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"It isn't enough that a movie be campy and mediocre. It must show incomparably flawed craftsmanship in every detail. It must be so stupefyingly artless that it IS ART, albeit of the most accidental kind." —
Jeff Sconce on the Cult of Bad cinema, quoted in Henry Jenkins'
Textual Poachers
"It is so bad that a kind of grandeur creeps into it." — H. L. Mencken, on Warren G. Harding's English composition
"We got the wrong play. We got the wrong director. We got the wrong actors. Where did we go right?" — Max Bialystock, in
The Producers, after their play
Springtime for Hitler becomes a smashing success.
Natasha Fatale: You are so bad, you're good!
Boris Badenov: It's good to be bad!
— Boris And Natasha a film which epitomizes this trope.
Once in a while, a
Wall Banger gets so bad, it creates a disruption in the badness continuum, and wraps right around to good. Maybe the
hubcap-on-a-wire flying saucers are cute, or the spontaneous brothel scene goes on for
so long it's hilarious, or the technically oriented
find humor in the way the
hacker can
suborn the traffic lights of New York with no perceptible effort.
Whatever the reason, a truly horrid piece of work can become an
unintentional riot and even get
its own fandom
for its very lack of quality. This can well be an ongoing process as attitudes change, budgets grow and cynicism increases.
On occasion, the writers may
intentionally try to pull off this trope. Of course, this almost
never actually results in something that fits because it's hard not to
"wink at the camera", so to speak.
Something which is
So Bad It's Good has a high probability of becoming a
Cult Classic. Many are heavy on
Camp, therefore falling far onto the silly side of the
Sliding Scale Of Silliness Versus Seriousness, and are often considered
Guilty Pleasures, although neither is necessary. See
Narm Charm. This is also often seen in
Memetic Mutation, when people combine two or more horrible things (or pieces thereof) into something good.
Leeroy Jenkins, for example.
If someone just keeps on churning out work that's
So Bad Its Good, they're probably
Giftedly Bad.
Unfortunately,
there's worse. There's even
in between. A good visual of all three can be found in
this xkcd comic.
Compare
Stylistic Suck and
So Unfunny Its Funny, which
play this trope for laughs.
Examples broken down by medium:
Examples:
Professional Wrestling
- WWE wrestler The Boogeyman is an almost-bald Scary Black Man with his entire head painted red with black spots, who walks like he's having a seizure, smashes giant antique clocks over his head, speaks almost entirely in singsongy nursery rhymes, eats worms by the handful, and his catchphrase is, "I'm... THE BOOGEYMAN! And I'm comin'... TO GETCHA!" The whole thing is as hilariously awful as it sounds.
- It should be noted that his backstory actually lampshades the ludicrousness involved — an actor for a show that didn't materialize who snapped (falling too deep into method acting) and became the Boogeyman, but was sicced onto WWE's Smack Down! brand anyway to see what would happen and because he was still under contract. Seriously.
- Even more hilariously awful is the time in one skit with D-Generation X, he appeared from underneath the ring, and told Triple H and Shawn Michaels: "I'm...THE BOOGEYMAN! And I'm comin' to - (briefly sans Boogeyman gimmick) - see if I can join DX."
- Would Ready To Rumble count?
- Wrestle-licious, baby!
- In the same vein, any all-woman promotion David McLane was involved in, whether it be GLOW, WOW, or POWW. Stupid, cheesy fun with stupid, cheesy gimmicks, stupid, cheesy action, and stupid, cheesy cheesecake.
- Mick Foley deliberately went for this while wrestling as Dude Love in order to separate the gimmick from his other personae (the sadistic Cactus Jack and the psychotic Mankind).
- WCW's San Francisco 49ers Match between Jeff Jarrett and Booker T is one of the most hilariously stupid matches of all time. It's basically a glorified pole match (gee, I wonder who booked this disasterpiece) with four wooden boxes at the end of each pole; one contains the WCW Championship and the other three contain "weapons:" a blow up doll, a framed picture of Scott Hall, and a coal miner's glove. It began with an old lady trying to smack Jarrett with a shirt Booker T gave her and ended with Beetlejuice (not that Beetlejuice, the Wack Packer from Howard Stern) giving Jarrett five "high blows". The title fell out of the box, and Dave Penzer... I mean Booker T became the WCW Champion.
Theater
- The Musical adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie has acquired this reputation. Its commercial failure on Broadway became so notorious that it was the inspiration for the book Not Since Carrie, a chronicle of Broadway musical flops of the latter half of the twentieth century.
- Show Within A Show example: "Pyramus and Thisbe" in A Midsummer Nights Dream. It's so badly written and wretchedly performed that it's hilarious. The Duke and his guests order it performed just for the Snark Bait.
Toys
- GoBots Rocklords. Think Transformers, but instead becoming something cool like a car, a dinosaur, a plane, or a tank, they became rocks! You could choose between granite, quartz or shale amongst others!
- The Piraka rap from Bionicle. Listen to it here in all of its hilarious glory.
Food
- KFC chips (that's fries in Yank-land). They taste terrible, and nutrition-wise you'd be better off eating your money. Yet you eat them anyway. Indeed, much fast food qualifies.
- Must be Your Mileage May Vary, this troper prefers them over the tiny, tasteless things McDonalds and Hungry Jacks (Burger King) sell.
- Second this, KFC probably have the nicest chips out of all the major fast food joints.
- Must be an international thing. McDonald's usually gets commended for its excellent fries here in the U.S. The rest of its food, however…
- But it also depends on the market. Many KFC's instead offer much more savory and delicious potato wedges instead of regular chips/fries.
- Sugar cereals. They wreck your teeth, turn you into a prime diabetes candidate, are usually over-sweetened to the point of being stomach-turning, and are generally the last thing you should be eating in the morning. Yet we love them. A lot of other Guilty Pleasure foods qualify.
- Hot Pockets. Jim Gaffigan: "They should come with a warning label. WARNING: YOU JUST BOUGHT HOT POCKETS! Hope you're drunk or heading home to a trailer!" But we still keep eating 'em!
- Sucaritos. OK this troper is dead serious, while visiting relatives in Colombia there was a commercial for Sucaritos (or named something very much like it) which bascially translates to 'little sugar bits'. The commercial starts with 5 first grades sitting in the middle of the desert (why?), shifting the sand talking about bored they are. Then a polar bear shows up on an ATV and says that they need to have fun, so he offers them a bowl of corn flakes and then says 'and lets add sugar', to which the kids reply 'we want more'. 'more' he adds sugar to the flakes, 'we want more', he adds even more sugar, 'no, MORE' and then even more sugar goes on them, followed by the kids suddenly riding sand skidoos, paragliding and sand surfing. When did our American commercials stop being that bad/good about selling sugar?
Real Life
Art
- The entire Dada "anti-art" movement was specifically made to be so stupid it's art. Why is an upside-down urinal considered art? "Because I said so".
