'Shit' films which you actually quite like

[Brundle-Fly]

House Of A 1000 Corpses/ The Devil's Rejects

I don't know, are they shit?  They're not classics but Rob Zombie's tribute to old slasher films are enjoyable if you like this sort of thing. They are horrible nihilistic movies but lovingly shot, have great soundtracks and include some top performances that makes them a par above most of the torture porn efforts that have come out in the past ten years*. I thought Zombie upped his game in the sequel too.

Most of all, unlike most slasher movies they are never boring. I was disappointed by his remake of Halloween though.


*See the remake of The Hills Have Eyes too. That's great fun but avoid the sequel at all costs.

[lipsink]

Superman III. It misses Lex Luthor and Lois Lane, but the alternative villains and Smallville setting make for a nice change of pace. And though the chemistry between Reeve and O'Toole is different than that between Reeve and Kidder, it's still nicely played. I also enjoy Lana's oafish, pisshead wannabe-suitor, the 'orrible robot scientist woman at the end, and the best scene in any of the Superman films - the wicked fight between Clark and bad Superman in the junkyard. It suffers cos it looks grubbier than the first two, it tries to be silly but often comes off as stupid, and Pryor almost overbalances the whole thing. It's also TOOOO LOOOOOONG. But I like it a lot.

This was always my favourite Superman movie as a kid. Looking back on it now it's definitely not as good as I and II but it's still really quite interesting and as you say Lana and Smallville are great changes. It's a shame they didn't continue with the Lois/Clark/Lana triangle hinted at at the end. There's way too much Richard Pryor though and not enough Supes too but it has a lot going for it.

[non capisco]

The Room

Tommy Wiseau is a genius. Oh hi, Mark. I'm fed up with this werl!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQst2mFlJM

Chiiiiiiiiip-chip-chip-chip-chip!

It's definitely more entertaining as a whole than I thought it would be. There's only one actor in it that seems to know he's acting in a bizarre stinker and mugs to the audience in a complicit 'I know, right?' way. God knows what was going on with the rest of them but I applaud their commitment. "So, I get a dramatic moment in my first scene when I announce I'm dying of breast cancer and after that no-one ever mentions it again? Right you are, Tommy. You seem to know what you're doing."

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

the best scene in any of the Superman films - the wicked fight between Clark and bad Superman in the junkyard

This is true. Bad Superman is up there for one of the most scary baddies in film, although given I was about 6 when I first saw it, that isn't surprising.

[Famous Mortimer]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Jason X is an amazing piece of cinema. Clearly I am correct and the 23,000 people on IMDB who voted it a 4.3 were watching a different film.

It's Jason Voorhees! He's in space!

Spoiler alert

He gets turned into Uber-Jason!

[close]

What's not to love?

Shit yeah, I love that film. Stupid but aware it's stupid, the robot head gets some good lines...it's a fine film.

[Famous Mortimer]

Chiiiiiiiiip-chip-chip-chip-chip!

It's definitely more entertaining as a whole than I thought it would be. There's only one actor in it that seems to know he's acting in a bizarre stinker and mugs to the audience in a complicit 'I know, right?' way. God knows what was going on with the rest of them but I applaud their commitment. "So, I get a dramatic moment in my first scene when I announce I'm dying of breast cancer and after that no-one ever mentions it again? Right you are, Tommy. You seem to know what you're doing."

Also features maybe the best blow job face in the history of cinema:

[Dark Sky]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Jason X is an amazing piece of cinema. Clearly I am correct and the 23,000 people on IMDB who voted it a 4.3 were watching a different film.

It's Jason Voorhees! He's in space!

Spoiler alert

He gets turned into Uber-Jason!

[close]

What's not to love?

oh god, yeah, I love Jason X.  And Freddy vs Jason, too!  That's probably shit, but in my mind it's as brilliant as any Fellini / Tarkovsky / Kieslowski.

[El Unicornio, mang]

The last Final Destination film. Exactly the same storyline/characters as every other one, and the acting was typically wooden, but the elaborate set-ups for grisly deaths were enough to keep me thoroughly entertained.

[Custard]

Also features maybe the best blow job face in the history of cinema:

Blimey, it's almost Joker in The Dark Knight

[Absorb the anus burn]

The Abyss (nice to see solid actors like Ed Harris in a beautifully shot action movie)
Who Dares Wins (second typing of Lewis Collins by myself today)
The Goonies (not sure if this is shit or just horribly dated now, but have fond memories of seeing it a few times one happy summer)

[Small Man Big Horse]

And Freddy vs Jason, too!  That's probably shit, but in my mind it's as brilliant as any Fellini / Tarkovsky / Kieslowski.

I loved that too, I saw at the cinema and everyone roared with laughter throughout.

The Goonies (not sure if this is shit or just horribly dated now, but have fond memories of seeing it a few times one happy summer)

I wasn't much of a fan of this as a kid, but an obsessed friend made me rewatch it last summer and it's a whole lot of fun.

I'm very fond of the John Cusack / Tim Robbins comedy Tapeheads. It's ridiculously 80s and horrifically garish, but there's a great gag rate and it's packed with absurdly silly bits.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The Goonies isn't shit. If you look at how carefully it guides the kids from curious adventurers to the point of no return it's superbly directed. It's also absolutely alone in its stylistics, features a fucking  fun bit of young romance and is guided throughout by a really strong moral message that encourages curiousity, independent thought and bravery.

It's such an amazing children's film- unlike so many these days it seems to have an almost pulsating awareness of exactly what gets them going, without it ever seeming like it's cynical or led by demographics.

The Goonies and The Witches are amazing children's films.

[McDead]

I'm very fond of the John Cusack / Tim Robbins comedy Tapeheads. It's ridiculously 80s and horrifically garish, but there's a great gag rate and it's packed with absurdly silly bits.

I caught this for the first time a few months ago, and absolutely HATED it for the first half an hour or so. Then, as is often the way, that annoyance turned to grudging respect and eventually into proper love. It's adorably off-kilter, obeys almost none of the arc "rules" of modern cinema and is content to be massively pointless and silly. Yep - good.

It's also a bit ahead of its time, anticipating the anarchic, lo-fi, freewheeling likes of Beavis and Butthead, Freddy Got Fingered and even - arguably- something like Mr Show. I haven't seen Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, but I bet Tapeheads is in there somewhere, if only a little bit.

[McDead]

This is true. Bad Superman is up there for one of the most scary baddies in film, although given I was about 6 when I first saw it, that isn't surprising.

He's still scary! Possibly cos Reeve REALLY goes for it - sullenly flicking peanuts at the bar, shunning Lana Lang's kid in the street (the rotter!) and completely losing his shit in the junkyard. If you've not seen it in a while, it's worth another look:

http://youtu.be/sfe5drzybRU

DANGER! ACID!

[El Unicornio, mang]

Bad Superman  is definitely scary, but the part where that woman turns into a robot at the end still gives me the fear...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuSsSwg9MXs

[AsparagusTrevor]

Bad Superman  is definitely scary, but the part where that woman turns into a robot at the end still gives me the fear...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuSsSwg9MXs

I used to hide my eyes during that bit when I was young, still gives me chills now.

He's still scary! Possibly cos Reeve REALLY goes for it - sullenly flicking peanuts at the bar, shunning Lana Lang's kid in the street (the rotter!) and completely losing his shit in the junkyard. If you've not seen it in a while, it's worth another look:

http://youtu.be/sfe5drzybRU

DANGER! ACID!

That was back when they didn't care so much about health and safety and open acid pits were commonplace in scrapyards. Still, at least they were responsible enough to have the "DANGER! ACID!" sign.

[SavageHedgehog]

The last Final Destination film. Exactly the same storyline/characters as every other one, and the acting was typically wooden, but the elaborate set-ups for grisly deaths were enough to keep me thoroughly entertained.

I love the Final Destination films. In fact, with the exception of the largely forgettable third film, it's a rare example of a series I like more as it goes along. The sillier the better with this lot. Yes, they're all the same, but so were Road Runner cartoons, and the two series share the same appeal; watching people get squished, and waiting for people to get squished, in hilarious and inventive ways.

The Goonies on the other hand, I don't get on with at all, and I would put that in the inverse category of popular/acclaimed films I just don't get.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

Thir13en Ghosts (the remake with Tony Shalhoub; I haven't seen the original). Utterly bonkers trapped-in-a-house-with-all-evil-ghosts romp that's a terrible film if you take your horror seriously but for a bit of a gruesome laugh it's surprisingly enjoyable.

Seconded.

DH4 wasn't actually bad but just unnecessary: the previous 3 had kept an upward graph of increasing returns, and this one couldn't go any better, unless they tried directly copying from 24.

Some straight-to-VHS/DVD sequels that aren't bad: Blair Witch 2 (there's a great extra segment at the end of the tape, which I saw first due to the previous borrower not bothering to rewind), also Starship Troopers 2 is actually a good SF tale about alien infiltration, far better than the first film.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

My problem with Final Destination is the scene in the first film where the kid gets killed by the accident in the kitchen. The whole thing just reminded me of the car chase in Naked Gun in which increasingly absurd obstacles kept appearing, and after I'd giggled at that the whole film seemed to be a self-parody. Which is a pity as the plane-exploding-in-the-background bit early on was a genuinely unsettling bit of footage.

[momatt]

Bad Superman  is definitely scary, but the part where that woman turns into a robot at the end still gives me the fear...

Hell yes.  It scared the poop out of me as a kid, but I still waited for that moment all the way through the film.  She was scary enough as a human, but getting overcome by all those wires and microchips is just horrible.  A bit like Tetsuo, the Iron Man.

I love the Final Destination films too.  Really trashy and silly, but gives me the impression that it knows it.  The many deaths are very seldom predictable and I like the red herrings that sometimes crop up.
It is an odd mixture of silliness and horror.  Yes, the plane exploding sticks in my head every time I get on one.  So realistic (I imagine).
Makes you bloody paranoid about all your household appliances afterwards though.

[Dark Sky]

My problem with Final Destination is the scene in the first film where the kid gets killed by the accident in the kitchen. The whole thing just reminded me of the car chase in Naked Gun in which increasingly absurd obstacles kept appearing, and after I'd giggled at that the whole film seemed to be a self-parody. Which is a pity as the plane-exploding-in-the-background bit early on was a genuinely unsettling bit of footage.

Do you mean the teacher?  I think it's meant to be faintly ridiculous...  All throughout the scene there's lots of potential dangerous elements and you're left wondering which one will kill her...turns out it's all of them!  The Final Destination films tend to start with some quite unsettling ideas you always vaguely wonder about (plane explosion, massive roadway pile up, rollercoaster accident, suspension bridge collapsing), but then after that they're just pure fun with lashings of irony.  2 and 5 got the balance spot on, I think.  There's far too many scenes of funerals in 1 and 3.

[Egyptian Feast]

There's far too many scenes of funerals in 1 and 3.

The match cut from the overhead shot of the two malfunctioning sunbeds to the two victims' coffins being lowered into the ground in FD3 is one of the biggest laughs in the series for me, though.

I haven't seen the fifth film yet because the fourth one was such a piece of shit, but I hear it was an improvement.

[chocky909]

He's still scary! Possibly cos Reeve REALLY goes for it - sullenly flicking peanuts at the bar, shunning Lana Lang's kid in the street (the rotter!) and completely losing his shit in the junkyard. If you've not seen it in a while, it's worth another look:

http://youtu.be/sfe5drzybRU

DANGER! ACID!

Did you ever notice that the suit in Superman Returns was closer in design to Bad Superman with the darker reds and blues?

[Cohaagen]

If we're choosing actual Shit Films, as opposed to so-bad-it's-good efforts and camp classics, which I could go on about all day, I nominate The Core and Repo Men.

The Core is a stone-cold classic. Ridiculous premise, boldly-drawn cartoonish characters that function as moving cliches, rampant implausibility, total ignorance of scientific fact at the most basic level, and it contains this corker of a line:

"Best guess, that's all science is: best guess"

Still, I find that I have to watch it every time it pops up on Sky Sci-Fi or Action, which is usually about twice a week.

Repo Men is another bag of balls, but despite the dreadful handicap of Jude Law in the main role it still manages to be hugely entertaining. Alice Braga is a dead ringer for Maria Conchita Alonso, and if you concentrate hard and watch with subtitles you can pretend someone else is playing Law's part. I've said before that this would have been a brilliant Schwarzenegger vehicle 25 years ago with Alonso, Carl Weathers and a few more 80s stalwarts. Add Verhoeven as director and you've got an action classic. As it is, Forrest Whitaker has lost a lot of weight since his big cuddly black teddy bear heyday and is at worst faintly menacing, John Leguizamo is good fun, and Leiv Schrieber is well typecast as the slimy corporate suit.

Oh, add Equilibrium to the list too. My aged mother is obsessed with that fucking thing. A reanimated monster of a film constructed from the component parts and vital organs of other, more original movies, it still bounces along quite well. The "Gun-Kata" sequences are preposterous (isn't the whole point of having guns so that you don't have to fuck around with martial arts and hand-to-hand combat?) but cinematically thrilling, and not even a whispering hack like Sean Pertwee can spoil things. Could have done with more Sean Bean though.

[Dark Sky]

The match cut from the overhead shot of the two malfunctioning sunbeds to the two victims' coffins being lowered into the ground in FD3 is one of the biggest laughs in the series for me, though.

That is great, I fully admit!

[El Unicornio, mang]

The match cut from the overhead shot of the two malfunctioning sunbeds to the two victims' coffins being lowered into the ground in FD3 is one of the biggest laughs in the series for me, though.

I haven't seen the fifth film yet because the fourth one was such a piece of shit, but I hear it was an improvement.

Definitely see the fifth one. The fourth one is easily the worst but this one improves on it by injecting a good amount of humour and some much better (and funnier) death scenes and improved CGI. It's got quite a lot of 3D-based shots which are slightly distracting, mind. Also, an unusual and unexpected twist at the very end....

[Ja'moke]

Stop it, Mean Girls is bloody excellent, and surely one of the most intelligent and witty films of its genre.  Who's said it's shit?!

Preach!

[AsparagusTrevor]

Definitely see the fifth one. The fourth one is easily the worst but this one improves on it by injecting a good amount of humour and some much better (and funnier) death scenes and improved CGI. It's got quite a lot of 3D-based shots which are slightly distracting, mind. Also, an unusual and unexpected twist at the very end....

I saw the fourth film in 3D at the cinema and enjoyed the experience, but seeing the film in 2D on DVD it was quite poor. I regret not seeing the fifth film in 3D at the cinema but at least it was a much better film.

Although it's got a good sense of humour, the fifth one has some really nasty deaths, like the

Spoiler alert

gymnast

[close]

and the

Spoiler alert

hot tar in the premonition

[close]

and of course the

Spoiler alert

laser-eye surgery

[close]

.

[vrailaine]

Does Southland Tales qualify for here? The longer version that was at Cannes certainly made me sway towards it being a big pile of crap, rather than some kind of silly comedy type thing. Probably watched it about 5 times overall.

[thecuriousorange]

The other week I quite enjoyed Duane 'The Rock' Johnson vehicle Walking Tall when it was on TV. I'm not going to try to defend it though.

In fact, that's at least The Rock's third mention in this thread. For the record, I quite liked Southland Tales too.

But before we all get too carried away, I can confirm that The Scorpion King is a steaming pile of wank.