So, you're trying to pick out a movie. You're not really sure what you want. You're not in the mood for romance. Drama would be too heavy. You want action, but not too much gore. And then it hits you; you want to watch a bad movie, a movie so unbelievably terrible that it becomes worth watching for sheer, stupid entertainment. You question how it even got made, and then you question why you ever questioned its brilliance. "Sharknado" is only the most recent bad movie to gain the traction that it deserves; there are hoards of other box office disasters that are also worthy of your attention.
That being said, I now present a genre that should really be its own category on Netflix: terrible movies that you need to watch.
1. Mac and Me
This movie is so close to my heart that it just had to be the first movie on the list. In this embarrassingly obvious rip-off of "E.T.," a kid in a wheelchair and his little sister meet a lost little alien and embark on a mission to get him home. This mission includes product placement, a pack of dogs chasing said alien down the street while it drives a toy jeep, a musical number inside a McDonalds and a scene where the boy in the wheelchair looses control of his chair and falls off a cliff in his backyard. Why is there a cliff in his backyard? Why does his mother rush out of the house in the middle of the afternoon wearing a bath robe?
Fun fact: whenever the actor Paul Rudd goes on the show "Conan," he pretends that he's going show a clip of a new movie and always ends up showing the wheelchair scene from this movie instead. Paul Rudd has excellent taste for horrible movies, which is one of the reasons why he will always be one of my favorite celebrities (even if he is Ant Man now).
2. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
If you know enough about music, you could probably guess that this movie has something to do with The Beatles. And once you learned that this movie actually stars Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, you could probably guess that this movie would be comedy gold. You would be right. The Bee Gees are in a magical bus, hunting down magical instruments to return to their town, all while singing some of the best (and worst) Beatles tunes around. A man named Mr. Mustard, actual Alice Cooperand actual Steve Martin are all measly side villains, serving the main musical masters of evil: Aerosmith. Not kidding. Aerosmith is the main villain in this movie. There's also a love interest for Peter Frampton aptly named Strawberry Fields. Unfortunately, she dies during the final battle between Peter Frampton and Steven Tyler, but in the last scene she's brought back to life by Billy Preston.
3. Grease 2
You remember "Grease." John Travolta and Oliva Newton-John prove to you that love can overcome anything as long as it comes with teased hair and leather pants. You probably don't remember "Grease 2." The cast is back. Well, Frenchie is back. Everyone else has graduated, but don't you worry, there's still plenty of grease left at Rydell High. In a completely identical yet reverse plot, Sandy's cousin Michael arrives at Rydell because the entire family is apparently slowly immigrating from Australia. He falls in love with Stephanie, the leader of the Pink Ladies played by Michelle Pfeiffer. He then goes on a quest to win her love the only way he knows how: by pretending to be someone else in a weird dream montage with hazy smoke and surprisingly dull motorcycle tricks. Even better, his alias is "Cool Rider," in case you didn't know that he was, you know, cool.
4. Sharknado
There's not much to say about this movie that everyone doesn't already know; it's the most popular of the terrible movie genre. There's a tornado made of sharks hellbent on attacking one man, his bikini-clad employee, his best friend the Aussie whose injury from the first scene immediately vanishes, his bitch of an ex wife and his two children who look like they could easily be the same age as their father. Highlights include a shark flying through a restaurant window, cuts of sharks in the water that look as if they were taken directly from Shark Week and lazily edited into the movie, a ferris wheel tastefully spinning off its tracks and into an office building, people normally driving around the city as sharks are falling from the sky plus a sheer disregard for logic. Oh, the main character also escapes the stomach of a shark with a chain saw, and then he and his ex wife make-out. Gross. But also awesome.
5. Romeo + Juliet
In fair Verona where we lay our scene, Leonardo Dicaprio and Claire Danes come together to show that there should be a limit to creative license. It's the classic story of "Romeo and Juliet" in a modern setting with classic Shakespearian language. It's as strange and unfitting as it sounds. There's a costume party, a fight at a gas station with guns, Hawaiian shirts and Shakespearian prose, plus Mercutio dresses as a drag queen and more or less convinces Romeo to do drugs. The Prince of Cats also has some really weird facial hair going on. But if you watch the trailer, you'll notice someone familiar at 0:20. It's Paul Rudd! Paul Rudd dressed as an astronaut in a Shakespeare movie. Also, just as a reminder, there's also a 1978 version of "Romeo and Juliet" with Alan Rickman as Tybalt.
6. The Village
This movie is brought to you by M. Night Shyamalan, so that should tell you all you need to know about its quality right there. But if you want more information, "The Village" is about a village (surprise) in the middle of the woods that lives in constant fear of weird, half pig-half zombie creatures with the speed of snails, the fashion sense of a Jedi and a name that reminds you suspiciously of Lord Voldemort: "those we don't speak of." The movie appears as if it takes place in the 19th century; however, once the blind female protagonist escapes through the woods seeking medical supplies for Joaquin Pheonix (who had recently been stabbed by a man with developmental disabilities), she learns that it's actually the 1970s. That's not the entire secret, either. The creatures are also fake, elder villagers in masks bent on making sure that no one discovers that modern civilization exists beyond the woods. That one creature she killed? The guy with disabilities. Whoops. And when the blind girl finally returns to the village (how does she find it?) and reveals that she knows the secret, the elders vote to make it appear as the guy with disabilities was killed by the creatures in order to carry on the facade. Brilliant.
And those are all of my terrible movie suggestions ... for now. There are always more hidden gems stashed away in the bottomless pits of Netflix. I'll keep searching. Meanwhile, grab some popcorn, your sense of humor and a chainsaw and get ready for some terrible movie magic.