The 10 most unintentionally hilarious movies ever made
Many performers wholeheartedly agree with the belief comedy is a lot harder to pull off successfully than drama, which makes it ironic that so many movies have aimed for the latter and ended up landing squarely on the former instead.
Bad films are a staple part of cinema; they always have been, and they always will be, but it takes something truly special and transcendental for a filmmaker to mount what’s supposed to be an entirely serious production, only for things to go so badly they’ve ended up making something hilarious instead.
It’s an effect that’s impossible to manufacture, and while some have tried to play the revisionist history card and claim it was the intention all along, nobody’s buying it. Unintentional comedy is such a highly specific thing that it can only happen organically under the right circumstances, and more often than not, it comes with its own set of benefits.
Terrible movies quickly get forgotten, and forgettable movies fade from memory even faster, but the ones made with the greatest will in the world that turn out to be comparable – or even superior – to a deliberate comedy have a way of securing long-lasting cult status.
10 unintentionally hilarious movies:
10. The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute, 2006)
Realistically, Neil LaBute’s brain-frying remake of The Wicker Man should probably be higher up on this list, but Nicolas Cage has repeatedly claimed that the comedy was the intention from the very beginning.
However, if that was truly the case, then it begs the question as to why a major studio like Warner Bros would funnel $40million into the production knowing that instead of remaking a timeless folk horror classic, it was an excuse for two filmmaking mavericks to take the piss and play things for laughs.
Regardless, the bees are more than enough to see The Wicker Man lauded as unintentional comedic gold, never mind Cage punching somebody full-on in the face while dressed in a bear costume. Whether it was deliberate or not remains up for debate, but nobody can argue the results were hilarious.
9. Miami Connection (Y.K. Kim, 1987)
It was very clear that director Y.K. Kim had never been made before when Miami Connection was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, with the first-time filmmaker lacking anything that even remotely resembled technical ability, creativity, or imagination.
He borrowed money, took out loans, spent his entire life savings, and mortgaged his taekwondo school to try his hand at the art of cinema, where he did at least manage to create an enduring cult favourite. As a work of art, Miami Connection is a truly awful thing, but such straight-faced sincerity nonetheless gave it new life as an accidental comedy.
Kim was quite literally told “it was trash” when he tried to sell it to various distributors, and while that’s entirely true, there’s something endearing about Miami Connection. The script is woeful, the acting is horrendous, and the unironic seriousness is misguided to a fault, but those are the exact reasons why it was deservedly reappraised as a comedy.
8. On Deadly Ground (Steven Seagal, 1994)
The exact moment Steven Seagal bought so much into his own hype that he disappeared up his own arse and came out on the other end caked in the stench of shit that would follow him for the rest of his career, On Deadly Ground was a vanity project gone wildly awry.
As the leading man, producer, and director, Seagal sought to push environmentalism to the forefront of a martial arts-heavy action flick, with his po-faced seriousness made even funnier knowing he’s playing a firefighter called Forrest Taft who falls so hard for a woman he renounces his evil ways and rebels against the greedy oil tycoon he’d been working for.
Michael Caine hams it up as the villain, Seagal always feels as though he’s gunning – or gurning, in this case – for an Oscar that’ll never come, and it’s clear he had his fingerprints all over the script after one character refers to his hero as “the ultimate fucking nightmare.” On Deadly Ground sucks, and it sucks hard, but it plays remarkably well as a deadpan comic vehicle for the ponytailed protagonist.
7. Pass Thru (Neil Breen, 2016)
Neil Breen has become the unwitting poster child for bargain basement cinema, with the one-man filmmaking army continuously oblivious to the fact the only reason people watch any of his movies is because they’re so staggeringly, jaw-droppingly shoddy.
Pass Thru might just be the best of the bunch, with writer, director, producer, leading man, editor, cinematographer, musical director, production designer, production manager, casting director, set designer, wardrobe supervisor, location manager, and makeup artist Breen playing an artificial intelligence sent from the future to embark on what’s effectively genocide.
Humans who harm other humans must be eradicated, and Breen is the only one who can do it. The greenscreens alone are enough to split viewers at the sides, and that’s to say nothing of the actual words that come out of the mouths of the characters, who give performances so wooden it feels like they’ve never even spoken aloud before.
6. Project: Kill (William Girdler, 1976)
Based entirely on the title and the fact it stars Leslie Nielsen in the lead role, it’s reasonable for many people to assume that Project: Kill is a parody along the lines of Airplane! and The Naked Gun that finds the actor using his penchant for slapstick to poke fun at the action genre.
The only issue is that isn’t the case in the slightest, even if the prospect of Nielsen playing a government assassin who spirals out of control after realising he’s been secretly programmed by the powers that be to take out targets for reasons other than national security certainly sounds like it.
As an action movie, Project: Kill is the pits. On the other hand, if it’s watched as part of a Nielsen triple-bill alongside the aforementioned comedy classics, then it can be enjoyed through a completely unintentional but fitting lens. It’s every bit as funny as the other two, even if it wasn’t supposed to be.
5. Wild Mountain Thyme (John Patrick Shanley, 2020)
Mirth might be expected of any film that bills itself as a rom-com, but the only laughs generated by Wild Mountain Thyme had nothing to do with the ones writer and director John Patrick Shanley expected to hear from audiences when he adapted his own novel Outside Mullingar for the screen.
Christopher Walken’s atrocious attempt at an Irish accent is merely one offender, with the entire principal cast comprised solely of stereotypes ripped right from the big book of cliches, while there’s a mind-blowing third act twist that’s supposed to be revelatory but ends up being nothing except uproarious.
Emily Blunt spends the whole movie pursuing Jamie Dornan as the object of her affection, but he can’t commit to a relationship because of who he really is on the inside. What does that mean? Obviously, it means he identifies as a honeybee and has spent his life believing himself to be one, which is a hard thing for budding love to overcome. No, seriously, that’s the twist.
4. Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995)
Poor Elizabeth Berkley’s career never recovered from the fiasco that was Paul Verhoeven‘s Showgirls, which gained plenty of notoriety in the build-up to its release for being an X-rated, exotic, and titillating drama set in the lascivious world of the titular profession.
On the plus side, after it tanked at the box office and won seven Golden Raspberry Awards, including ‘Worst Picture’, ‘Worst Director’, and ‘Worst Actress’, it took on a long-lasting lease of second life as a tongue-in-cheek camp classic that’s the very definition of ‘so good it’s actually entertaining’.
That wasn’t the intention of anybody involved, of course, but the worst and most misjudged motion pictures have a funny habit of becoming cult classics for the very same reasons that torpedoed them the first time around. It’s supposed to be a drama, but as a comedy, it’s exponentially better.
3. The Swarm (Irwin Allen, 1978)
Michael Caine has happily branded The Swarm as one of the worst movies he’s ever been part of during a career that spanned more than 70 years, and it’s impossible to argue with the two-time Oscar-winning legend, because it really is that bad.
Director Irwin Allen was a key figure in the 1970s disaster boom, but deciding to make one about killer bees was a boneheaded call. As a serious film, it’s almost incomprehensibly tragic, but what makes it so unintentionally hilarious and, therefore, completely watchable as such is the sheer array of legendary stars who signed up and took such unmitigated crap so seriously.
Beyond Caine, the ensemble features Golden Globe-winning The Graduate star Katharine Ross, fellow Globe winner Richard Widmark, as well as Oscar winners Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, José Ferrer, Patty Duke, and Henry Fonda. That’s a prestige drama cast and a Z-grade monster mash, which is why The Swarm deserves to be experienced first-hand.
2. The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan, 2008)
Mark Wahlberg talking to plants does not sound like the basis for an environmentally-conscious sci-fi thriller designed to be treated with the utmost seriousness. It does sound like the basis for a phenomenal comedy, though, which is exactly what The Happening is.
The star has admitted he doesn’t regard the preposterous tale of fauna gone rogue as one of his career highlights, but that’s only because he hasn’t become one of the many who’ve accepted The Happening for what it truly is: M. Night Shyamalan’s first real stab at making viewers burst out laughing repeatedly.
That may not have been his intention considering his filmography has rarely been treated as anything other than being of the utmost importance, but it’s sure as shit the one and only way to squeeze a single shred of enjoyment from a dour, dire, and borderline career-killing folly.
1. The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003)
The undisputed cinematic king of unintentional comedy is Tommy Wiseau, a man so mysterious that nobody has any idea who he really is, where he came from, how he earned his money, or what on earth possessed him to spend so much of it on The Room.
Presumably, his self-funded passion project stemmed from the ironclad confidence and self-belief that he was one of the greatest minds in cinema history who’d yet to be given the opportunity to unleash themselves, which he took it upon himself to do.
The Room is a very, very, very bad movie, and yet it constantly plays to packed houses after evolving into not only a cult classic of the highest order but an immersive slice of experiential cinema that only works to the fullest extent when everyone else is on the joke. It’s impressive longevity, not that it was never Wiseau’s intention.
