Razputin: If you hate the show so much, why don't you just leave?
Jasper: I just can't take my eyes off it! It's like watching the scene of a
horrible car accident... An accident where the victims can't act, and the paramedics forget their lines!
There's
Hype Aversion, when numerous people's rabid touting of the latest masterpiece deter you from rushing out and buying it. And then there's the reverse phenomenon, when numerous people's rabid
panning of the latest uber-stinker, complete with detailed lists on why you should never, ever,
ever buy this piece of dung actually fill you with the masochistic urge to rush out and buy it just to see if it's
that bad.
It's like hearing about the train wreck of the century: Your better sensibilities are repulsed at the thought of it, and yet part of you wants to see that wreck in all its magnificent destruction. You
want to see just how
gloriously terrible it must be for all the high-profile people to be expressing their horror over it.
Don't feel ashamed about it; it's the natural foil to our obsession with the best of the best. Just as we want to know how high in brilliance art can rise, we also want to know how low it can sink in sheer awfulness. Plus the fact that reviews spewing bile over the many ways something stinks tend to be far more entertaining to read than reviews extolling the virtues of the latest
Oscar Bait.
Examples:
- Battlefield Earth.
- Many people watch Plan 9 From Outer Space after they hear about its So Bad Its Good reputation. They are rarely disappointed.
- Online film critic James Berardinelli considers the direct-to-video Zombie! Vs. Mardi Gras the worst film ever. He was chagrined when he learned that his "worst film of all time
" citation for it was being used to lure customers to buy it.
- A majority of the (already small) sales of The Legend Of Rah And The Muggles were from curiosity over the Frivolous Lawsuit the author launched against Harry Potter, but soon benefited from this trope once word got out how awful the book was.
- This is precisely why Big Rigs Over The Road Racing sold more than about 5 units.
- Much more: GameSpot reported that it outsold half the "Best Game of 2004 No One Played" nominees. Criteria to enter the category: less than 20,000 copies
- Roughly half the films from Mystery Science Theater 3000 qualify - the others are camp classics.
- This troper desperately wants to find "Offending Angels" on DVD - not only did it receive 1 star ratings from every single critic unlucky enough to have to watch it, but it grossed a total of £79. Yes, seventy-nine whole pounds. It played for an entire week in Croydon without a single audience member, in fact.
- In a bizarre twist, this troper and some of his friends saw Ishtar based entirely on its bad reputation. We were actually disappointed that it was genuinely funny. We got over it, though. There's a closet of love between your eyes...
- The only reason why this troper watched It's Pat and Gigli. (On cable, of course, they're not even worth renting.)
- The only reason this troper bought Gigli. To be fair, though, it was secondhand and the DVD doesn't see much use. And it's the only reason this troper even bought such films as ''The Misadventures of Amy Everhart''.
- A variation occurs in a girl this troper once met. She was a movie lover, who watched everything possible in the video rental (once he found her with 5 movies), among these films, Catwoman and both Anaconda movies. And stated they're as bad as reported.
- I watched Catwoman, expecting to see a deliciously-stinky example of this, and was disappointed to find that the film wasn't actually terrible in & of itself. My wife & I (both comic-book fans of no small degree) actually found the film to be an enjoyably-serviceable comic-book movie that, while not great by any means, didn't live up to the anti-hype it had gotten. The film's primary crime against humanity is its complete discontinuity with the character from the comics. If they had named Halle Berry's alter ego ANYTHING else, I'd bet that the movie wouldn't have bombed half as badly as it did.
- This troper sometimes seeks out bad films from the more innocuous genres. It's easier to viscerally enjoy one-star So Bad Its Good than four-star True Art Is Angsty (which can go Deus Angst Machina and be praised for it).
- The Conqueror with John Wayne. Infamous for being both bad and deadly (it was filmed downwind from nuclear tests), and very much non-PC, but it has its good points.
- A message board thread that this troper regularly participates in dedicated to snarking the hell out of Dominic Deegan has corrupted at least half a dozen readers.
- This troper believes that this is the only reason the two sequels to Touched By Venom (AKA "The Venom Cock book) ever saw the light of day. They were much better than Venom, but that's like saying a punch to the gut is much better than a punch to the face.
- The Eragon movie of The Inheritance Trilogy through and through. This troper had already read countless blog entries on how terrible the movie is and how GOD FORBID should the readers waste time on it, and was still compelled to watch it just for the benefit of squirming in her seat for over an hour. Well, personal impressions DO come at a price...
- This appears to be the only reason anyone's seen Showgirls.
- Hey, some of us watched it for the chance to see Jessie naked.
- I once read an article of academic film criticism about it. The author seemed to think it was deep.
- So, the hot naked chick ISN"T Jesus in Purgatory?
- Fred Clark, aka Slacktivist has been painstakingly tearing apart the Left Behind novels, documenting their bad writing, terrible plotting, and worse theology. After five years of this, he's almost to the end of the first book.
- I find it hard to believe that nobody has mentioned the works of Uwe Boll, who practically makes a living creating works that garner bile fascination.
- If you're willing to look hard enough, you can find a surprising number of excellent fanfics. The one fanfic with the most feedback this troper has been able to find on all of FanFiction.Net, far and away the most popular fanfic site on the web? My Immortal, purported to be the worst fanfic ever, believed by some to be a troll but So Bad Its Horrible either way.
- The hype generated by the sheer awfulness of Troll 2 was enough to generate a dedicated full-scale Troll 2 convention.
- Yes, it's Manos! The Hands of Fate!
