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With a rapidly changing library of titles, hosting your own movie marathon on Netflix is pretty easy. But instead of cherry-picking timeless classics or old favorites to enjoy, why not pay attention to those unfamiliar titles that you constantly find yourself weeding through and have yourself a Bad Movie Marathon?
We sifted through the awful, the absurd, and just plain WTF offerings of Netflix and managed to whittle a pretty extensive list down to 25 semi-digestible entries. Representing all genres and countless questionable career moves, here are some truly abysmal titles whose creators will never have to worry about pesky things like counting money or Oscar statuette placement.
1) Airplane II: The Sequel
The Internet may be sharply divided on a lot of issues, but a visit to almost any online community can agree that the original Airplane! is an iconic comedy that, despite its 1980 release date, is timeless. When director Ken Finkleman attempted to recreate the magic two years later in a futuristic setting, rehashing identical jokes and reuniting most of the original film's cast, it didn't work out so well. Still, you can enjoy one of William Shatner’s earliest comedic performances and be on the lookout for cameo appearances by then-unknowns Pat Sajak and George Wendt.
2) Bad Johnson
Usually if you tell someone that you’re going to see an independent film, that connotes that you’re watching a movie of quality. But in the case of Bad Johnson, it simply means that no studio was crazy enough to throw money at a movie about a man who learns how to be an adult after his penis detaches from his body, comes to life in human form, and tries to steal his girlfriend. (The penis is, of course, a total dick. Get it?) Starring Twilight’s Cam Gigandet as a “charming womanizer,” Bad Johnson rarely even rises to the level of being interestingly bad. Cam Gigandet’s penis is the least of his problems. It’s the movie that can’t get it up.
3) Big Top Pee-wee
After winning over an entire generation with the highly acclaimed Pee-wee's Big Adventure and the Saturday morning variety series Pee-wee's Playhouse, Pee-wee Herman tried a second foray into cinema. Unfortunately, without the direction of Tim Burton and the writing talents of Phil Hartman, Big Top Pee-wee just turned out to be an uninteresting mess. Pee-wee as a farmer? A circus that could travel through space? Such aspects make the Rube Goldberg-style breakfast machine from Pee-wee's Big Adventure seem believable. Keep an eye out for a cameo from a very young Dustin Diamond, who went on to play Screech in Saved By the Bell.
4) Can’t Stop the Music
Starring Bruce Jenner and Steve Guttenberg, Can’t Stop the Music deserves a spot on this list for being historically bad. After a double feature of Xanadu and this film, created as a vehicle for the Village People, John J.B. Wilson was inspired to create an awards show honoring the worst in cinema each year. Thus, the Razzies were born, where Can’t Stop the Music was named the group’s first winner for Worst Picture. While a critically reviled box office bomb, the movie’s soundtrack at least proved to be a hit. In addition, Baskin Robbins found a memorable way to cash in on the Village People craze: To promote the movie, the ice cream chain offered a flavor named “Can’t Stop the Nuts.”
5) Down Periscope
Kelsey Grammer decided that being a household name on three different TV series (Cheers, its spin-off series Frasier, and The Simpsons) wasn't enough. Thus, he turned his attention to films, trying his luck with the painfully awful Down Periscope. Costarring Lauren Holly, Rob Schneider, and William H. Macy, the (very liberally categorized) "comedy" stars Grammer as a veteran Navy captain who must lead a crew of dimwits in a naval war game. Grammer would later return to film work in ensemble casts: In 2014 alone, he has appeared in X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Expendables 3, and Transformers: Age of Extinction.
6) Forces of Nature
After striking box office gold and critical acclaim with Good Will Hunting, Hollywood wanted as much of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as possible. While Damon went on to become a respected actor, Affleck largely became a joke. Forces of Nature, a vapid romantic comedy that pairs Affleck with Sandra Bullock, is just one of Affleck's many mistakes that ultimately led to him deciding to turn his focus to directing.
7) Gigli
Another of Ben Affleck’s many entries on this list, Gigli is the notorious box office turkey that helped bring the Bennifer portmanteau into the world. But unlike most turkeys, this one features a notorious crime against America’s favorite holiday bird. In the film, Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are brought together by narrative convenience and a shared interest in Lopez’s lesbianism, which will, of course, be jettisoned by the end of the movie, when she meets the the right man. (Ah, Hollywood.) When Lopez eventually lets Affleck know she’s ready for heterosexuality, she flops down on a hotel bed in front of him, spreads her legs, and says, “Gobble gobble.” Good luck unseeing that on Thanksgiving.
8) The Hillz
Paris Hilton may not be America’s sorority girl next door anymore, but she’s still the queen of the IMDb Bottom 100. Currently, Hilton holds three slots on the list, with mentions for Nine Lives, Pledge This!, and The Hottie & the Nottie, the latter currently the fourth-lowest-rated movie ever. Time has been slightly kinder to the The Hillz, which ranked as high as No. 15 before eventually being bumped off the list altogether. Like Nottie, The Hillz operates under the bizarre delusion that every man on the planet should want to passionately pursue Paris Hilton, even if it leads to their eventual death. Considering the film’s romantic hero is a white Beverly Hills gangster whose associates are named Seb and Duff, perhaps it’s for the best.
9) inAPPropriate Comedy
On the short list of worst movies ever made, inAPPropriate Comedy brings together an unlikely cast of Lindsay Lohan, Rob Schneider, Michelle Rodriguez, Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, and former ShamWow spokesman Vince Offer for an omnibus comedy of skits loosely tied together by an offensive iPhone app. The result is about as hilarious as Funny Games, a movie that mistakes being mindblowingly racist for having any sort of basic comic perspective. In one recurring skit, called “The Amazing Racist,” comedian Ari Shaffir goes Jackass on people of color by attempting to lure them into a boat back to Africa. If the apocalypse does destroy the world, let’s hope it takes all copies of this movie first.
10) An Invisible Sign
Jessica Alba has never been known for her thespic abilities. To date, her most memorable performance was in Sin City, a film that mostly required her to take off her clothes and shake her lady parts in slow motion. Indeed, in An Invisible Sign, Alba proves the biggest hurdle between herself and success is pointing her face into the camera and acting. Director Marilyn Agrelo casts Alba as a 20-year-old genius math teacher with OCD, but the movie’s idea of intelligence is making her into a stunted Manic Pixie Dream Girl with Pippi Longstocking braids. It’s like a Saturday Night Live skit, except that no one in the movie is in on the joke.
11) Jersey Girl
Kevin Smith spent the 1990s earning the respect of geeks, indie film buffs, and the Internet in general with movies like Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. Suffering an apparent midlife crisis after Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, he attempted to cross over into mainstream (read: "uninspired") cinema with the romantic comedy Jersey Girl. Starring his frequent lead actor Ben Affleck, the film follows his character's forays through the perils of single parenthood following the sudden death of his wife (Jennifer Lopez). Not even cameo appearances by Jason Lee, Matt Damon, and Will Smith could save this melodramatic dreck, and Smith went back to the well two years later with Clerks II.
12) Love Wedding Marriage
Directed by Dermot Mulroney, Love Wedding Marriage has the dubious distinction of scoring a rare 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, one of two Mandy Moore (along with Swinging With the Finkels) movies to earn the honor. In Love Wedding Marriage, Moore plays an alleged Berkeley graduate and relationship counselor with all the acting skill of an energetic high school cheerleader, and she gets no help from onscreen husband Kellan Lutz, who feels less like a romantic partner than her gay best friend. The film, co-starring Jane Seymour and James Brolin as Moore’s wackily estranged parents, wants to be a commentary on modern commitment, but as the New York Times memorably put it, it feels more like “punishment for a crime you can’t remember committing.”
13) The Master of Disguise
Poor Dana Carvey. After the success of Wayne's World, Mike Myers rose to international stardom with roles in the Austin Powers and Shrek franchises, leaving Carvey to accept supporting roles in lame, forgettable films like Little Nicky and Trapped in Paradise. He attempted to gain back his leading man status by assuming several roles in The Master of Disguise, but obviously things didn't quite work out and he became the most ridiculous SNL alum since Rob Schneider.
14) Mindhunters
For as astoundingly inept and ridiculous as it is, it almost feels wrong to put Renny Harlin’s Mindhunters on a worst-of list. Can a movie that’s as pleasurably awful as Mindhunters really be bad? That’s for you to decide. The Chicago Tribune’s Allison Benedikt predicted it would become the Showgirls of psycho-thrillers, and surely Mindhunters’ dialogue has the chops. In one memorable scene from Showgirls, two characters bond over eating kibble. In Mindhunters, a character hypothesizes about the best way to kill someone: “I guess we found his one weakness: bullets.”
15) Movie 43
Movie 43 worked harder to win Worst Picture than nearly any movie in history. Long a passion project of the Farrelly brothers, Movie 43 was a decade in the making, rejected by nearly every studio in Hollywood before the Farrellys got funding; the film then had to be shot over a period of several years to accommodate its A-list cast (including Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and Naomi Watts). The result is the anti-Boyhood, bringing together one of the most talented casts in history for a sketch comedy that barely rises to the level of trash. Actually, as a movie that milks laughs out of Hugh Jackman’s ball-chin and Chris Pratt defecating on Anna Faris’ chest, Movie 43 would be lucky to be mentioned in the same sentence as trash.
16) Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger
We didn't even know that there was a Nativity 1, but something tells us that never seeing the original will not in any way impede our viewing pleasure of its sequel. What will impede said viewing pleasure will be seeing one of Doctor Who’s most respected doctors, David Tennant, trying to lead a group of annoying, one-dimensional children on a musical adventure to an important regional competition.
17) Only God Forgives
Ryan Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn teamed up to make Drive. Surely their follow-up, set in the world of Bangkok’s underground boxing scene, would live up to that film’s high standards? However, Only God Forgives is as horrible as Drive was great, one of the worst excuses for an arthouse movie in recent years. Gosling’s usual Brandoisms come off here as shockingly inert and often unintentionally hilarious, playing a mute sadist with a taste for ultraviolence. Meanwhile, Kristin Scott Thomas breaks off entire pieces of scenery and swallows them whole as his mother, an Oedipal figure sure to be a favorite Halloween costume among hipster drag queens everywhere.
18) Passion
In describing the movies Bucky Larson and Ed, film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term “shitty miracle” to describe a film in which “everything goes awry.” Rabin writes, “It’s not a matter of one sorry element dragging the rest down; it’s every terrible component amplifying the awfulness of everything else.” Of recent years, Brian dePalma’s Passion is one of the most likely candidates, a remake of the French corporate psychosexual thriller Love Crime that should come with its own laugh track. Starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace, it’s so shockingly, mesmerisingly bad it doesn’t appear to take place on Earth. The film’s cold exteriors are meant to suggest Germany, but it feels more like that ice planet in Interstellar.
19) Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead
Well before Asylum Films came on the scene, there was renowned B-movie mastermind Lloyd Kaufman and his crop of Troma films. Chock-full of ridiculous premises and gross-out humor, no bad movie list would be complete without at least one entry from the collection. While a good number of Kaufman's Troma library is available on Netflix, including the Toxic Avenger series and Tromeo and Juliet,Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is the clear winner. A chicken farm built over an old Indian burial ground? Check. Not one, but two horrible puns in the film's title? Double check.
20) Reefer Madness
Back in 1936, anti-marijuana activists released a propaganda film that supposedly showed the dangers of marijuana. Painting marijuana dealers and their teenage customers in the same light as heroin aficionados, Reefer Madness not-so-subtly suggests that weed can cause even casual users to mow down pedestrians, attempt rape, and frame others for cold-blooded murder. The obviously ineffective film became a cult sensation and is now a top pick on the "so bad it's good" scale of cinema. It's best watched while high.
21) Sharknado
As its subtitle says, "Enough said!" The film that helped put Asylum Films on the map and inspired a (somehow even worse [and not in that good way]) sequel, Sharknado pits shark-filled funnel clouds against a who's-who of washed-up actors. Other Asylum films currently available on Netflix include Mega Shark Vs. Mecha Shark and Age of Dinosaurs, just in case you're in a marathon mood.
22) Spice World
In the late 1990s, you couldn't turn on a radio without hearing "Wannabe," "2 Become 1," or any other of the Spice Girls' many mindless hit singles. Geri, Mel B, and the rest of the British pop group attempted to capitalize on their popularity with the truly awful cult classic Spice World, which follows the group through a series of lame dream sequences and implausible plot twists as they make their way to a concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. Enjoy some fun appearances by people who should have known better, including Elton John and Stephen Fry, but don't expect anything deeper, story-wise, than the music video for "Wannabe."
23) Swept Away
Some movies are so bad you just have to run out and see them immediately. Showgirls, for instance, deserves to be watched and loved as much as possible. Swept Away, however, should be stranded on a desert island with the rest of Madonna’s acting career. The singer has always had difficulty resembling a carbon-based life form, whether onscreen or off, but never has imitating basic human emotion proven more difficult than in Swept Away; this is ironic considering that Madonna is asked to play an arrogant socialite with an attitude problem, which shouldn’t be all that hard for her.
24) A Talking Cat!?!
A Talking Cat!?! (punctuation courtesy of the movie) is The Room of family entertainment. It not only fails in the ways we expect bad movies to come up short (poor acting, stilted dialogue) but also somehow finds unprecedented ways to be truly incompetent. Filmed in director David deCoteau’s house (known best for softcore gay horror movies), the film features the worst animal voiceover in history. Eric Roberts, who sounds slightly drunk, seems to have recorded the audio for the titular feline via walkie talkie. Even better: His character doesn’t really talk so much as give limited fortune cookie advice to the humans around him while deCoteau gives him a creepy Microsoft Paint mouth to talk through. In some scenes, you can actually see the cat being guided by a laser pointer.
25) Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor
If there’s one movie on this list that’s wholeheartedly recommended as nearly essential viewing, it’s TPTCOAMC, both a problematic Hail Mary and a camp classic waiting to be discovered. In Temptation, we are treated to Kim Kardashian spouting off lines like, “That’s not make up, that’s make down,” and Vanessa Williams sporting a fake French accent that needs to be heard to believed. Come for Temptation’s Old Testament views on marriage (in which a snake-handler matriarch is the unlikely voice of reason); stay for Brandy Norwood’s cameo as Sad HIV Girl. How do you know she’s sad and has HIV? Because she only has one lamp in her apartment. In Tyler Perry’s world, HIV patients can’t afford overhead lighting.
Screengrab via Netflix
