The 10 worst-rated movies actually worth watching
Nobody – hopefully, at least – sets out to make a bad movie on purpose, but there can often be plenty of enjoyment derived from a disastrous film, albeit for the wrong reasons.
Even if it wasn’t the intention of the filmmakers, certain cinematic catastrophes have managed to find an audience as cult classics, unintentional comedies, or compelling case studies for just how badly things can go awry.
It’s impossible to justifiably defend a bad movie and claim that it’s actually an unheralded masterpiece, but it’s nonetheless entirely possible to say with a completely straight face that, for a variety of reasons, a dismal dud demands to be seen and needs to be watched.
There aren’t many people out there who’d reasonably call any of the following ten titles anything less than abysmal, but every single one of them has a bespoke set of merits that offer a convincing case to be viewed, even if once is probably enough.
10 worst-rated movies worth watching:
10. Howard the Duck (Willard Huyck, 1986)
Neatly surmised by star Lea Thompson’s daughter Zoey Deutch as “the film in which my mother makes love to a duck,” what makes Howard the Duck a must-see is that despite being terrible, it made no small amount of history.
If someone had told a cinemagoer in the summer of 1986 that Marvel Comics would be the biggest and most lucrative brand in Hollywood history after witnessing the company’s first feature-length theatrical adaptation first-hand, there’s a very high chance some serious questions would be asked.
Beyond that, it was produced by George Lucas and broke new ground for visual effects by featuring the first-ever digital wire removal in cinema history. It’s awful beyond a shadow of a doubt, but in its own way, Howard the Duck is a perversely entertaining trailblazer. Oh, and somebody has sex with an anthropomorphised waterfowl.
9. Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983)
Saturday Night Fever was a cultural phenomenon that spawned one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time, turned John Travolta into an Academy Award-nominated superstar, became a seminal part of the disco era, and recouped its budget 80 times over at the box office.
With that in mind, expectations were high for the sequel, especially when Sylvester Stallone was drafted in to direct the year after he cemented himself as an A-list titan by starring and directing in Rocky III and bringing Rambo to the screen for the first time in First Blood.
That’s a mouth-watering combination, creating unreasonable expectations. One of the worst-reviewed sequels that’s ever been made, Staying Alive was a complete and utter laughing stock. Watching it back-to-back with Saturday Night Fever would make for a mind-blowing double-feature that shows just how difficult it is to stuff lightning back into the bottle. It sucks, for sure, but fascinatingly so.
8. Season of the Witch (Dominic Sena, 2011)
There’s not a thing about Season of the Witch that doesn’t sound entertaining, at least until all of its various fantasy elements were put into the blender and then dumped on-screen into a beige sludge of nothingness.
A 13th-century buddy movie of sorts played with the utmost solemnity; it’s got Nicolas Cage in a silly wig playing a knight who teams up with Ron Perlman to escort a woman accused of witchcraft to an abbey where she’ll be destroyed before all sorts of supernatural shenanigans break loose.
The witch is played by future Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Queen Elizabeth Claire Foy; Christopher Lee is there too as the majestically-named Cardinal D’Ambroise, with Stephen Graham also swinging by. Watch it with the brain firmly set to ‘off’, pretend it was intentionally made to be so laughable, and there’s no shortage of fun to be had.
7. Gotti (Kevin Connolly, 2018)
Even the people who made Gotti knew it was terrible and decided that leveraging the crime biopic‘s notorious reputation was the only viable option left on the table, deciding to lean into its relentless panning to drum up interest.
That came after the production was accused of using bots to manufacture false reviews showering it in praise, leaving them without much of a leg to stand on when it transpired Gotti was every bit as irredeemably bad as everyone had been led to believe.
A six-time Golden Raspberry Award nominee, it plays as a parody of the gangster biopic made by people who didn’t realise they were making a parody at all. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is down to personal preference, but it’s car crash cinema at its most unintentionally intoxicating either way.
6. Sir Billi (Sascha Hartmann, 2012)
Sean Connery may have retired from acting following his experience working on 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but his final credit was such a long time coming that it wasn’t released until almost a decade after he’d called it quits.
It’s worth tracking down for any self-respecting fan of Connery’s work, though, based entirely on how dreadful it turned out. The animation is a decade behind the times, the humour is bizarrely crude and sexist for a family film, and it even makes a point of poking fun at its star’s iconic stint as James Bond.
A weird combination for a story following an elderly veterinarian with a penchant for skateboarding who sets out to save the last beaver in Scotland, which conspired to sign off on a legendary career by taking an utter pasting and earning less than £16,000 at the box office in the United Kingdom against a £15 million budget. And no, that’s not a typo.
5. Pinocchio (Roberto Benigni, 2002)
Pinocchio can be interpreted as a sinister tale at the best of times, with Academy Award winner Roberto Benigni taking things to an even more uncomfortable level when he brought his passion project to screens.
The tale of a puppet who longs to become a real boy has been seen on-screen countless times over, but only once has it starred an actor – who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay – that was right on the cusp of turning 50 years old when it released.
Quite why Benigni decided he was the ideal candidate to play the title role remains entirely up for debate, and it makes for a jarring experience quite unlike anything that exists in cinema. Whether that’s a positive or a negative is entirely down to mileage, but it’s so peculiar it almost begs to be witnessed first-hand.
4. Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997)
Revisiting Batman & Robin is made an altogether more curious – and, by extension, enchanting – prospect simply by the position it ended up occupying in the ongoing timeline of the character’s big-screen adventures.
Released eight years after Tim Burton’s Batman and eight years before Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, it’s placed squarely in between two greats of the superhero genre as a startling example of just how badly things can go wrong without the right director steering the ship.
Watching it through a 21st-century lens adds another accidental layer of unexpected poignancy, because it’s hard to imagine in this environmentally-conscious age there’s ever going to be another blockbuster revolving around a trust fund billionaire painted as the hero while he battles a grieving husband who wants the opposite of global warming, and a murdered botanist who espouses the values of a plant-based existence.
3. Maximum Overdrive (Stephen King, 1986)
Adaptations of Stephen King‘s literary back catalogue have been a regular fixture of film and television for decades, but only one of them was lucky enough to be directed by the man himself.
Technically, that’s probably not the right word, considering King actively disowned Maximum Overdrive from the second it landed in cinemas, confessed to being out of his mind on drugs when he was making it, and has since repeatedly apologised to star Emilio Estevez for convincing him it would be good.
Still, as the only King-directed King movie in existence with a soundtrack from AC/DC that finds vehicles coming to life and seeking revenge on their human oppressors after being subjected to radiation from a comet, it’s certainly one of a kind.
2. Jack and Jill (Dennis Dugan, 2011)
If it wasn’t for the presence of Al Pacino, then it goes without saying there would be absolutely nothing whatsoever to recommend about the risible Jack and Jill.
After all, this is a comedy that set records for all the wrong reasons when it secured the most nominations for any movie in the history of the Golden Raspberry Awards with 12, winning ten of them. To illustrate that point, the only trophies it missed out on were the ones where Jack and Jill had more than one nominee.
And yet, Pacino knows this film is an abomination. He gets it; he’s good enough and experienced enough to know that the Adam Sandler vehicle was wretched. Despite that, he gives it his all in an inexplicably committed supporting role, where he plays an even shoutier version of himself than usual. If anything, the Dunkaccino commercial alone is worth watching.
1. Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000)
John Travolta was so convinced his love letter to Scientology was destined for greatness that he initially courted Quentin Tarantino to direct, which is every bit as preposterous as it sounds.
In the end, a very compelling case can be made that the actor’s post-Pulp Fiction resurgence ended right then and there. So abysmal on every level it makes perfect sense production company Franchise Pictures went bust after being forced into a mammoth pay-out for artificially inflating the budget to squeeze more money out of its financial partners, Battlefield Earth is cataclysmic.
That doesn’t mean it should actively be ignored, though, when there’s an unseemly level of enjoyment to be derived from watching what’s basically a snuff film of Travolta’s career. As bad as it may be – and it is very, very bad – it’s the sort of movie that’s so head-scratchingly woeful it’s almost impossible to look away from.
