Calling something the worst movie ever made sounds like an insult, but in film culture, it’s practically a badge of honor. Some of cinema’s most beloved titles earned that reputation precisely because they failed so spectacularly and so sincerely that audiences couldn’t look away. There’s a real difference between a film that’s lazily bad and one that’s catastrophically, gloriously bad.
The seven films below aren’t just poorly reviewed. They’re historically significant in their awfulness, debated by critics, loved by cult audiences, and in several cases, more famous than movies that actually worked. Each one has a legitimate claim to the title.
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959): The Original Worst Film
Plan 9 from Outer Space played on television in relative obscurity from 1961 until 1980, when authors Harry Medved and Michael Medved dubbed it the “worst film ever made” in their book The Golden Turkey Awards. That label turned a forgotten B-movie into a cultural institution overnight. The book invited readers to nominate their pick for the most inept motion picture in the history of cinema, and more than 3,000 ballots were cast. Plan 9 won the vote by a landslide.
The film is truly a low-budget endeavour, with gravestones in the cemetery visibly made from two-dimensional cardboard blocks, and flying saucers complete with wires helping them levitate left openly visible on screen. The one true star, famed horror actor Bela Lugosi, is not even really in the movie. He appears only from stock footage the director Ed Wood had filmed for another project. It was only a minor hindrance to Wood that Lugosi passed away before production began, and a stand-in who bears little resemblance to Lugosi plays the same part in other scenes, using a cape to hide his face. Despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, the film holds a genuine 66% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes today.
The Room (2003): The Citizen Kane of Bad Movies
The Room is a 2003 American independent romantic drama written, directed, and produced by Tommy Wiseau, who also stars in the film alongside Juliette Danielle and Greg Sestero. Set in San Francisco, it centers on a melodramatic love triangle between amiable banker Johnny, his deceptive fiancée Lisa, and his conflicted best friend Mark. A number of publications have labeled The Room as one of the worst films ever made, one even describing it as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.”
In its initial 2003 box office run, The Room grossed just $1,900 on a $6 million budget. The budget itself raises eyebrows. The Room cost $6 million, a frankly ridiculous amount for something that looks as bad as it does, with much of it attributed to its high cast and crew turnover and Wiseau’s ignorance about serving as an effective producer, alongside an infamous billboard that cost upwards of $300,000. Decades later, it’s still playing at midnight screenings around the world, with audiences throwing plastic spoons at the screen.
Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966): A Fertilizer Salesman’s Nightmare
The movie was insurance and fertilizer salesman Harold P. Warren’s shoddy attempt at making a horror film almost entirely by himself, a task he only undertook to settle a bet with professional screenwriter Stirling Silliphant. The resulting film made Plan 9 look polished. Manos opens with nine minutes of monotonous driving scenes reportedly intended to be overlaid with opening credits that were never added, and includes dialogue spoken while all characters are facing away from the camera, along with a character complaining about it getting dark while the sun is brightly shining.
The film holds a rare 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Entertainment Weekly says the movie is “widely regarded as, quite simply, the worst movie ever made.” The movie gained legendary status after Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured it, and the film’s complete ineptitude makes it perfect for group viewing and commentary. Despite being nearly unwatchable on its own merits, Manos has found new life as a shared experience among bad movie enthusiasts.
Troll 2 (1990): No Trolls. Just Goblins. And Chaos.
The Italian-American horror film Troll 2 is not, in fact, a sequel to Troll. There aren’t even any trolls in it. That’s all one needs to know to get an idea of how weird an experience it is. Its story follows a vacationing family who discovers that the entire town they’re visiting is inhabited by murderous goblins disguised as humans, who plan to eat them. The acting is notoriously bad, with lines delivered in a stilted, unnatural fashion, and special effects are equally unimpressive, with costumes that look like hastily made Halloween outfits.
Troll 2, for all its many flaws, is at least a beloved bad movie. It scratches a similar itch to Birdemic: Shock and Terror, but might well be even funnier in its desperate pursuit to scare viewers. Aside from a wild ending, nothing in Troll 2 comes even remotely close to proving genuinely frightening, but the comedic value is undeniable. The film’s reputation has grown over the years, earning a documentary titled Best Worst Movie. Fans celebrate its ineptitude, gathering for screenings where they relish in the absurdity and quote the film’s most memorable lines.
Gigli (2003): Hollywood’s Most Expensive Misfire of Love
2003’s Gigli is a spectacular and frustrating mess that truly deserves to be called the worst romantic film ever made. Starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez at the height of their celebrity power couple phase, they compete to see who can give the blandest performance in a story about a low-level mob enforcer and hit woman as they partake in a kidnapping scheme. The crime comedy earned little more than ten percent of its $54 million production costs and was savaged by critics.
The movie’s real-life romantic subplot between its stars created a media frenzy that overshadowed the film itself. Gigli represents the ultimate celebrity couple disaster, where Hollywood’s fascination with star power completely overwhelmed any consideration of story or character development. From the god-awful writing to the underwhelming plot and both leads’ disinterested acting, Gigli truly is a film that gets worse and worse with age. Along with its laughable box office performance and multiple Razzie nominations, this truly is a legendary disaster.
Catwoman (2004): How to Waste an Oscar Winner
Pitof’s Catwoman represents everything wrong with early 2000s superhero movies, featuring Halle Berry in a performance so bad it earned her a Razzie Award, which she graciously accepted in person. That acceptance speech, where Berry showed up in person to collect the award, is itself now more famous than anything in the actual film. There are a myriad of reasons why Catwoman is generally considered one of the worst superhero movies of all time, and its ugly aesthetics are one of the biggest. Most of those unpleasant looks come from shameful CGI, but the shoddy camera certainly doesn’t help, filled with awkward zooms to the point of nausea and clearly influenced by the hyperactivity of Pitof’s background in music videos.
Despite its superhero origins, the film strays far from its source material, resulting in a plot that’s both confusing and clichéd. Berry’s performance is hindered by a poorly written script and laughable CGI, particularly during action sequences. The film’s disjointed narrative and unrealistic dialogue contribute to its legacy as a cinematic misstep. Over the years, it has become an example of what not to do in superhero filmmaking, often cited in discussions of the genre’s low points.
Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010): CGI Horror at Its Most Unhinged
Birdemic: Shock and Terror usually gets brought up whenever the topic of bad movies from the last couple of decades comes up, and with very good reason. It drops well below what one might consider low budget, having some of the least convincing special effects in cinema history, used to bring to life a story about swarms of killer birds terrorizing people in a small American town. The special effects are matched in incompetence by everything else that went into Birdemic, because it’s not well-acted, it’s bizarrely written, its pacing is all over the place, and visually, it is entirely flat from start to finish.
Vietnamese director James Nguyen wanted to create a riveting drama and horror movie when he made the first installment of the trilogy. Since the film is on this list, it did not accomplish that. The acting and editing are terrible, but Birdemic also has another aspect that causes its own particular Shock and Terror: CGI. Still, there’s something almost admirable about a film this committed to its own vision, however broken that vision may be. The ineptness is mesmerizing, meaning this is one film that, while without redeeming elements in the traditional sense, remains utterly worth watching.
