For a glorious spell last weekend, The Emoji Movie – a film that has been called “venal”, “insidious” and “the end of the world” – achieved the almost impossible and gained entry to the Zero Per Cent Club. In other words, it failed to receive a single positive notice from a professional critic on Rotten Tomatoes. Not a scrap, not a jot, not even the barest pity point. It was, in a word, irredeemable.

This is no longer the case, thanks to a lukewarm review by El Nuevo Dia. But for a while it was part of the most exclusive club in Hollywood. The Zero Per Cent Club includes triumphs such as Run for Your Wife, 10 Rules for Sleeping Around and Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back. It takes work to be in this club. Making a film that is merely bad won’t cut it. To be in the Zero Per Cent Club, you need to be genuinely incompetent.

So, what steps do you need to take to earn membership? Having looked at the worst of the worst, here are some notes.

Be a sequel

Sea sick ... Patrick Culliton and Telly Savalas in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros

Here is the bad news. If you want to make a comprehensively awful film, it helps to follow a better one: many of the Zero Per Cent Club’s members are sequels. So, if you want to make a cack-handed follow-up to an Oscar-winning movie, look to The Sting II, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and Jaws: The Revenge for inspiration.

If your only idea involves sending a beloved character to an unfamiliar setting, there is Billy Jack Goes to Washington and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan. If you are making a sequel only because you had a jazzy idea for a subtitle, the Zero Per Cent Club includes Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain and, of course, Highlander 2: The Quickening.

Go genre

Ropey at best ... Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return. Photograph: Allstar/Dimension Films

There is no point trying to reinvent the wheel if you want to be part of the Zero Per Cent Club. What if you succeed only partly and end up impressing someone? It is better to make a boilerplate genre piece – and make it badly. That is what the makers of Orgy of the Dead did. And the makers of The Brotherhood of Satan. And Empire of the Ants. And Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return. They all picked a mainstream genre that critics are sniffy about, so that was half the battle won. In the case of Empire of the Ants, the other half of the battle was won by just filming some ants.

Revive a loathed movie series

Firing blanks ... Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock

Despite its wide variety, the Zero Per Cent Club is dominated by two film series. Police Academy 4, 5, 6 and 7 all succeeded in appalling every critic in the world, but even this lousiness has been topped by National Lampoon, which counts Movie Madness, Senior Trip, Gold Diggers, Dorm Daze, Pledge This! and Transylmania as Zero Per Cent Club members. While there hasn’t been a new Police Academy film for nearly a quarter of a century, National Lampoon was still churning out movies in the middle of this decade, so its run may continue. Anyway, who owns the rights to Look Who’s Talking? Are they selling? If not, I am sure Michael Winner’s estate will be willing to sell the Death Wish franchise for cheap.

Make a kids’ film

Barking up the wrong tree ... Pudsey the Dog: The Movie. Photograph: Allstar/Vertigo Films

This was The Emoji Movie’s tactic. If you can make something truly cynical for children, under the false impression that kids are stupid and they will lap up anything, you are well on your way to a seat at the Zero Per Cent table. This is what Mac and Me did, by retelling ET from a viewpoint of overt, relentless McDonald’s product placement. It is what Pudsey the Dog: The Movie did, by spinning a hopeless plot out of a dog whose only achievement was keeping his nose quite close to a woman’s bum. It is what Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio did, by being the creepiest thing anyone has committed to film.

And if all else fails?

Bitter taste ... Keith Lemon: The Film. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Give your film a title that people would be too embarrassed to say out loud. Take a bow Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever, Kronk’s New Groove, Beer for My Horses, Midgets vs Mascots, Generation Um … and, of course, Keith Lemon: The Film, which is included only because Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t allow negative scores.