William Bendix stars in The Babe Ruth Story, which has attracted unfortunate attention as one the worst movies ever made.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (90): Jungle Woman (1944) might have one of Universal’s better casts but it enjoys a reputation as one of Universal’s worst horror films.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (91): The daft 1943 horror movie Captive Wild Woman stars John Carradine as mad scientist Dr Sigmund Walters, who transfuses a woman’s blood into the veins of Cheela, the circus ape.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (92): The Jungle Captive (1945) stars Otto Kruger as crazed scientist Dr Stendhal, who tries to change Paula the incredibly hairy dead Ape Woman into a live and lovely female.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (93): John Wayne stars as the Mongolian chieftain Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956), fondly regarded as one of the worst movies of all time.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (94): Roger Ebert called A Place for Lovers (1968) the ‘most godawful piece of pseudo-romantic slop I’ve ever seen!’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (95): Warren Beatty defends the mega-flop Ishtar as ‘a very good, not very big, comedy, made by a brilliant woman. And I think it’s funny.’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (96): ‘How bad is it?’ ‘Mariah Carey in Glitter bad!’

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (97):  Pop diva Britney Spears makes an unwise crossover to the movies in Crossroads (2002). It goes straight in the video dump bin.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (98): Jennifer Lopez in Enough (2002) – third of a trio of films from hell. following Glitter and Crossroads.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (99): The Last Airbender got nine nominations at the 31st Golden Raspberry Awards, and won five, including Worst Picture and Worst Director.

The 100 Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (100): The Horror of Party Beach is billed as ‘The first horror monster musical!’ Stephen King names it as one of his favourite films.

The 100+ Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (101): The Curse of the Living Corpse. A splendidly Gothic premise is turned into an inept and tacky low-budget horror quickie.

The 100+ Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (102): Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone are embarrassed to be playing The Corpse and Reginald Ripper in the potty 1966 beach party comedy horror movie The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini.

The 100+ Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (103): Inchon (1981). The 72-year-old Laurence Olivier explained: ‘Nothing is beneath me if it pays well. I’ve earned the right to damn well grab whatever I can in the time I’ve got left.’ 

The 100+ Worst Movies: So Bad It’s Good (104): Heavens to betsy, it’s esteemed septuagenarian peer Lord Olivier starring in the 1977 Harold Robbins farrago film The Betsy.