These so-bad-they're-great horror movies are perfect for gorehounds and comedy fans.
Halloween is arguably the greatest of all holidays. First off, as an adult, Halloween is the perfect excuse to marathon-watch the scariest, goriest, most pants-soiling horror movies available. Secondly, adults can buy their own candy, and none of it will be an eraser, gum or three dirty pennies.
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But what if you don't like being scared, and would rather watch a violent, gory scream-fest that makes you laugh? Well, you might be a crazy serial killer, in which case, we can't help you. But if that's not the case, check out our list of 13 awful horror movies that are so wonderfully terrible you can't help but love them.
13. Jason X
The legendary Friday The 13th franchise follows -- for the most part -- an unstoppable killer named Jason who uses a machete to murder sexy teens while wearing a hockey mask. In Jason X, our favorite silent killer finds himself kidnapped by the government and cryogenically frozen. Then, 445 years later, some young space travelers take his body on board their spaceship and wake him up. Because everyone is stupid in a horror movie.
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Despite being bad, it's incredibly fun. You can feel that director James Isaac is just having a great time by telling the most over-the-top story he possibly can while still delivering on the violence and blood people expect. It's this wink-and-a-nod style that saves the film from being an unintelligible mess, and makes it one of the more creative installments in the franchise.
12. Leprechaun 5: In The Hood
The Leprechaun franchise was already sending their little green psycho up to the stars in Leprechaun 4: In Space. So what do the creators of Leprechaun think is even scarier than the void of the universe? The hood, apparently.
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In Leprechaun 5: In The Hood, the main heroes are two rappers named Postmaster P and Stray Bullet. At one point, they get the Leprechaun to smoke weed laced with clovers, and also the Leprechaun himself raps about being evil. The movie is like a hip-hop Mad Libs story filled in lazy lunatics.
Leprechaun 5 is full of weird, confusing racism, as is the entire Leprechaun series for that matter. But if you want a delicious insanity and stupidity sandwich, you can't ask for anything better.
11. The Gingerdead Man
Serial killer Millard Findlemeyer is executed for his crimes. His ashes are given to his mother, and she mixes them into gingerbread spice mix, and then gives it to a local bakery. By the way, Millard's mother is a witch. The bakery uses the concoction (and adds some accidental employee blood, because it is a terrible, disgusting bakery) to make a large gingerbread man that comes to life and begins killing people.
It's ridiculous in every sense of the word, but there is one thing that actually makes the movie rather creepy. The voice of The Gingerdead Man is Gary Busey. No one is saying that, in real life, Gary Busey himself is a giant, humanoid gingerbread creature with a hunger for human flesh. But no one is saying he isn't, either.
And the sequels are worth checking out, if only for their titles: Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion Of The Crust and Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.
10. Killer Klowns From Outer Space
This is, hands down, one of the funniest horror movies you'll ever see. It follows evil aliens who look like clowns. They land on Earth in their spaceship that looks like a circus tent and proceed to kidnap people by shooting them with ray guns that somehow cocoon them in super sticky cotton candy. It's honestly an absurd and enjoyable film.
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Unless, that is, you have even the slightest fear of clowns. Then it is an inescapable, hellish nightmare that will, without fail, leave you absolutely catatonic. American Horror Story: Freak Show's Twisty has nothing on Jojo the Klownzillla.
That is going to stick with you for the rest of your life.
9. Birdemic: Shock And Terror
Birdemic has been called a lot of things. Director James Nguyen says it's a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Others say it's an incomprehensible travesty of film making. In reality, it's both. The film follows the burgeoning, loving relationship between Rod and Nathalie. Meanwhile, birds are attacking everyone all the time. This seems to have no real impact on Rod and Nathalie, who are too busy being in love and ignoring the "h" that's just hanging out in the middle of her name for no reason. Eventually, the bird epidemic gets so bad they have to flee.
It's one of those movies you have to see to believe. Nothing is good about it. Not one thing. And that is the best thing about it. The acting feels like you're watching a student play put on by people with recent head injuries and the birds look like poorly-animated clip-art gifs. As for the story? Well, "story" might be too strong a word. But you pop this in with some friends (and some beers) and you simply won't stop laughing.
8. Silent Night Deadly Night 2
Imagine you're a movie producer in 1987. Now imagine you have no money, but you need to get a movie made anyway. Well, if you were the producer of Silent Night Deadly Night 2, you'd give your director a check for $0 and tell him to just re-edit the footage from the first movie and pretend it's a sequel. That is, apparently, an actual thing that happened.
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Director Lee Harry refused to do that. So instead he shot as much as he could on a shoe-string budget, and then just played clips from the first movie as flashbacks - and it's glorious. As near as is possible to tell, the story is about a kid who is a spree-shooter and also wants to murder an abusive nun. Also, it's funny somehow. Unlike a number of other movies on this list, the comedy in this one is not intentional.
7. Don't Be Scared
Did you know rapper Master P made a horror movie called Don't Be Scared? No, of course you didn't because it might be the worst movie ever made, and that's including the several movies on this list already that are vying for that title.
Here are the highlights:
It's shot like a X-rated movie from the late '80s, but nowhere near as well-made.
A 40-year old Master P plays a college freshman.
The killer is a masked man in a black robe, but there's also a ghost. However the ghost has nothing to do with the killings or the story. She's just there for no discernible reason.
All of the extras keep glancing nervously at the camera all the time.
You can't hear anything over the hip-hop soundtrack because no one ever mixed the sound levels while editing the movie.
A girl is killed by being locked in a shower. That's it. Just locked in the shower. A regular shower, and somehow she dies from it. Like, pretty quickly.
And if all of that sounds amazing, the whole thing is also less than 45 minutes long.
6. The Wicker Man
Nicolas Cage plays an insane detective in this remake of the 1973 horror classic. Actually, there is no way to explain The Wicker Man that will be more amazing than just watching this brilliant video of all the scenes where Nick Cage acts crazy. Warning! Spoilers. But really, it doesn't matter.
The magnificence of The Wicker Man is truly encapsulated in that scene where Nick Cage dresses like a bear and punches a random nun in the face.
5. Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf
Iconic horror director Joe Dante made a wonderfully fun and scary werewolf film in 1981 with The Howling. Dante had nothing to do with this epic disaster of a sequel released in 1985, and though terrible, it might actually be more fun than the original.
The film is a jumbled confusing mess of a story that largely serves as a way to show off badly shot and poorly acted semi-graphic sex scenes between actors who seemed like they didn't want to be there. Also, there's a werewolf. And, for reasons beyond anyone's understanding, beloved actor Christopher Lee is there. You know, Saruman from The Lord Of The Rings? The '80s were weird.
4. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
SPOILERS: It's about a killer bed. Admittedly, you probably guessed that part from the title. But can you guess any of the circumstances around the creation of a sentient, murderous bed? It was possessed by the spirit of a demon, obviously.
Then, by "the bed that eats," the movie actually shows that it randomly decides to ingest people, somehow, and turn them into skeletons.
Comedian Patton Oswalt has an amazing stand-up routine about Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, in which he explains the working thought process that lead to the creation of this film, and the deep-seated conviction it must have taken to finish it. Check it out, but be careful as it's possibly NSFW due to profane language. Much like all the movies on this list.
3. Jaws: The Revenge
In this fourth Jaws film, Police Chief Brody (played by Roy Scheider from Jaws and Jaws 2) has died. His wife (still played by Lorraine Gary, because a job is a job) thinks a shark is targeting members of her family after her son is devoured by one. So she flees to see her older son in the Bahamas, and the shark follows her there. It follows her to the Bahamas. That's what this movie is about.
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It was so bad Lorraine Gary just straight up quit acting after it came out. Somehow, Oscar-winner Michael Caine stars in this mess. And the saddest part? The first Oscar he won was for Hannah And Her Sisters in 1987, and he had to miss the Academy Awards ceremony because he was shooting Jaws: The Revenge.
2. Troll 2
No list of so-bad-they're-great movies would be complete without mentioning Troll 2. There is even a documentary about how entertainingly bad it is called Best Worst Movie. If you've never seen it, this should be a top priority.
What makes Troll 2 so bad? Just everything. It's called Troll 2, but it features no trolls. It has vegetarian goblins who try to turn people into plants to eat them. That's their scheme. It kind of feels like cheating, really. Also, the name of the town in Nilbog, as in "Goblin" spelled backwards.
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The acting is terrible, the writing is astonishingly awful, the makeup and special effects are almost impossibly bad - and yet at no point are you ever bored, and as soon as it's over, you'll watch it again immediately.
1. The Abominable Dr. Phibes
This is one of the all-time greatest, craziest movies ever made. Horror legend Vincent Price stars as Dr. Anton Phibes. He and his wife get in a terrible car accident that leaves him disfigured and his wife dead. Driven to insanity by grief, he blames his wife's doctors for her death, believing them to have been incompetent in their care for her. So he murders them one by one in revenge.
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Actually, that sounds pretty good, right? At least compared to some of the plots on this list? Or all of them? But then it goes down the rabbit hole quickly. How does Dr. Phibes decide to kill everyone? With ludicrously complex murder schemes based on the 10 Biblical plagues of Egypt. Duh.
To explain what that entails would give away the brilliance that is The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but you owe it to yourself to check this out -- and all 12 others -- this Halloween.
If you can't get enough horror movie goodness, check out the video below for ET's look at Hollywood's Top 5 Scream Queens!
For more horror movie news and commentary, you can follow Zach Seemayer on Twitter @ZachSeemayer
