Top Five Bad Movies I Love

5. The Evil Dead

I have a certain amount of loyalty to this movie because its exterior scenes were filmed in my hometown.  Consequently, despite the high cheese factor, when I first saw this film as a kid it was scarier than anything I’d seen before.  These demons and zombies weren’t just lurking in the woods; they were lurking in the distinctly East Tennessean woods identical to the view from my bedroom window.  This first Evil Dead plays it straighter (or tries to) than its sequels, but there’s already some pretty funny stuff going on, mostly thanks to Bruce Campbell.  Sam Raimi, despite some missteps along the way, has made some of the greatest pulp films of the last three decades, and he got off to a strong start here.

4. Barbarella

I don’t understand this movie at all, but it’s really, really pretty to look at (and not just because of Jane Fonda, although she’s certainly not hard on the eyes).  The dialogue varies from deliberately nonsensical to just plain terrible. Barbarella, despite being the protagonist and having her own spaceship, is never really an empowered woman at all.  Yet somehow the psychedelic music, special effects, and production design make it all worthwhile, plus there are great lines like, “An angel doesn’t make love. An angel is love.”

3. Fire and Ice

Ralph Bakshi is a much-maligned artist who I have great respect for, but he’s not at the top of his game with this movie.  I’m not sure if this is set in a Robert E. Howard style imaginary prehistory or another planet entirely, but either way the world is populated entirely by monsters and ridiculously good-looking humans who wear as little as possible.   The animation is almost entirely rotoscoped, which creates a look that’s at once dreamlike and sort of pedestrian.   Bakshi still packs in some great visuals, though, especially in the backgrounds.  Also, the villain is an albino guy who doesn’t wear pants.  Well, actually nobody in this movie wears pants, but the villain wears a shirt, which just accentuates his pantslessness.

2. Flash Gordon

I almost disqualified this movie from the list, on the grounds that it’s an intentional pastiche of cheesy old sci-fi.  I included it because I’m certain the end result was much worse than the filmmakers had planned.  Surely nobody (even Dino De Laurentiis) would deliberately cast two leads as totally lacking in talent and charisma as Sam Jones and Melody Anderson.  As awful as their performances are, everything going on around them makes the movie a ton of fun.  Max von Sydow (can you believe this movie shares a star with The Seventh Seal?) is a fantastic Ming.  Famous madman Brian Blessed elevates every scene he’s in, thanks to his strangely charismatic shouting.  Ornella Muti’s English is a little awkward, but she’s ridiculously gorgeous.  Throw in a delightfully dated soundtrack by Queen and some phenomenal costume design by Danilo Donati, and this is a movie I can watch over and over again.

1. Forbidden Zone

This is what happens when a movie is made by a bunch of people who are incredibly talented but have no idea how to make a movie.  Specifically, it’s The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, a performance art group from the 1970’s comprised of Danny Elfman and a bunch of people you’ve never heard of.  After much membership upheaval, the group evolved into Elfman’s 1980’s new wave band (just called Oingo Boingo), but at this time they were still into early jazz and cabaret music.  Forbidden Zone might be the strangest musical ever made: Children are played by old people, women are played by men, and buildings are played by painted cardboard.  The visual and musical choices are directly influenced by 1930’s Fleischer cartoons, an effect that is only increased by the stylized sets and larger-than-life acting.  The one truly great actor here is Susan Tyrrell, who dominates the screen as Queen Doris of the Sixth Dimension.  Danny Elfman himself makes a cameo as Satan, who performs a variation on “Minnie the Moocher.”  That and other musical numbers are what keep me coming back to this film, despite the total failure of its narrative and humor.