Badmovies.org Forum

What must a movie have to be considered a good bad movie for you? Where do you draw the line? Do you separate bad movies from B-Movies?

For me the most important factor is unintentional humor. Lots of laughter = good entertainment = good bad movie. Examples:

Troll 2 (1990), Showgirls (1995), The Wicker Man (2006).

If a movie doesn't provide too much unintentional laughter but still manages to entertain with crappy but somewhat cool over-the-top action or jaw-dropping weirdness like in Lady Terminator (1987), The Jackhammer Massacre (2004) or Skinned Deep (2004) then it is a good bad movie in book as well.

What is your definition of a good bad movie?

In general, a good bad movie is one that isn't boring.  Example - PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

A bad bad movie is one that's so boring you can barely keep your eyes open, have trouble watching it all the way to the end, and may never attempt to watch it again.  Example - Lucio Fulci's CONQUEST.

The simplest answer is Burgomaster: If it's boring, it's a bad b-movie. If it's not boring, it's a good b-movie.

That's simplifying it quite a bit, but anything more than that and the question is unanswerable. It's kind of like saying what makes for a nice [insert body part] on a member of the gender you are attracted to? It depends on the person, and even then it's still not an exact science, as a man who is generally attracted to large breasts may see a less endowed woman who drives him crazy. Sorry for the crude analogy, but I think it fits. :teddyr:

I do consider some B-movies different from bad movies although some fit into both categories too IMO. What some call B-movies were actually movies that for their time and era would have been considered to have great FX in many cases, and/or capable actors, probably depending on where the budget went, but would be a B-picture to play after the A film was over. Many B-movies weren't actually bad, just lower budget fare on average. There were many quality small films B Westerns and War pictures that does get NOT typically get grouped in with what most think of as B-movies. To me, a good bad movie is stuff like TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, FRANKENSTEIN VS. THE SPACE MONSTER, MANIAC (1934), THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. A bad bad movie would be stuff like MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL, BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE.

Definition of B-Movie from Wikipedia: "A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture conceived neither as an arthouse film nor as pornography. In its original usage, during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the 1950s. Early B movies were often part of series in which the star repeatedly played the same character. Almost always shorter than the top-billed films they were paired with, many had running times of 70 minutes or less. The term connoted a general perception that B movies were inferior to the more handsomely budgeted headliners; individual B films were often ignored by critics...From their beginnings to the present day, B movies have provided opportunities both for those coming up in the profession and others whose careers are waning. "

It hast to be entertaining and funny. I don't care who did what or what the movie's budget was. Recently I enjoy a good bad movie such as Roller Blade more than any Hollywood movie that's out there just because trash and bad movies are stuffed with new and totally crazy ideas.

It has to capture your attention and keep it there. In bad bad movies, your eyes will wander, and you'll start to think about turning it off and doing something else. If you're able to laugh at something, or get pulled into the camp, it's enjoyable.

A bad movie has to have good characters - likable, sympathetic, preferrably in tight tank tops (which a gratifying number of them do feature).  I can sit through just about anything if I like the characters.  On the other hand, if the characters are self-righteous, argumentative, etc. I'll turn it off immediately.  Probably why I have no interest in 99% of what Hollywood puts out. 

It also helps if the plot / action moves along at a good pace, though it can certainly take a break for some gratuitous nudity (which a gratifying number of them do feature).  A good B movie realizes that it needs to entertain the audience, not exist solely for the purpose of getting paychecks for the cast and crew and a profit margin for the studio.  Did I mention the thing about 99% of spam remakes, whacked-out comedies, and CGI spectacles, a.k.a. Hollywood movies?  I also really like it when the screenplay is written by using this thing called "creative thinking".  So many movies seem to be made by people who watched two or three genre films and combined the elements together into their own project, adding absolutely nothing new.

Well I'm going to assume you're also asking what I look for in finding one.
Anything that is more than 90 minuets long is dangerous territory... for boredom.
You can usually judge a b-movie by it's cover for its quality, but you can't be certain what the movies about:

(http://www.animaldisguise.com/images/ironmaster.jpg)
Typical example-- looks like a sword and sorcery flick, but on the back it suggests it's about cave men.

Titles are good indicators too.

Look at the back cover, are there any rubber puppets, or people screaming?

Read the plot summary, does it try to build character development too much-- if it's a horror movie, and it's obviously cheap, by adding a big drama element to it for a film that's 90+ minuets long, it's probably going to have character development by lousy actors for 80 minuets of the movie when you just want to see people explode, or rubber monsters attack people, or some other goofy things.
Example of boring:
"Sally Stupidkin just inherited a house after leaving North Portside Sea Sanitarium, but there's a big family secret about the house. No one wishes to talk about the secret, and her family members act suspicious when around Sally. But she has to get her family to talk because she is having strange dreams at night in the house."

Hope that helps.

A good bad movie is a film that can be bad in many ways, but the ways are entertaining.  The best example of this would be Samurai Cop.  The movie had some of the worst dialogue, action scenes, and lots of bad effects, but it was so entertaining because of that.  The bad dialogue was laugh worthy, the effects were entertaining (Got a love a submachine gun that also shoots paintball bullets!), and the action scenes were a blast (Enjoyed how they smashed through a bunch of cardboard boxes and made a van exploded by lightly touching against a wall).

Also, a bad movie can be good by how cheesy it is.  Example: See the original Fantastic Four film.

I'll always think of "B" movies as low budget Scifi/fantasy and horror, been watching this sort of film for over 50 years (time flies when you're having fun) and as long as the film is entertaining, regardless of why, it's a good movie. In some the special effects are pretty bad but the acting is good and the story is interesting, in others the acting is second rate but the effects and the story are good, and then there are the ones that are so ridiculously awful that they're funny and fun to watch, and finally there are the ones that are just bad. Whether a "B" movie is good or bad is entirely up to the individual watching it, different opinions are what makes a horse race.

Any movie that I enjoy watching, but most other people wouldn't.

Good and bad have no meaning.  I either enjoy a movie or I don't.  Nothing else matters.

There are movies that I consider to be true failures.  If a movie can't inspire me to form any kind of opinion or have any sort of emotional reaction to it at all, it has failed.