Nine Terrific Bad Movies

One Million Years BC (1966) Having no dialog other than some grunts and semi-words, this movie is really bad, but 27 year old Rachel Welch running from dinosaurs, ferocious beasts, and beastly men, climbing over rocks and through crevices wearing a little piece of fur is not to be missed. The creature features in this classic – now that's entertainment. This film is a pleasure to watch.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) This film is seriously, truly BAD. I mean just awful, "I don't like hearin' noises, especially when there ain't sposed to be any." As if made for Mystery Science Theater, it has classic Bela Legosi chasing the lady in the white nightgown through the cemetery. The aliens send a message which includes, “You didn't actually think you were the only inhabitants of the universe? How could any race be so stupid?” Also, at the Pentagon, “We have reports of saucers flying so low the exhaust knocked people to the ground.”

At one point the alien shouts at the human, “You're stupid! Stupid! STUPID!!”

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987) is just butt awful bad. It's terrible, but virtually naked voluptuous babes expose copious amounts of eye candy as they run around with big ray guns in a fierce battle with fully clothed men and ugly mechanical robots. North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms condemned the film as "indecent" on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1992. Uh, Jesse, how do you know? Watch it for the plot.

Bride of the Monster (1955) Bela Legosi plays the standard mad scientist out to conquer the world by using radioactivity to create an army of monsters that will do his bidding. He keeps an octopus in a large tank beside his laboratory, and as the hungry beast occasionally devours passers by, both police and a cute newspaper reporter start investigating. The lines, the acting, and the scenes are consistently bad enough to provoke almost continuous laughter.

J-Men Forever (1979). This film became popular on late night television's Night Flight and is not a film, per se, but a collection of stock footage assembled from hundreds of films. The evil disk jockey known as The Lightning Bug seeks to rule the world by brainwashing it with marijuana and rock and roll music. Fortunately, our J-Men heroes respond to the threat to humanity and save the day. Almost non-stop laughter.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) This hysterical film has jokes embedded inside of jokes saturating its reeking badness. Prepare to laugh until it hurts. Tomatoes go on the rampage until it is discovered that the song “Puberty Love” played at sufficient volume destroys all of the tomatoes. To defeat the one killer tomato protecting itself with ear muffins, our hero gets sufficiently close to the beast holding up the song's equally fatal sheet music. How do people think of stuff like this?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Not much need for comment here. If you think this was actually a good movie, uh, yes, good, but good as bad. If you haven't seen it, you are missing a lot. My daughter did the whole routine at the theater. I watched at home.

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) features the memorable scene where the bad teenager "skeletonizes" an innocent doggie and then rips the flesh off the bones of a woman in a swimming pool. What adds to the film's electricity is the teenager perspective where teens both know and matter more than the old folks. The need to destroy a giant lobster and the dramatic music are a hoot.

Billy Jack (1971) Some might argue that this is not a bad movie, and it really is worth seeing. Still, it's bad, but the alternative school and the exercises and discourse that occurs there provides a stirring if not longing for that brief period in history, entirely unlike today, where people actually did ask questions and listen when others replied.