c/bad-movie-night

I finally watched 'The Room' with a group and the energy was wild

My buddy in Austin had a viewing party last weekend, and hearing everyone yell 'Oh hi Mark!' at the screen was half the fun. The plot makes zero sense, the acting is like a high school play, but we were laughing the whole time. It's the kind of movie you can't really watch alone to get the full, weird joy of it. What's your top pick for a movie that's only good with a crowd?

Warning: I thought I could find a bad movie in 10 minutes last night

Ended up scrolling through Tubi for over an hour because every terrible-looking poster was a gem. How do you even pick one when they're all so gloriously awful?

My friend Jake insisted we watch 'The Room' at his apartment last month

He said it was the best worst movie ever made, and he was right. The weird flower shop scenes and the terrible football throwing had us laughing for two hours straight. Has anyone else seen a movie that's so bad it becomes a great group watch?

Appreciation post: The 1998 'Lost in Space' movie is a perfect disaster

I rewatched it last week and the sheer amount of CGI monkeys and Gary Oldman's accent make it a riot. What's your go-to movie that's so bad it loops back to being a blast?

Hot take: My 'bad movie night' group in Boise only works if we start with the worst film first, not the best one.

We tried to save the absolute worst for last, but after a 3-hour slog through 'The Last Vampire on Earth', a 2007 direct-to-DVD mess, everyone was too tired and annoyed to enjoy the slightly better bad movie we had lined up, so now we always open with the biggest disaster to get the groans and laughs out early.

Remember when 'so bad it's good' meant a VHS tape and a group of friends?

We used to just grab whatever looked terrible at the video store, like 'Troll 2', and laugh together. Now my friends try to curate 'ironic' streams alone, and it loses all the messy, shared fun. What's the last movie you watched with a group that had everyone howling at the screen?

My buddy insisted we watch 'The Garbage Pail Kids Movie' and then got weirdly defensive about the plot.

He spent the whole runtime in my living room trying to explain the 'deep lore' of the Stinky Rich character, claiming it was a critique of 80s consumerism.

Rant: I had to pick between 'The Room' and 'Birdemic' for our group's first bad movie night.

My friends in Austin were all set for a truly terrible movie, and I was in charge of picking the first one. I went with 'Birdemic' because the clip of the flying birds looked so cheap and funny. It was a hit, but the CGI gave us all a headache after about an hour. What's a better bad movie that's fun but won't make your eyes hurt?

Rant: I tried to watch 'The Room' with my roommate and it took us 3 hours to get through it

We started it around 8 PM thinking it was a normal movie. We had to pause it every 5 minutes because we were laughing so hard at the weird lines and bad acting. My roommate kept asking 'what is even happening?' during the flower shop scene. We finally finished after 11 PM because we kept rewinding to see the worst parts again. What's another movie that's so bad it makes a simple watch turn into a whole night?

PSA: My bad movie night group almost broke up over a film called 'Shark Exorcist'

We were at my buddy's apartment in Tempe, Arizona, about six months ago, and we decided to watch this thing. The box said 'The devil has a new favorite animal.' It was maybe 70 minutes long and the shark was clearly a rubber toy on a string. We usually laugh and yell at the screen, but this was different. It was so boring and badly made that it just killed the vibe completely. Nobody was having fun, we were just staring in confused silence. After that, we made a new rule: any movie we pick has to have at least one review online calling it 'so bad it's good.' We can't just grab the weirdest looking DVD at the thrift store anymore. Has anyone else had a movie that was just too bad to be any fun at all?

My friend's bad movie night almost got ruined by a scratched DVD

We were at my buddy's place in Sacramento last weekend, ready to watch this old monster movie called 'Reptilicus'... the DVD was from a library sale and looked pretty rough. About 20 minutes in, right as the cheap rubber monster was supposed to show up, the screen froze and started making this awful digital noise. We tried cleaning the disc with a t-shirt, but it just skipped ahead to a totally different scene. We ended up having to guess the plot for the whole middle part, making up our own dialogue for the characters. It somehow made the bad acting and effects even funnier. Has anyone else had a movie night saved by a technical mess-up?

Rant: My buddy insisted we watch 'The Room' and I thought it sounded awful

We watched it in his Chicago apartment last Friday and I've never laughed so hard at a movie that was trying to be serious. What's your go-to 'so bad it's good' movie for a group?

Showerthought: my sister's boyfriend said 'The Room' is a drama and we should watch it seriously

The Sharknado marathon last weekend broke my brain

We watched all six movies back to back, and I'm genuinely split on whether that's the peak of bad movie enjoyment or just self-inflicted punishment. The third one has a scene where a shark gets chainsawed in half inside the Washington Monument. Where do you stand on the 'so bad it's a masterpiece' scale for that franchise?

Showerthought: watching 'The Room' with my serious film friend versus with my goofy cousin

Honestly, the first time was just awkward silence, but the second time we made a drinking game out of every 'oh hi Mark' and it was a blast. What's your go-to movie for turning a bad night into a fun one?

Just dropped $15 on a VHS of 'Theodore Rex' and it was worth every penny

Found it at a thrift store in Phoenix, it's a buddy cop movie with Whoopi Goldberg and a dinosaur puppet. The effects are so cheap you can see the zipper on the suit, and the plot makes zero sense. Has anyone else seen a movie that's this bad but still weirdly fun to watch?

My sister said she only watches bad movies with friends now

We were talking last night and she told me, "I don't want to waste a good movie if I'm just going to be talking over it." It hit me that for her, the fun is the shared experience of making fun of it, not the movie itself. She said their best night was watching a movie from 2003 called 'The Room' and laughing the whole time. So, is the movie even the point anymore, or is it just the excuse to hang out?

Showerthought: The Sharknado movies got worse on purpose and it ruined the fun

I watched the first Sharknado again last week, then the sixth one from 2018, and the difference is night and day. The first one was a dumb, charming mess where they fought sharks with chainsaws. It felt like a real try at a B-movie. By the time they got to 'The Last Sharknado: It's About Time', it was just a parade of cameos and self-aware jokes. They stopped trying to make a bad movie and started trying to make a 'so bad it's good' movie, which is a totally different thing. The magic was in the first one's honest stupidity, not the later ones winking at the camera. It went from a fun bad movie night pick to a chore in about 5 years. Has anyone else felt a series lost its charm once it knew it was a joke?

Can we talk about the 'so bad it's good' movie box sets you find at discount stores?

I spent about $15 on a 20-movie DVD pack of sci-fi films from a bargain bin. Most were terrible, but one called 'Cyborg Cop 2' became our group's favorite bad movie night pick. Has anyone else found a hidden gem in one of those cheap sets?

Warning: 'The Room' is a whole different movie after you've seen it three times

Honestly, the first viewing is just shock, but by the third time in six months, you're yelling the lines with your friends. What's a movie that gets funnier the more you hate it?

I saw a VHS copy of 'The Room' at a thrift store in Boise for $2 and the cover was just Tommy Wiseau's face looking confused.

It's now the centerpiece of our bad movie nights because the tape itself has a weird green tint that makes every football scene look like it's on Mars.

Just found out the director of 'The Room' had a real job as a street performer

I was reading about Tommy Wiseau's background before he made that movie. He actually worked as a street performer in San Francisco for a while, doing mime and stuff. It kind of explains the weird physical comedy in the film. Has anyone else stumbled on a fact that makes a famously bad movie make a tiny bit more sense?

Pro tip: I bought a 20 dollar projector screen for my garage and it made our bad movie nights way better.

The picture is still terrible, but now we can actually see the awful CGI in all its glory on a big, proper surface instead of a painted wall, so what other cheap upgrades have actually worked for you guys?

Looking for movies with truly baffling special effects

Our group got a lot of mileage out of 'The Giant Claw' from 1957, specifically the scene where the monster is clearly a puppet on a string. The problem is we've burned through most of the obvious ones like 'Plan 9 from Outer Space.' What's a movie where the effects are so cheap they wrap back around to being charming?