LogFAQs > #978877777

Manos: The Hands of Fate
Troll 2
The Room
Foodfight!

Manos has been my favorite bad movie since I first saw it 15 years ago. It was made by a fertilizer salesman on a bet with an established screenwriter, that he could create a feature-length film from scratch with no prior experience, and it shows - every facet of the movie is a haphazard mess. All the dialogue was dubbed in post because they used a hand-crank camera that could record 30 seconds of soundless footage at a time, little-to-no thought was put into the direction/cinematography/lighting, and the editing/storytelling is very disjointed and nonsensical at times. Still, I find it endearing that the "filmmaker" did actually win the bet, and the performances by the actors playing the villains give the movie a lot of charm. Clearly the guy playing 'The Master' has some actual acting chops (maybe the only one in the movie), and Torgo is maybe the best-worst villain ever, with a musical theme consisting of 4 notes on a loop. Classic moments include a cop "investigating" a disturbance by walking 5 feet into the background then returning, and the wife claiming "it's getting dark" in broad daylight. Also made for one of the best MST3K episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yAvPMoHrcE

I think it'd be interesting to see it remade as a "serious, good" movie that's still a little self-aware and pays homage to the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W59ZF2AbboE

Troll 2 and The Room compete for most quotable bad movie, as well as most consistently funny. Like Torgo, the main villain Creedence Leonore Gielgud is incredibly bizarre and unintentionally hilarious. The popcorn scene..............defies reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NThrk6C-pKE

Many classic lines such as "You can't piss on hospitality!", "Nilbog.....it's GOBLIN spelled BACKWARDS!", "Eggs.....PHUH!", and "They're eating her......and then they're going to eat ME.......oh my GODDDDDDDDDDD." Also the use of Joshua's grandpa as a spiritual guide is delightfully strange. I urge anyone who's seen it to check out the documentary "Best Worst Movie," it's a fascinating retrospective, catching up with many of the actors 20 years later.

I feel like everyone knows The Room, and rightly so, so not much to add there.

I went with the 3D-animated Foodfight! as my final and most recent choice after some brainstorming. Released in 2012, it's one of the most notorious examples of a misappropriated film budget. They somehow got an A-list voice cast, who recorded their lines about a decade before the film came out, then very suspiciously "lost" all their "good" animated sequences, and had to throw together something that looks like it was made by a middle-schooler in Microsoft 3D Movie Maker. Mr. Clipboard (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) is a sight to behold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GM4ZsIjBl4&pp=ygURZm9vZGZpZ2h0IGJyYW5kIHg%3D