The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time

by Phil Hall

These are the films that inspire wonder-you are left wondering how seemingly intelligent people could gather together and spend money to create such bizarre productions. From A-list atrocities to Grade-Z zaniness, 100 of the most wonderfully warped anti-classics have been gathered together for this celebration of cinematic kookiness. Relive the jaw-dropping spectacle of John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Halle Berry as Catwoman, Jack Palance as Fidel Castro, and Jerry Lewis as a Gore Vidal-inspired extra-terrestrial. Sing along with a naked Anthony Newley, tap your toes to a "Pennsylvania Polka" dance number in the middle of an unauthorized remake of A Streetcar Named Desire, watch a suicidal Elizabeth Taylor run amok in Rome and appreciate Coleridge's poetry with topless women. Hook up with Edward D. Wood Jr., Phil Tucker, Tommy Wiseau and their peers in the so-bad-they're-good genre, and marvel at how cinema royalty including Stanley Kubrick, George Cukor, Michelangelo Antonioni and Clint Eastwood could conceive celluloid debacles of an unprecedented scale. When it comes to shock and awe, nothing compares to The 100 Greatest Bad Movies of All Time.

258 pages, Paperback

First published July 4, 2013

Reviews

[Brad Shellady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Informative without trying to be above the material. Written a very accessible manner but does not become wordy or leaden I. The approach.
Above all, you can tell the author loves film, and that's the real criteria

[Jessica Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good: There's a nice variety of movies on here and he does make an effort of listing some less obvious ones alongside movies like The Room.

Bad: The reviews themselves are nothing special and he makes the mistake of quoting Roger Ebert a couple of times, which just made me think of better bad movie reviews.

Weird: I'll never get over how misguided Manos: The Hands of Fate was from beginning to end. I didn't realize that it was filmed in 30-second increments on a hand-cranked camera so the movie was not only terrible but a bitch to actually film.

Final: There are more interesting bad movie guides out there (Ebert had three and MST3K's Mike Nelson had one just to name people the author mentions) so unless you're some sort of bad movie completionist this is probably a skip.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

A delight for any movie buff, this is an alphabetical arrangement of 100 films from the so-bad-they're-good category (Plan 9 From Outer Space) to the it-never-should-have-been-made category (Linda Lovelace's pre-Deep Throat venture into bestiality). There are feature films, knock-offs, dud career-enders, and a 1925 version of Wizard of Oz previously unknown to me. Personally, I think he should have swapped out Disney's technically innovative The Black Cauldron with Drew Barrymore's Doppleganger, but any list like this is subjective.

I talked with the author on my show Outsight Radio Hours.

[SHUiZMZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Be on the lookout for my review of Phil Hall's book at shuizmz.com in the near future.