Like many other genres, horror movies run the gamut of quality, from universally praised films to grindhouse and exploitation quickies, usually made for cheap. This list definitely covers the latter, particularly horror movies that are so bad they’re good. Here is a ranking of entertaining, schlocky horror movies.
The 13 Best Horror Movies That Are So Bad They’re Good, Ranked
13. Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Just when you thought that the age of barely cohesive horror flicks with shoestring budgets was gone as filmmaking has gone progressively digital, something like Birdemic comes along and reminds you that laughably bad horror movies are never going away. Largely self-financed by filmmaker James Nguyen for approximately $10,000, 2010’s Birdemic: Shock and Terror has a town overwhelmed by murderous birds. Due to climate change, the birds are also capable of spitting acidic phlegm and can explode upon impact despite all scientific explanations saying otherwise.
Given how cheap the visual effects are alone, Birdemic is one of those movies that you can scarcely believe exists let alone got an eventual release. This, of course, doesn’t include the hilariously ridiculous premise and wooden acting, or the fact that the birds themselves don’t appear until nearly 50 minutes into the 93-minute runtime. Playing out like a bad and overlong practical joke, Birdemic somehow went on to spawn two sequels almost as a running gag.
12. The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires
After Christopher Lee left his longtime role as Dracula with 1973’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the British film studio Hammer Film Productions was in need of a new direction for its vampire franchise. Cashing in on the international interest in kung fu movies coming out of Hong Kong at the time, they produced 1974’s The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, which featured a new actor playing Dracula as the venerable count traveled to 19th century China. This leads Doctor Abraham Van Helsing to team up with a troupe of martial artists to destroy the vampire and his minions.
A martial arts/vampire blend produced on a relatively low budget in the mid-70s is about as grindhouse as Hammer ever got, and it shows. While Lee’s presence as Dracula is acutely missed, you’re really not coming to this movie for the charismatic vampire as much as the idea of watching martial artists fighting the undead. The action sequences are adequately staged while the ludicrous premise definitely doesn’t make for the worst idea for a horror movie.
11. The Stuff
With rampant corporate malfeasance and unchecked consumerism really picking up in the ‘80s, the 1985 satirical horror movie The Stuff tries to provide its own cosmic commentary on those elements. When quarry workers in Georgia discover a white, viscous substance emerging from the ground, they find it’s edible, delicious, and addictive. As the substance is mass-distributed and grows in popularity, a boy learns the disturbing, true nature of it and tries to warn the world, only to be punished for it.
The social commentary aspect of The Stuff is completely lost in its execution, making for an oddly paced horror film that feels less like satire and more like a genuine attempt at a cheap scary movie. The Stuff is presented like an inverse of The Blob – if The Blob involved glorified marshmallow fluff.
10. Plan 9 from Outer Space
The granddaddy of low-budget, campy classics, Plan 9 from Outer Space is the defining movie by the king of ‘50s cinematic schlock, filmmaker Ed Wood. The movie has extraterrestrials raise undead armies around Earth to either conquer the planet or get it to heed their warning to stop the production of doomsday weapons. Plan 9 from Outer Space received a regional release in 1958 before moving to television, where it eventually became a cult classic for its shoddy execution.
With its shoestring budget evidence, including boom mics’ shadows seen in the final film to its plot hold-filled story, Plan 9 from Outer Space is a wall-to-wall disaster. Wood would even resort to using stock footage of Dracula actor Bela Lugosi filmed for other projects to include in Plan 9 after Lugosi’s death, with Wood’s family chiropractor standing in for Lugosi’s character while covering his face with a cape. One of those movies that has to be seen to be believed, Plan 9 from Outer Space quickly grew in infamy as the ultimate ‘50s B-movie.
9. Troll 2
Just because monsters are vegetarians doesn’t mean humans are safe and that distinction oddly serves as the narrative crux behind 1990’s Troll 2. Presumably a sequel to 1986’s Troll, though the two movies have no direct connections, Troll 2 follows a family that goes on a homestay vacation in a rural town that is menaced by goblins. Though the goblins only eat plants, they use dark magic to transform hapless humans into the plants that they consume.
From a troubled production and numerous amateur actors, Troll 2 has the features of a low-budget movie thrown together and crudely assembled into a barely cohesive film. Of note, one of the character’s poorly delivered reaction to witnessing the goblins eating a girl before eating him has become a popular internet meme. Beyond this scene, Troll 2 is just as campy and hilariously bad, which is all the more head-scratching when one considers the movie’s monsters are goblins and not trolls at all, as the title would suggest.
8. Hard Rock Zombies
If you ever wanted a zombie rock musical, the 1985 comedy horror movie Hard Rock Zombies somehow accomplishes this task, if only in its intended premise. The movie follows an aspiring rock band that is murdered by Nazis hiding out in a remote California town who are planning to take over the United States. Rising from the grave as zombies hungry for revenge, the band sets their sights on their killers before continuing their plans to impress a local record label executive.
Any movie that features Nazis being gruesomely killed by zombies is going to be considered for a recommendation and Hard Rock Zombies definitely applies. The rock’n’roll element is a campy novelty, and the movie appears to acknowledge that, though it doesn’t add much to the film overall. For a legitimately good rocking zombie movie, there’s Return of the Living Dead, but Hard Rock Zombies has a schlocky appeal to it.
7. Night of the Demons
The 1988 horror flick Night of the Demons has a solid premise right out the gate, following a group of high schoolers who throw a party in a funeral parlor on Halloween night. Deciding to hold a seance, the group accidentally unleashes a demonic entity in the crematorium that begins to possess the teenagers and cause them to turn on each other. As the body count steadily grows, the victims rise as menacing zombies with their own demonic possessors.
Night of the Demons is a hodge-podge of different horror tropes, from demonic possession to slasher and zombie elements, as the filmmakers throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. And, of course, you can’t have a cheap ‘80s horror movie without all that gratuitous sex and violence, and Night of the Demons certainly delivers on that score. A horror-cliche smorgasbord, there is a lot to like in Night of the Demons, even if the execution is a bit shaky.
6. Jason X
By 2001, iconic slasher Jason Voorhees had seemingly done it all after taking Manhattan and going to Hell in his presumed final movie. The horror franchise was revived with a decidedly more sci-fi premise with Jason X, which catapulted the masked killer over 400 years into the future. After being preserved in cryogenic stasis for over four centuries, Jason is recovered and revived by archaeological students in their space station before upgrading himself to become even deadlier than ever.
The idea of putting Jason Voorhees in space is as campy a creative decision as the Friday the 13th series ever made, which is really saying something, given its bizarre history. Still, if you can swallow the ridiculous premise, Jason X is a lot of early 2000s fun and features some of the most entertaining kills in the franchise. After this, Jason would literally be brought back down to Earth and to his usual, relatively grounded fare, but Jason X remains an underrated entry in the series.
5. Night of the Lepus
As far as overgrown creatures that terrorize small towns go, few would’ve normally expected rabbits to make the shortlist as potential monsters. 1972’s Night of the Lepus subverts that expectation, with its antagonists being genetically altered rabbits who have grown to gigantic size and developed an insatiable taste for human flesh. With entire towns across the Southwest at risk of being overrun, a group of scientists and ranchers team up to wipe out the ravenous rabbits.
With its patently ridiculous premise and poor special effects, Night of the Lepus lives down to expectations as a low-budget horror flick that’s completely laughable and mercifully short. Buoying the film are a number of reliable character actors, including Star Trek’s DeForest Kelley as a college president caught up in the hairy hijinks. Unintentionally campy, including comedically hollow dialogue underscoring its quality, Night of the Lepus is an entertaining late-night movie to pass about an hour and a half.
4. Leprechaun in the Hood
The Leprechaun horror movie series has always been a notoriously bad one despite helping launch the career of Jennifer Aniston and enduring since 1993. By 2000, the movies began to lean into the franchise’s infamy, which is especially apparent in that year’s installment Leprechaun in the Hood. When a pair of wannabe rappers accidentally unleash an ancient leprechaun in Los Angeles, they find themselves pursued by the monster and the record label producer who kept the creature imprisoned for decades.
From the leprechaun becoming immersed in hip-hop culture to the introduction of magical clover joints, Leprechaun in the Hood knows exactly what kind of movie it is. The leprechaun employs fly girls to track down his quarry and even raps at a certain point in what is one of the worst moments ever committed to film. If, for whatever reason, you wanted to see a leprechaun horror movie bringing in Ice-T and Coolio, Leprechaun in the Hood has you covered.
3. The Wicker Man
Not to be confused with the masterful 1973 folk horror original film, 2006’s remake of The Wicker Man stars Nicolas Cage as police officer Edward Malus. After learning that his ex-girlfriend’s young daughter has been seemingly kidnapped by a pagan cult on a remote Pacific Northwestern island, Edward goes to investigate and bring her home. However, Edward quickly finds the cult to be more sinister than he anticipated and more than ready for his arrival and meddling in their affairs.
Throughout Cage’s extensive filmography, there are few as meme-friendly as his remake of The Wicker Man. From Cage trying to sneak around the cult’s island in a large costume to being tortured by bees, the 2006 Wicker Man is full of outlandish set pieces that defy logic even when presented in context. Definitely not superior to the 1973 movie, the remake certainly goes on its own path and is all intentionally funnier for it.
2. Maximum Overdrive
The sole feature directorial effort of best-selling horror author Stephen King, 1986’s Maximum Overdrive adapts King’s own 1973 short story “Trucks.” After a strange comet passes Earth, machines suddenly become violently hostile towards humanity, ranging from everything from vending machines to trucks. A small group of people band together to defend themselves from the murderous machines, using a surprisingly robust arsenal of weapons to take on the fleet of vehicles and other lethal devices.
Right from its opening scenes and very premise, Maximum Overdrive immediately becomes a camp classic, including a memorable scene of King playing a man insulted by a malevolent ATM. With its ham-fisted acting and an overall shoddy production, King never returned to the director’s chair after his experiences making Maximum Overdrive. A cinematic trainwreck, Maximum Overdrive tries to deliver high-octane tension but comes off as a goofy bit of filmmaking.
1. TerrorVision
In a lot of ways, TerrorVision feels like the evil cousin to suburban coming-of-age fantasy movies like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and The Monster Squad, which makes it perfect for the ‘80s. After an extraterrestrial creature is beamed into their home through a television satellite, a young boy named Sherman finds his life completely upended. As Sherman tries to warn anyone who will listen to him about the monster, the creature is able to transport itself through televisions in the area. This rampage ends up attracting the attention of Medusa, a late-night television host in the style of Elvira who quickly becomes drawn into the sci-fi horror antics.
TerrorVision has all the major unsavory hallmarks of ‘80s cinema, including gross-out gags, gratuitous gore, and superfluous sexual antics. The movie really feels like an ‘80s horror guilty pleasure, reveling in its own campy premise and creature feature self-awareness to deliver a no-frills adventure. Plus, any movie that has its monster develop a soft spot for heavy metal deserves a spot on this list.
And those are the 13 best horror movies that are so bad they’re good.
Published: Sep 6, 2024 09:06 am