The 5 Most Hilarious, Grotesque, Shoddily Crafted, Absurd Schlock Films of All Time!

1) Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky - Quite simply, the Citizen Kane of Schlock cinema. Nothing can, or ever will, surpass it. See what can go down when prisons, "like car parks," become franchised commercial ventures. Track it down, or else chained blob of fat "Zorro" will, "beat you up, turn you into mince meat and put you in a pie!"

2) The Ice Cream Man - Marvel at Clint Howard in his most memorable role to date! Special points for head puppets, numerous superfluous references to "sharp blades," and the uncanny physical transformation one child actor had to undergo in order to play the role of overweight Tuna (hint: he stuffed a pillow down his shirt in most shots).

3) Fudoh: The Next Generation - Directed by Takashi Miike. That's summary enough for those familiar with his body of work. Plus, it has a twist that puts The Crying Game to utter shame!

4) Battlefield: Earth - An American Comedy Classic. Highlights include seeing humanity forget all traces of religion and culture except for the phrase "piece of cake," an overly excessive use of dutch angles, fighter jets in mint condition after centuries of inactivity, and a lesson in psychlo-speak. The alien menace took over our planet in less than twenty minutes... and we blew up their's in less than thirty seconds...

5) Crippled Masters - The more handicapped you become, the more unstoppable you are! Must be seen to be believed!

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Good Bad Movies are my fine wine. I'm talking about the kind of crap you can watch over and over again, because with each subsequent viewing something else will come to your attention, whether it's footsteps being out of synch or a waterfall going in reverse, that fortifies its position as being a truly deep bad film, one that actually has layers of badness to it. Here's a call out to any and all chewers (especially Film Guru/Critic Nick Nunziata ) to share their thoughts and educate us all on what the must-sees of schlock are.

The list above is DEFINITELY incomplete, so hopefully in the coming days I'll add a few more groupings of five (I'm already kicking myself for not including Saturn 3 in this post).

Plan 9 From Outerspace falls into this category without argument, and ranks high up the list for no other reason than Thor Johnson, stealing the show from even MIA Bella Legosi. Gotta love the convoluted analogy describing how the "Solarbenite" works...

Anyhow, If you want to see a truly awful space opera, much more deserving of the "worst film" title, check out Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 . The biggest mindfuck you could ever give yourself is in trying to find a sound reason, or any reason, for how this could be directed by the same guy who helmed Charade, Damn Yankees! and Singin' in the Rain. But sure enough, he's one of the culprits for this mess and his career suffered appropriately after release, along with Kirk Douglas' and Farrah Fawcett's. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Kirk's stroke was a direct response to having to act in this piece of garbage, and certain scenes gave me the impression he performed them post-stroke. Harvey Keitel also got dragged into this cinematic blasphemy, though it's worth noting that you'll never see Harvey in the same light again. Special points for the robot's head, which is ridiculously disproportionate from the rest of its body and appeared as though it was built from spare Radio Shack scraps, and likewise for lots of random sex between Kirk and Farrah.

Another film worth checking out, this time on the kung fu end of the spectrum, is Drunken Wu-Tang . Just reading off the back of the case: "Highlights include the Banana Monster, groin-munching robots, giant pipe kung fu, handheld cluster bombs, the spiky antics of Porcupine Back and more in this rip-roaring tale of martial mayhem." Not all of this summary is entirely accurate or really summarizes what the film is about (the hell kinda style is "giant pipe kung fu?"), but I'm having enough difficulty encapsulating what this film is about. Let's see, there's also a rat-mobile, a heated slide used to burn people's palms off as they're sliding down, a mannish old-woman, and various other shit...

And of course, like all cheap Hong Kong films, it is *exactly 90 minutes long. This film isn't so much badly made as it is just fucking crazy! Damn cool, and worth checking out.

The Legend of the Liquid Sword is another film that, while more polished than Drunken Wu-Tang and stylistically more Raimi-esque, is more worth noting because of a few little "quirks"
For one, how about a climax where our lord and savior Jesus Christ flies down on his magic cross and starts blowing up ninjas? Or how a black ninja, formerly known as "Batman," suddenly turns into a vampire-like creature that can spit a glowing silver that causes people to detonate, and thereafter becomes known by the name "Black Ninja?" The most fucked up thing about this film is a ten-minute long parade that involves ninjas running atop other running ninjas (highly sped up, of course), doing multiflips and flying in the air concurrently, and finally concludes with all of them hoisting a golden Swastika into the air. I have no idea what relevance it serves either, but coupled with an Asian Jesus, I'm sure the film had something interesting say... too bad it's all lost in the horrible dubbing...

Again, 90 minutes long. Exactly. So the backcover says...

On a side-note, if Monkey Shines fails to make it on the 100 best kills list (and anybody who's seen it knows what scene I'm talking about), I'm pressing charges against the site for failure to represent its target audience.

I can definitely sympathize with that, Napoleon. It was perhaps years that my friends and I searched for the film that housed the near-legendary "exploding head" clip that teased us regularly on the Craig Kilborn-era Daily Show. After a fateful trip to Best Buy, our discovery of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky could best be described as something comparable to a fairly well-known image taken from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Hell, if Mel Gibson had known about it earlier, he'd have scrapped The Passion without a second's hesitation to pay respect to Ricky's story instead.

To this day I still haven't found anything even close to the same calibre as Riki-Oh, though admittedly I haven't been looking as hard as I had since finding it. Perhaps I didn't see any reason to...

Without anymore aimless rambling, I found both Legend of the Liquid Sword and Drunken Wu Tang at Wherehouse Music, formerly Blockbuster Music, formerly Sound Warehouse, around two years ago. Both are distributed by Arena Home Video, as a part of their Hong Kong Connection series.

Sometimes I've run into some pretty cool things at Wherehouse Music that are far more valuable than the management realizes, like an out-of-print Criterion Silence of the Lambs. Hell, maybe they still have some of these films for sale, since as far as I remember they never sold too well to begin with. The rule of thumb is, the more the backcover tells of supernatural happenings or crotch-munching robots, the more likely it is to be flat-out hilarious. You can't gauge from the stills, since of all of them, only about 1/5 of them, if that, actually are taken from the movie inside the case. On a side note, I've heard that Revenge of the Jay Badger or something similar to that title is on par or perhaps even greater than the other two films, though I have yet to judge for myself.

Oh, and in regards to Agent Blue's top 5, Baseketball wasn't exactly what I had in mind for this list (although Matt Stone and Trey Parker admitted recently on Jimmy Kimmel Live that they thought it was a "bad" film), but if you felt it was humorous for all the wrong reasons then I say keep it up there. Besides, it's your list, not mine. And from what I remember of Drop Dead Fred, that film was utter shite, and it pains my soul to see a former Young Ones cast member subject himself to that kind of non-humor. That probably belongs on a "worst movie" thread than this one, since while the films detailed here could be strongly argued as "God awful," the difference is I'd likely watch them again in a second because of that.

If anybody is familiar with the bizarre work of Takashi Miike, could you outline what some of his "hits" and/or "misses" are? Oddly enough, I still haven't come around to checking out Audition, and I heard that Happiness of the Katakuris is black comedy at its most twisted. The cover itself promises greatness, showing an overtly cheerful Asian family holding hands and skipping gayly across a sunny meadow. I'm guessing there's around a 3 to 5 chance that one of them will end up dying via vaginal darts...

The time has come to spice things up on this thread with a little controversy...

Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, and Army of Darkness fit all the criteria of being "Hilarious, Grotesque, Shoddily Crafted," and "Absurd."

Therefore, would you all say that the Evil Dead trilogy is nothing more than three good "bad" movies, or does that only apply to the first entry?

Even the first film, which is by most standards a straight-up horror, becomes parodied in each subsequent movie. Do you think it has a following moreso because of the unintentional humor from the low production values, the cheese factor and the obvious "shemps," or because it works as an effective entry in the horror genre?

I guess the main question I'm posing here is whether or not you think any one of these films belongs on this thread.

Right, time for me to chime in on the subject...

Since my post has somehow been erased three times now, I've decided to keep this short.

I totally agree with you guys on all the points you made in defense of the Evil Dead Trilogy. However, I still feel all three films deserve slots on this thread alongside Meet the Feebles, Bad Taste, and Dead Alive.

Why alongside Peter Jackson's beloved "splatoons?"

This may just be a matter of taste, but I feel every one of the above films are funnier than hell (intentionally more often than unintentionally), they all can be deemed as "low class" or even "revolting," and they certainly don't take themselves seriously (The first Evil Dead has a straighter face, but it never acts like it's anything more than entertainment. Then again, I don't think you can hope to ascend any higher once a "rape by tree" device becomes integral to the plot). Lastly, there are moments in these films when, yes, the seams show through due to budgetary issues or otherwise, but they somehow complement the greatness of the film itself.

Why I call these films "good" bad is not because their failures actually end up being their only saving grace, like with Saturn 3, but because they aim low but still hit their target head on! These are the kinds of movies I think are actually quite great, yet most "normal" people like my brother-in-law will say it's awful simply because of the content.

Hope this helps clear up what this thread is all about! Keep on posting those lists for all to see!

You can never go wrong with the Tokyo Shock seal of quality. I remembered this while rewatching Fudoh: The New Generation, when trailers for Riki Oh and Reborn from Hell: Samurai Armageddon played beforehand.

Madre Dios!!
How could I forget to mention John Waters?!

Pink Flamingos is one of those films I haven't seen in over a year now, yet some of the most horrific and vile images to ever come from a 16mm camera are still as fresh in my mind as if I had seen them first-hand last Tuesday.

The guy's asshole flexing in-and-out to the beat of "Bird is the Word" sticks out more than anything, even more than a seemingly eight minute long threesome with a chicken!

And how could you ever hope to wipe away the image of a small Scottie taking a modest-sized crap alongside the street and seconds later seeing Divine's hand sweep it off the pavement and into her mouth... ALL IN ONE TAKE!!

Talk about cleaning up after your dog!

John Waters, you are the filthiest person alive.