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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
"I would just like to point out that you just read about a ghost and a gorilla vampire trying to have sex when they suddenly are interrupted by a robot out to get a drug lord. You will never read that again in any other context, so cherish this moment before it's gone." - Review of the movie Robo Vampire at Encyclopedia Obscura
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 Its 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. 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.
Unfortunately, there's worse. Fortunately, there's also better.
Examples broken down by medium:
Examples:
Comic Books
New Media
- YouTube Poop uses this trope endlessly (and intentionally).
- In each Worth1000 contest, the amazingly well done higher-ranked entries often contrast with the So Bad Its Good entries that make up the rest.
- This Guy and his friend made a video discribed as "This is intended to be laughably bad. considering; all the actors are action figures, the cast are mostly morons, it was made after 11:00 PM, Me and my best friend were feeling kooky, I got new Pokemon figures, and the dialogue is nuts. This was made for a good laugh and I was not serious at the time of the recording." It's on Youtube and you can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUSnoXaCMZI.
- About 45% of this site's ads.
- Song parody website Amiright features a lot of these, and the names of the parodists who write them are [even wackier than the songs themselves, for instance some of the editors are quite fond of Theme Naming. One of which is Agrimorfee- whose name sounds like the name of a Greek god or Harry Potter character and get this...his name *means* 'parody.'
- The Heroes Wiki. Suffering from the problem that most wikis about recent fads have (Which is, covering a popular but rather narrow subject), the administration is desperate to have an article on every nook and cranny of the Heroes Universe, resulting in the creation of page about things like Matching suits, Coffee Mugs and "Heroism". Add to that the strange fan creations page and the rather poor writing on the important subjects, and you get what is perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious encyclopedia, ever.
- This troper still doesn't know why he watches Screwattack productions despite having repeated bouts of getting Dan Browned.
- The Flash "Animation" Series Transformers: Action Blast. The only voice actor is The Poor Mans Substitute of Peter Cullen, the Animation is limited to the characters sliding in a static backdrop, the art style change every shots, there is no consistency for the models used for the characters, and the plot is pretty much ripped wholesale from the Pilot three-parter of Transformers Generation 1. The scary thing? It's an official work.
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."
- WCW did something with celebrities wrestling. The most memorable ones being Dennis Rodman and Jay Leno.
Webcomics
- It's never quite clear whether it's intentional or not, but between the occasional interruptions for captioned photographs of tech support calls, an utterly bizarre early gender reveal, an Unwanted Harem that puts Tenchi to shame, a political filler that's no more or less than a black(?!?) Nazi with W's where swastikas should be, and a Good Angel Bad Angel lesbian sex scene, Too Much Information definitely fits.
- The random interruptions were moved to another site. The Fan Service is still pretty cool, though.
- Powerup Comics is a deliberate attempt to straddle this and So Bad Its Horrible. The main characters are blatant Marty Stus who only have two poses (endlessly copied and pasted). The punchlines often rely on blatant discrimination and intentional backdrafting. But once you accept that the comic is irredeemably awful, the numerous art errors and non-punchlines like "Okay Shadow I know how you love to game!" suddenly become hilarious. Whether you love it or hate it largely depends on whether you're in on the joke.
- The Jack BS arc Frigid McThunderbones would certainly fall into this category. David Hopkins has quite clearly set out to use this trope in the entire arc. Not only does he parody a wide variety of awful material, but he does it in such a way it's actually funny at times (which is somewhat surprising, considering that Jack is normally a serious story comic).
- This trope is a reason why a good number of people continue to read Dominic Deegan.
- Of course, somewhat undermined by those people screeching how they'll stop reading every two minutes, but are then personally offended when you ask them why they haven't followed through on the promise.
Western Animation
- Captain Planet And The Planeteers. A show about an earth spirit who gives five teenagers mystical rings that gives (four of) them badass Elemental Powers (and the fifth one gets, uh, something else) should make for some quality entertainment, right? Instead we get preachy aesops about environmentalism and why conservative white Americans suck. We also get idiotic villains who pollute the earth just for the sake of polluting it half the time and when the heroes combine their rings' power, we get a green-mullet-headed, blue-skinned superhero who spouts terrible puns every other second. But this ludicrous premise and execution has made it the reason to watch and has created many forum-based memes. Plus, in addition to using real guns and real drugs and real death, it remains the only children's cartoon in history to have an episode about AIDS.
- And did we mention that Captain Planet gets mortally wounded just by getting splashed with a little dirty motor oil?
- Or that one episode where Hitler (I'm not kidding) beats Captain Planet by simply staring at him? Because his hate is so immense and Captain Planet just can't take it? Yeah...
- There's also the fact that, as Spirit of the Earth, Gaia was enormously powerful, and likely capable of beating the villains by herself... but she chose a group of CHILDREN to do it for her, apparently to teach them about the perils of pollution. That's more important than putting children in dangerous situations, it seems.
- It's also very hypocritical. At the end of some episodes, there would be a public service announcement saying that saving a ton of paper would preserve some amount of water. Well, Captain Planet, in it's six seasons, was animated on paper. Oh, and let's not forget the large line of plastic figurines they once had. Whoops!
- In 1999 there was an animated feature made out of The King and I, a lovely idea, but due to incompetent filmmakers kowtowing to the implications of the Animation Age Ghetto, it bore only a little more resemblance to its source material than Peter Griffin's version did. Highlights include "I Whistle a Happy Tune" being used to fend off a dragon (the villain is a sorcerer with an Ethnic Scrappy sidekick), a Tastes Like Diabetes Dream Sequence for "I Have Dreamed", empathy pets including a monkey, and an Everybody Lives ending. Why this film has not become a cult sensation this troper can't fathom.
- In this troper's opinion, both the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat USA cartoons fall squarely in this category; filled with Narm, plotholes, and all-around wackiness, yet in a way that's heartwarmingly amusing.
- Take one of the most violent and overly innuendo-filled fighting game series of all time, attempt to make it family friendly, add a bespectacled tween magician for the young ones to associate with and you get the American Darkstalkers animated series, one of the best examples of unintentional So Bad Its Good ever.
- To be fair, the Darkstalkers cartoon came two years before the first Harry Potter book was published, so Harry Grimoire's eerie resemblance to J.K. Rowling's junior wizard was just a bizarre coincidence.
- The new Biker Mice From Mars series despite the controversial new look of the mice.
- Celebrity Deathmatch anyone? Claymation versions of celebrities fighting eachother to the death. Some of the most memorable have been Jim Carrey vs Mariah Carrey, Madonna VS Michael Jackson, and David Letterman vs Jay Leno.
- ''Freddie the Frog'' was the strangest children's movie ever made. Made during the Disney Renaissance, it had such strange plot devices as the Loch Ness Monster saving a prince from his evil witch aunt in medieval France. Then he suddenly grows six feet and becomes a Frog secret agent in twentieth-century Britain. I Am Not Making This Up.
- ''Chuck Noris Karate Kommandos'' Hillarous, at least the opening. But it still manages some So Bad Its Good Moments with the zany fight scenes, horrible acting and super ninja's (oh no, hes a ninja, and hes super?!) effeminate voice. Here are some of the "best" moments
- John Candy's Celebrity Toon Camp Candy. And also 'Gravesdale High.
- Jibber Jabber. The characters crawled out from the deepest pit in the Uncanny Valley, and the whole series is ridiculously cheesy. That's what makes it so hilarious!
Theater
- The little-seen musical adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie, Or So I Heard. It only ran seven official peformances on Broadway after previews, and was so notorious that it was the inspiration for the book Not Since Carrie, a chronicle of Broadway musicals which flopped in the second half of the twentieth century.
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