All week, The Ringer will be celebrating Good Bad Movies, those films that are so terrible they’re endlessly amusing and — dare we say it? — actually good. Please join us as we give the over-the-top action movies, low-budget romance thrillers, and peak ’80s cheese-fests the spotlights they deserve.

Here’s a thing I’m not afraid to admit: I’ve seen Road House more times than I’ve seen The Godfather. I’ve seen Citizen Kane twice in my life — but once watched She’s All That twice in a weekend. You, too, are guilty of something like this.

There’s just something enjoyable about a movie that’s hopelessly committed to its (very bad) vision. Whether it’s due to bad special effects, awful acting, or a completely absurd or nonsensical plot, these films create a sense of sheer wonderment and force you to exclaim, "How is this a movie?!" But the mere fact that something so illogical, or low-budget, or ill-conceived exists is at the root of why we like these movies. They’re so bad that … they’re actually kind of good.

Because it’s summertime — the season when so many Good Bad Movies have bloomed — we wanted to give the subgenre the attention it deserves. We’ll be exploring the genre at length, but no project would be complete without a big list that definitively determines the greatest Good Bad Movies to ever be released. It was a Herculean task (and in this case we’re specifically using that adjective with the Rock’s Hercules in mind); here’s how we did it.

The Qualifications

The Good Bad Movie genre is not easy to define. The line between so-bad-it’s-good and so-bad-I-left-the-theater is quite thin; taste is subjective, and what one person finds to be amusingly bad others may consider plain bad. The emergence of parody movies, meanwhile, raises questions about how integral artistic intent is in giving a film the Good Bad label. Therefore, following these three rules is a solid, efficient way to determine whether a movie is Good Bad:

Enjoyment of the movie must be derived from its badness. Its badness needs to be the thing that creates a sense of bewildered enjoyment. There must be a pervading sense that those who made the film thought what they were doing was great, or at least good. Good Bad Movies have minimal self-awareness. Here are two examples that may help explain this sentiment: (1) MacGruber is not a Good Bad Movie, it’s a tribute to Good Bad Movies, and (2) Fast Five is not a Good Bad Movie, it is a movie that intentionally wades into ridiculousness (and then manufactures a reaction similar to the one a Good Bad Movie elicits naturally). The movie must have been something of a critical failure when it was released. Critics, god bless them, hold movies to a high standard as an art form and generally don’t reward a movie for being of low quality. In that way, they’re a helpful, as-objective-as-possible resource in determining which films are bad, and therefore eligible to be Good Bad.

After solidifying what qualifies a Good Bad Movie, we moved toward constructing a definitive top-50 list.

The Process

It started in-house, with staff members of The Ringer nominating candidates. After weeding out the nominees that did not adhere to Rule No. 3 above — any film with over a 60 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes was deemed ineligible — the remaining movies were put through this formula:

I know. Stay with me.

CR stands for Cultural Relevance, and was determined by multiplying a movie’s number of Google News hits in the last year (with 1 point being awarded per 100 hits) by the number of years it’s been since that movie’s release. A Good Bad Movie’s ability to stay in the cultural conversation years after it came out is important, and indicates how a respective movie is gaining appreciation and growing a fan base.

RT — this one’s easy — stands for Rotten Tomatoes score. Because Good Bad Movies must overcome an astonishingly low level of quality, our system favors the films with truly abysmal critical receptions, rather than the ones that were reviewed as mediocre to bad.

PO stands for Public Opinion. Overall enjoyment is the absolute end goal of a Good Bad Movie, and how much a Good Bad Movie is liked is core to its rating against other Good Bad Movies. To determine PO, a couple of weeks ago we tweeted out a list of every candidate and asked readers to pick their 10 favorites. After the poll closed and total votes were tabulated, each movie was ranked from 1 to 64, with first place being awarded 64 points, second place 63 points, and so on. Do the 6,700 or so people who voted in this poll appropriately represent the opinion of the viewing public? Probably not. But until the government adds Good Bad Movie questions to census forms, this is the best we’ve got.

GBS stands for Good Bad Score. The higher a movie’s GBS is, the more esteemed it is as a Good Bad Movie.

All right! Now that math class is over, it’s time to learn the 50 best Good Bad Movies ever. — Andrew Gruttadaro

The Ranking

50. ‘Idle Hands’ (1999)

Good Bad Score: 43.2

Rotten Tomatoes: 16%

Andrew Gruttadaro: Here’s how I picture how the pitch meeting for Idle Hands went:

Guy 1: Hey, ya know that saying, "Idle hands are the devil’s workshop"?

Guy 2: Kinda.

Guy 1: What if that was a movie?

Guy 2: Here’s $25 million.

Idle Hands is literally about a stoner whose hand develops a mind of its own and goes on a killing rampage. It’s unbelievably stupid and bizarrely tone deaf: This guy’s hand kills his parents and best friends, and it all plays out like a comedy. But Idle Hands is Good Bad because of how sharply of a time it feels — it’s 1999 in a VHS tape. The entire movie is scored by the Offspring — which the trailer goes out of its way to mention; ’90s heartthrob Devon Sawa is the lead; Seth Green, that era’s go-to witty sidekick, is the witty sidekick; and a pre-Honest Jessica Alba is the literal girl next door who is … into the hand situation? I don’t know how and/or why — but I do know that Idle Hands is a gem of a bad movie.

49. ‘Lionheart’ (1990)

GBS: 45.1

RT: 33%

Shea Serrano: A seven-part formula for creating a Good Bad Movie: First, you cast Jean-Claude Van Damme. Second, you make the movie a thing where the main part of the plot is that he has to fight in a tournament or in an off-the-books fight circle to avenge something or someone. Third, you make sure to have an impossible-to-defeat bad guy waiting for JCVD at the end. Fourth, don’t forget to sprinkle in, say, something like 10 percent worth of moments when JCVD interacts with a woman in some charming way. Fifth, also be sure to have a point in there when he gets hurt pretty badly but not so badly that it totally stops him from fighting. Sixth, have at least one funny scene. And then seventh, let it end with JCVD all busted up but still triumphant. It works just about every single time. (Except for the The Quest. I don’t know what TF happened there.)

48. ‘Cellular’ (2004)

GBS: 46.8

RT: 55%

Micah Peters: There’s a number of things counting against the 2004 thriller Cellular: Jason Statham in a villain role, which always feels off; entirely illogical plot choices; the fact that it’s extremely not Phone Booth 2. But then again, it’s just over 90 minutes and either entertaining or unintentionally funny enough ("How did you get involved?" "I just answered my phone" is an actual exchange) to hold your attention until the credits roll. You won’t think too hard, maybe one or two details will actually stay with you — like Statham and Chris Evans beefing over whose crewneck tee is most medium, or how the movie feels like it was made specifically for MTV2 daytime programming — and both William H. Macy and Jessica Biel are in it.

47. ‘Dante’s Peak’ (1997)

GBS: 48.6

RT: 27%

Alyssa Bereznak: Pierce Brosnan looks really cool on a mountain and near explosions. As long as you accept that as the only unifying premise of the objectively bad 1997 action flick Dante’s Peak, you’ll be able enjoy it. The film takes place in a peaceful town that gets blown to pieces after a once-inactive volcano suddenly erupts. Brosnan plays a noted vulcanologist who spends the first half of the movie squinting at rocks and warning people that danger is coming. He’s scarred by the loss of his girlfriend, who "loved volcanoes" but was also killed by one. And even though he convinces town mayor/single mom Linda Hamilton to fall in love with him in the span of a day, he asserts that he’s "always been better at figuring out volcanoes than people and politics." $100 million worth of molten lava CGI later, he emerges from the mountain hellscape with a broken arm and a new family. Being is a vulcanologist is a trip, man.

46. ‘Obsessed’ (2009)

GBS: 51.3

RT: 19%

Hannah Giorgis: How many times can you watch a pre–Blue Ivy Beyoncé say "You touched my child" to the white woman (Ali Larter) trying to steal her husband (Idris Elba)? The limit does not exist. What Obsessed lacks in believable dialogue, premise, and overall quality, it makes up for with Beyoncé–Ali Larter fight scenes and the very idea of Beyoncé and Idris Elba as a couple. Sorry, Unforgettable.

45. ‘Stone Cold’ (1991)

GBS: 51.8

RT: 29%

Serrano: There are a bunch of ways to figure out if a movie is just a regular bad movie or if it’s a Good Bad Movie, but probably the easiest is to just ask yourself, "Does this movie star Brian Bosworth as a renegade cop who has to go undercover to take down a white supremacist biker gang? And is there a scene where a guy gets his hand mutilated because someone else shoves it into a spinning motorcycle wheel? And does Brian Bosworth’s character have a komodo dragon that he feeds smoothies made of Snickers and potato chips? And is there a part where a guy dresses like a member of the clergy so he can sneak a bunch of weapons into a courtroom?" Because if the answers to those questions are all yes, then you know it’s a Good Bad Movie.

44. ‘The Wicker Man’ (2006)

GBS: 62

RT: 15%

Lindsay Zoladz: A movie is only as Good Bad as its corresponding drinking game. I can say with confidence, then, that the 2006 Nic Cage remake of The Wicker Man is a Great Bad Movie, because the drinking game my friends and I played once while watching it made us so belligerent that I was nearly evicted from my home. Rules included "drink every time Nic Cage raises his voice," "drink every time Nic Cage makes an unreasonable demand," and, the one that my liver will never recover from, "drink every time Nic Cage strikes anything with intent to damage (this includes people also)."

The most ridiculous moments of The Wicker Man have, rightfully, become memes: Cage’s overdramatic read of the line "How’d it get burned?"; his death wail "NOT THE BEES!"; and, of course, the scene where he punches a woman in the face while wearing a bear suit, which is only slightly more ridiculous when put into slow motion and set to the Chariots of Fire song. From top to bottom, this movie is basically just an hour and 42 minutes of Nicolas Cage striking the viewer with intent to damage, which means you have to drink for the entire thing.

43. ‘Youngblood’ (1986)

GBS: 66.6

RT: 38%

Gruttadaro: Youngblood is what would happen if you threw Dirty Dancing, St. Elmo’s Fire, and a hockey puck into a cauldron. It’s deliciously ’80s, with an absurd amount of slow-motion hockey scenes, a fantastic training montage, an extremely cheesy but fun "hotshot athlete hooks up with the coach’s daughter" plotline, and a murderer’s row of icons from the decade: Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, and a brand-new Keanu Reeves. Out of every entry in Swayze’s ’80s oeuvre, Youngblood probably gets the least reverence, but it’s absolutely deserving of a cult movement. I mean, c’mon, just look at this:

42. ‘Hercules’ (2014)

GBS: 69.2

RT: 60%

Sam Schube: The first thing we need to talk about is Hercules’s lion hat. Hercules has plenty of great, horrible, very good-bad moments — cheese god Brett Ratner’s gory direction, John Hurt’s heel turn, the fact that the Rock’s Hercules has luscious shoulder-length hair and a club that makes him look like Bam-Bam — but we need to start with the lion hat. This lion hat:

The hat was once the head of the Nemean Lion, which Hercules slayed as one of his famous 12 labors. Naturally, Ratner’s film yada-yadas those endeavors to make a movie about Herc training an army of farmers. But that’s part of the film’s appeal. Hercules assumes that no one would ever see a Hercules movie that’s … you know, about the legend of Hercules. ("His father was Zeus — the Zeus, king of the gods," the narrator intones. Got it — that Zeus.) In its place, we get a sturdy swords-and-sandals epic, a very confused Dwayne Johnson performance, and — yes — the lion hat. Long may it roar.

41. ‘You Got Served’ (2004)

GBS: 74.6

RT: 16%

Giorgis: 2004 was a simpler time. A time when dance movies reigned supreme, when B2K ruled the airwaves and teen girls’ hearts. A time that brought us the true gem that is You Got Served, a delightfully terrible dance-competition movie that stars Omarion (and the rest of B2K, too, in theory), Marques Houston, Meagan Good, and Steve Harvey. Watch for choreography far more compelling than the characters themselves, gratuitous predictable drama, and the iconic titular catchphrase.

40. ‘Battleship’ (2012)

GBS: 86.2

RT: 34%

Amanda Dobbins: Rihanna

& Neeson

& Kitsch

& Berg

& Plemons

& Decker

& Jerry Ferrara

& a World War II ship that gets attacked by aliens

God bless everyone — literally every single person in the cast — who took this board game movie so seriously.

39. ‘Save the Last Dance’ (2001)

GBS: 88.3

RT: 53%

Giorgis: Upon rewatch, Save the Last Dance is almost unbearably corny. The story line — white-girl ballet dancer (Julia Stiles) moves to the hood and learns how to dance hippity hop after falling for a black classmate (Sean Patrick Thomas) — is eye-roll worthy enough, but the worst part of the movie is Stiles’s dancing. If you watch it entirely to cackle at the movie attempting to sell you on Stiles as the next J.Lo, Save the Last Dance is quality entertainment. Quality reads from Bianca Lawson’s and Kerry Washington’s characters don’t hurt, either.

38. ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ (2006)

GBS: 116.5

RT: 37%

Victor Luckerson: A great bad movie is full of semifamous actors/celebrities — often referred to as "that guy" — who immediately seem worse off for having appeared in the film. Tokyo Drift is full of such revelations. Main character Lucas Black is that guy from Friday Night Lights and the Wonderful World of Disney movie Flash. The dude he races at the start of the movie is that kid from Home Improvement (not Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who is too ’90s-iconic to be "that guy"). Black’s high school buddy is that guy from mediocre early-2000s rap, also known as Bow Wow. And the movie ends with the ultimate cameo — Vin Diesel, that guy from the original The Fast and the Furious! Before it could become a blockbuster action franchise, F&F had to devolve into B-movie schlock. Watching fame-adjacent actors muddle through the franchise’s critical and commercial nadir is one of life’s great joys.

37. ‘Just One of the Guys’ (1985)

GBS: 128.8

RT: 40%

Sean Fennessey: I don’t even think there’s a fun way to write about this movie anymore. Notions of gender have evolved so acutely and precisely in the past 10 years that the fundamental premise doesn’t seem so much insensitive as it does just plain weird. What mitigates the complications though: It’s terrible. But also enrapturing. You can’t look away from the high-stakes drama that ensues when a disgruntled, beautiful teenage girl (played by 28-year-old Joyce Hyser, perhaps best known as a former paramour of both Warren Beatty and Bruce Springsteen) is told she can’t succeed at her local high school newspaper, so she poses as a slick teen boy in a rival high school to do some serious journalism and prove her doubters wrong, all while trying to stave off suitors and ultimately land the man of her dreams. Simply typing the plot has bent me over into a right angle. And yet, this movie is cable crack. That isn’t an explanation. But it’s the truth.

36. ‘Bad Boys II’ (2003)

GBS: 130

RT: 23%

Gruttadaro: Before the Transformers series, Bad Boys II was the peak example of director Michael Bay’s scorched-earth maximalism. The action is over the top — a chase on a Miami highway has cars AND BOATS barrel-rolling through balls of fire (no mention of casualties though); there’s an entire side plot focused on Martin Lawrence’s character’s struggle with erectile disfunction, which is solved when he accidentally ingests ecstasy; a then relatively unknown Michael Shannon plays a member of the KKK, which is depicted more as a hokey group of rednecks rather than a hate group. Bad Boys II is bad, but in a way that makes you shake your head until you’re somehow smiling and then laughing. Blame buddy-cop duo Lawrence and Will Smith, who commit to the (awful) material harder than anyone would ever expect them to.

35. ‘Spice World’ (1997)

GBS: 143.1

RT: 36%

Giorgis: Twenty years later, does anyone remember the actual plot of Spice World? For the unfamiliar, the film followed the Spice Girls as they drove around London in their tour bus. Rather than track average encounters with fans, Spice World took the girls on strange, unexpected adventures including encounters with aliens and a night in a haunted castle. None of the girls can really act (sorry, boos), but the movie is more about their outrageous antics than any sort of plausibility. Mel B, Mel C, Emma, and Geri all spiced up our lives back in 1997; if you wanna be my lover now, you still gotta get with this film.

34. ‘Battlefield Earth’ (2000)

GBS: 156.1

RT: 3%

Gruttadaro: So you’re telling me that a movie based on a book written by the guy who invented Scientology, starring John Travolta as a 9-foot-tall alien in dreadlocks, was not the greatest film of 2000? Many actually consider it "the worst movie ever made"? I AM SHOCKED!

Yes, at the time, Battlefield Earth was excoriated for being one of the "most uninvolving and incomprehensible major-studio fantasies" ever. The thousands of words of criticism written about the movie all still stand. But here is a great example of a movie that became Good Bad over time. Almost two decades removed from its release, with Travolta reduced from movie star to an "Adele Dazeem"–uttering caricature, it’s incredible to revisit this woefully misguided passion project. A failure of this magnitude needs to be appreciated. Right, dreadlocked Travolta?

OK, sure. I’ll take that as a yes.

33. ‘Surviving the Game’ (1994)

GBS: 164.6

RT: 27%

Gruttadaro: Rich guys played by Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham, and Charles S. Dutton hunt down a homeless man played by Ice-T — that is an incomprehensible, can’t-miss movie premise. Surviving the Game has too many Good Bad moments to count: Ice-T’s loquacious summary of how it felt to lose his family; the way he says, "Well done … bitch," after Busey’s character dies in a fire; and of course, Busey’s three-minute monologue about killing a childhood dog with his bare hands:

I think Busey thought he was going to get an Oscar nomination for this. He did not.

32. ‘Mission: Impossible II’ (2000)

GBS: 183.2

RT: 57%

Gruttadaro: John Woo is a Good Bad genius, and his Mission: Impossible II may be the movie that’s most saturated with his brand of slo-mo, hyperstylized action. Before a climactic scene in which Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt emerges to take down a henchman, a flock of doves inexplicably flutter across the screen. Motorcycle stunts alone seem to make up about 65 percent of the film:

Add to that how truly ridiculous it is how much of the plot rides on absurd face-switching technology — and the fact that M:I-2 is a pinnacle for Cruise’s hair — and you’ve got a bona fide Good Bad action classic.

31. ‘Nothing but Trouble’ (1991)

GBS: 185.4

RT: 8%

Charlotte Goddu: This Dan Aykroyd film has all the bright carnivalesque absurdity of Ghostbusters — only applied with a heavier hand. Demi Moore and Chevy Chase find themselves imprisoned in the small town of Valkenvania, inside a haunted-house-ride mansion full of secret conveyor belts and moving walls. The movie should by all rights be 100 percent goofy: There’s a deathly roller coaster called "Mr. Bonestripper" and a fight scene where the weapon of choice is a chamber pot; Tupac makes a cameo as a member of Digital Underground, rapping while the decrepit grandpa who’s imprisoned Chase and Moore plays a killer organ solo. But the goofiness is sprinkled with oddly classic moments. Chase slips into a Jimmy Stewart cadence every once in a while; he and Moore share a tender kiss on a train rolling off into the night. Nothing but Trouble doesn’t define itself as only absurd; it also seems to think it’s a real love story, which is just precious and sincerely silly.

30. ‘Demolition Man’ (1993)

GBS: 206.6

RT: 64%

Gruttadaro: "Now all restaurants are Taco Bell." That’s a direct quote from Sandra Bullock’s character in Demolition Man. Don’t worry, she also explains why: "Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars." This bit of dialogue is Demolition Man in a nutshell, a preposterous Sylvester Stallone action vehicle about a police officer who, in the future, is thawed out from his cryogenic chamber to catch his archnemesis (Wesley Snipes). The movie joyously skates by on "this is what life will be like in the future" fantasies: Beyond the Franchise Wars, in the future police refer to homicide as a "murder-death-kill" — because who needs vocabularial efficiency? — and this is how they have sex:

How could you not love a train wreck like this?

29. ‘The Chase’ (1994)

GBS: 228.4

RT: 37%

Gruttadaro: Here’s movie critic James Berardinelli on The Chase: "As an example of modern cinematic art, The Chase is an utter failure. As a character study, it can’t get past the comic book stage. As a tightly plotted thriller, it’s missing about half the story line. But, as a piece of unfettered, unpretentious entertainment, it hits the bullseye." That’s a perfect distillation of the Good Bad Movie genre. To further Berardinelli’s point, and to give you some highlights if you haven’t seen The Chase, here are a few things that happen:

Charlie Sheen, a children’s party clown, is on the lam after a string of robberies perpetrated by a clown are pegged on him. (They got the wrong clown!)

Charlie Sheen, in order to evade police, takes Kristy Swanson hostage and initiates the titular chase.

Two vigilantes — played by Anthony Kiedis and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, of course — try to apprehend Sheen, only for their car to crash in a fiery explosion.

Swanson empathizes with Sheen, and the two have sex DURING THE CHASE.

At the end of the film, Swanson, now in love with Sheen, steals a helicopter, and the two abscond to Mexico and live happily ever after.

I love The Chase.

28. ‘The Last Action Hero’ (1993)

GBS: 234.8

RT: 37%

Fennessey: Unlike many of the awful, shrill, silly, cynical stuff on this list, I actually like-like the good-good Last Action Hero. But I’ll play along for the sake of this package. Briefly, here’s the like-like: This movie can be a learning tool for young cinephiles! In practical respects, yes, John McTiernan was once one of the most gifted action-sequence filmmakers of late capitalism. And it features Schwarzenegger at the height of his fame delivering groan-bombs with aplomb. There’s high-level villain performances from Future Tywin Lannister, the great Charles Dance, as well as Tom Noonan as "Ripper" (and also Tom Noonan, playing himself in the real world). And the movie satisfyingly subverts and redefines what to expect from Arnold. But for aspirant movie obsessives it also winks at temporal loops and fourth-wall erosion, utilizes Bergman’s Death from The Seventh Seal as an ancillary bad guy, and identifies the concept of "the movie trope" decades before the internet made explaining things easy. Upon release, critics called this movie too clever for its own good. To that I say, "Have you seen Baywatch?"

27. ‘The Happening’ (2008)

GBS: 250.4

RT: 18%

Fennessey: I don’t care about spoiling the reveal of M. Night Shyamalan’s hysterical, painfully slow, idiot tour de force: The trees are killing everyone. Not just the trees — the gaseous compound emitted by trees. Technically a scientifically minded warning about global warming (I think?), The Happening applies the kind of story logic a dog might find in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which is to say: woof. The most elite aspect of this movie is Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel evincing the chemistry of two starfish suctioned to the bottom of the Dead Sea. They play educators trying to escape the viral scourge and get to the bottom of the world’s outbreak. And no matter who survives, we win.

26. ‘Gigli’ (2003)

GBS: 270.3

RT: 6%

Bereznak: Gigli is an all-around offensive movie. It’s offensive to the LGBT community for centering its plot on one straight man’s (mind-bogglingly successful) goal to turn a lesbian into a straight woman. It’s offensive to people with disabilities for relentlessly exploiting a mentally disabled character for cheap laughs. And it’s offensive to mobsters across the land, who would definitely never trust the dopey duo of Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) and Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) to kidnap a federal prosecutor’s family member. But the 2003 flop remains valuable for one main reason: It’s the most revealing artifact we have left of Bennifer, an ill-fated two-year relationship that began at the height of the gossip news boom and ended with a short-lived and very expensive engagement. That these two read Gigli’s cringeworthy script — one in which Affleck yells, "I am the rule of fuckin’ cool. … I’m the fucking original straight first foremost pimp mack fucking hustler original gangster’s gangsta" — and still agreed to star in the movie proves that they were deeply, foolishly, blindly in love. Just as Christopher Walken’s and Al Pacino’s brief cameos in the film were completely incongruous to its tone and plot, so was Affleck and Lopez’s two-hour long chemistry. Gigli gave the public a chance to ogle at hot famous people who were dating for a full two hours, and it did so without putting forth even the slightest effort to offer anything else of substance. For that, it will always be a nonsensical gem in the history of tabloid-driven casting.

25. ‘Catwoman’ (2004)

GBS: 291.4

RT: 9%

Gruttadaro: I don’t have the words to explain this one, but I do have the video:

Yep. That is Halle Berry — ACADEMY AWARD–WINNING ACTRESS HALLE BERRY — rubbing a bunch of catnip on her face because she is a cat-woman.

24. ‘Con Air’ (1997)

GBS: 310.7

RT: 56%

Fennessey: There is no greater premise for a movie than a rogue’s gallery let loose upon the world. Seven Samurai. The Wild Bunch. Ocean’s Ocho. Con Air is the most self-consciously rogue of all galleries with the easiest elevator pitch in modern movie history: Good-hearted, wrongly convicted Nicolas Cage must battle a plane full of felons. Con Air has had a fascinating life cycle that has toggled from anticipated to celebrated to mocked to mockingly celebrated. At its best, it mixes knowingly schlocky sub-Seagal dialogue, mad-eyed commitment from John "Cyrus the Virus" Malkovich, and director Simon West’s operatic camp approach to set pieces. Put the bunny back in the box. And remember this: Just a year removed from his Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas, Cage starred in Con Air and Face/Off, which opened IN THE SAME MONTH in 1997. This is like Pablo Prigioni scoring 50 points in consecutive NBA Finals games.

23. ‘The Room’ (2003)

GBS: 330.6

RT: 32%

Zoladz: There are bad movies, there are really bad movies, and then there is The Room, a film so iconic in its terribleness that it has become — on the midnight movie circuit at least — one of the most beloved movies of the century. For one thing, it’s spawned one of the most hotly debated philosophical questions of our time: Is Tommy Wiseau fucking with us? The low-budget melodrama seems to have been made in complete earnestness and with a lack of comprehension about how awful it is — and yet Wiseau has spun the whole ordeal into an enduring stardom that will become only more entrenched this December when James Franco’s hotly anticipated The Disaster Artist is released. There is already award-season buzz for Franco’s film (in which he plays Wiseau), and even the vaguest possibility that a movie about The Room could be nominated for an Oscar somehow makes the whole Good Bad Movie cycle complete, proving how slippery the cinematic distinction is between treasure and trash.

22. ‘Troll 2’ (1990)

GBS: 403.7

RT: 6%

Gruttadaro: Troll 2 is maybe the movie that best exemplifies this genre’s ability to conjure cult followings. Troll 2 is quite possibly the worst movie ever made — it sounds like a sequel to a 1986 movie called Troll, and yet it is not connected to that film in any way; it’s not a sequel at all — but a fervent movement arose in appreciation of Troll 2’s badness. Long after the movie should have drifted into obscurity, screenings were being held in cities like Los Angeles and New York, and fans of the campy fantasy movie packed in to revel in the schlock. In 2009, Michael Stephenson, child star of Troll 2, went on to make a documentary about the movie’s second life as a cult classic called Best Worst Movie, which got pretty solid reviews. That right there is a story with a happy ending, which also proves how much value a Good Bad Movie can have.

21. ‘Road House’ (1989)

GBS: 453.8

RT: 38%

Gruttadaro: People in the ’80s had so much irrational confidence and Patrick Swayze had so much juice that they literally said, "OK, let’s act like America is a country where club bouncers are revered and renown like celebrities, and where small towns completely lack police departments and bend to the whims of whoever is the wealthiest." That’s Road House. Swayze plays Dalton, a martial arts expert who also has a philosophy degree from NYU (just incredible). Dalton is a mercenarial "cooler" who goes town to town cleaning up dive bars, and his latest challenge is Jasper, Missouri, a town that’s being terrorized by a businessman who literally drives a monster truck through a car dealership parking lot. Do I need to write more? I could — like, 10,000 words more. But I think you get the picture why this movie is so exhilaratingly bad/good.

20. ‘Fear’ (1996)

GBS: 462.2

RT: 39%

Dobbins: Say the words "roller coaster scene" to any woman in her 30s and you will understand the role this film played in a generation’s sexual awakening. It is a truly preposterous two minutes: the awkward, Lifetime-y glances between Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon, the Sundays’ "Wild Horses" soundtrack, Reese’s li’l ’90s kilt, and also the part where the roller coaster’s down-swoop is used as a clumsy visual metaphor for an orgasm. I’m so embarrassed, but also it’s important — that’s what this list is about, right?

19. ‘Mortal Kombat’ (1995)

GBS: 639.3

RT: 34%

Rob Harvilla: Should we start with the music, or end with the music, or talk only about the music? Fact: This goofball cinematic reimagining of the mega-popular and absurdly gory arcade game has the third-best soundtrack of the ’90s, behind Pulp Fiction and The Crow. This is the reason. If you’ve never exercised to that gonzo techno earworm (courtesy of the Immortals, an offshoot of industrial-dirtbag crew Lords of Acid), can you even claim to be truly fit? As for the film itself, it’s Big Trouble in Little China if it took itself way too seriously, an uneasy mix of ludicrous fight scenes and Very Bad Acting. Linden Ashby is bad as pompous movie star Johnny Cage. Bridgette Wilson (a.k.a. Mrs. Pete Sampras, and the romantic lead in Billy Madison) is worse as scowling cop Sonya Blade, in a role originally slated for (!?!?) Cameron Diaz. And here is a GIF depicting what happens if you ask Christopher Lambert what it was like to play Raiden, god of thunder and wooden dialogue:

This is very arguably the best video-game movie ever made, which gives you some idea of how dire the video-game-movie industry situation really is.

18. ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’ (1993)

GBS: 640.8

RT: 39%

Luckerson: I’m not sure there’s ever been a good film that had a title ending with "The Movie," but this one embraces its craven capitalist mission so fully — to make the most badass, butt-rock-fueled episode of Power Rangers ever — that there is absolutely no reason to hate or even dislike it. What exactly could you be looking for in a film called Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie besides cringey one-liners ("Have a nice trip, see you next fall" remains a go-to insult of mine during street fights), a legitimately sinister villain in Ivan Ooze, plentiful Bulk and Skull high jinks, sky-surfing soundtracked by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and honest-to-goodness ninjas? The only person with any right to disparage this movie is the Black Ranger, who got saddled with a frog when they upgraded Zords near the film’s climax.

17. ‘Deep Blue Sea’ (1999)

GBS: 698.2

RT: 57%

Luckerson: This film can be distilled into a two-minute scene that has become one of the most iconic movie deaths of all time. Samuel L. Jackson, in a stirring portrayal of Samuel L. Jackson, is giving a motivational speech to the few comrades who have survived at an aquatic research facility overrun with three genetically modified super-intelligent sharks. As his resonant words reach their crescendo, a poorly rendered CG shark leaps out of a nearby pool and devours him.

It’s a baffling moment in a movie that careens from one unlikely set piece to the next. (Remember when LL Cool J set a shark on fire in the water for eating his bird?) Every creative decision in this movie feels like it was made with the hope of one-upping Jaws. Instead, Deep Blue Sea turns killer sharks into an inadvertent punch line. A really, really funny punch line.

16. ‘Honey’ (2003)

GBS: 719

RT: 21%

Kate Knibbs: I’m not going to sit here on the internet and lie to you and tell you that Honey is a well-made film with believable acting or a plot that makes sense. But I will tell you that the movie, about Jessica Alba as a down-on-her-luck choreographer with a dream, is a delightful early-aughts music artifact. Not only does it feature a surprisingly meaty cameo by Missy Elliott and a full-on supporting role for Lil’ Romeo, it also features appearances from Ginuwine, Jadakiss, Blaque, Tweet, and Sheek Louch. Also, it costars Mekhi Phifer, who is a good actor who deserves a better career than he’s had. It’s the perfect movie to put on in the background if you’re having a ’00s theme party, and Jessica Alba’s abs remain an inspiration to us all.

15. ‘xXx’ (2002)

GBS: 788.3

RT: 48%

Gruttadaro: This movie is for the group of people who watched other action movies and exclaimed, "THIS ISN’T EXTREME ENOUGH, BRO!" xXx is what would happen if Mission: Impossible and the X Games had sex. Xander Cage (A-plus name) does everything Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourne would do, just more EXTREME and with more bravado — because that’s what we all needed in 2002. Vin Diesel snowboards, skateboards, dirt bikes, and base jumps. The opening scene is Xander (he also goes by just "X") exacting revenge on a politician who tried to ban rap music. God, it’s so good.

14. ‘No Holds Barred’ (1989)

GBS: 1,151.6

RT: 11%

Gruttadaro: This one’s tough, because it’s pretty hard to laugh at anything Hulk Hogan–related anymore. But it’s a great example of both cheesy ’80s action and a recurring miscalculation in the movie industry that maximum fame in one field will translate to the big screen seamlessly. (It happened with the Rock too.) Despite his starpower in professional wrestling, Hulk Hogan turned out to not be a fantastic film actor, though it is fun to watch him jump through the roof of a limousine, or feign shock (or is it anger? Or maybe amusement? How does one propose I read this scene?) over making one henchman poop his pants.

13. ‘Showgirls’ (1995)

GBS: 1,190.6

RT: 19%

Zoladz: Here Kyle MacLachlan, one of the stars of Showgirls, recalls watching Showgirls for the first time:

That was how much of the world felt about Paul Verhoeven’s stilted, gloriously over-the-top Razzie winner when it was first released in 1995. (It remains the only NC-17 movie to see a wide release in the U.S., and it bombed so hard at the box office that it’s probably the sole reason there haven’t been any more.) But in recent years, Showgirls has undergone a reappraisal by critics, filmmakers, and fans who believe the whole thing was just one slyly brilliant satire about the American Dream. Which, maybe it is? Kind of? But it’s also a smorgasbord of porn-worthy acting and Elizabeth Berkley’s manic, sub–Miley Cyrus gyrations, all amounting to a glittering car crash of a movie that you can’t take your eyes off of for a second.

12. ‘She’s All That’ (1999)

GBS: 1,212.3

RT: 38%

Serrano: Let me tell you just eight things about She’s All That: (1) It’s one of those high school movies where a really popular person starts hanging out with a less popular, less attractive person as part of a bet. (2) The less popular, less attractive person is considered less popular and less attractive only because she wears glasses and drops things while she’s walking. (3) There’s a reveal scene where we see the unattractive girl all made over and guess what: She took off her glasses so now she’s very beautiful! (4) There’s a part in it where someone gets forced to eat pubic hair in a cafeteria. (5) The most profound moment happens during a scene where a guy plays hacky sack onstage as part of an impromptu art performance. (6) Lil’ Kim and Usher have small parts in it. (7) It ends with that "Kiss Me" song by Sixpence None the Richer. (8) It’s perfect.

11. ‘The Beach’ (2000)

GBS: 1,420

RT: 19%

Michael Baumann: This is a so-bad-it’s-good movie because its components are so good. Director Danny Boyle? Good filmmaker. Story by Alex Garland? Good writer. Leonardo DiCaprio? Good lead actor. Tilda Swinton? Good creepy bad guy. Guillaume Canet? Good ineffectual French douchecanoe.

The Beach didn’t age well because, by dint of coming out in that beautiful, fleeting moment between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, it has a frosted-tipped, optimistic aesthetic that makes it read like an LFO music video. But really, it’s a utopian collectivist vision: We could be a polyglot socialist society of beautiful people who do nothing but fish, get high, and play cricket on the beach, but our perfect world was ruined by pettiness, deceit, greed, and the arrogance of clumsy American men who think the rules don’t apply to them. In that respect, The Beach is a prescient and essential piece of pre–War on Terror, pre-2008 economic collapse filmmaking, perhaps the greatest piece of turn-of-the-century cultural criticism.

10. ‘Speed 2: Cruise Control’ (1997)

GBS: 1,558

RT: 3%

Justin Charity: 1997 gave us Titanic. It also gave us Speed 2: Cruise Control.

I don’t want to hoodwink anyone here: Let me be perfectly clear that Speed 2 is a movie that one comes to love at an impressionable age only because they were overexposed to its syndication on cable in the early 2000s. It is by no means a good movie, but it is a comfortable movie. It’s a movie whose goofy narrative beats rock me into a state of complacent bliss. Rarely am I able to follow a plot so faithfully despite its making no sense whatsoever. Willem Dafoe hijacks a cruise ship off the coast of Saint Martin, and weary sequel passenger Sandra Bullock teams up with Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) and one of the Lost Boys (Jason Patric) to ground the ship safely before Dafoe — who’s a bit daffy and vague about all this business — can crash them into an oil tanker. This is all well and good as an excuse to have Dafoe torment three armed and attractive screen actors in a novelty setting for two hours, though it falls apart as a proper conflict. The whole movie feels like a giant misunderstanding: of what made the original Speed so thrilling, of why people love single-setting action flicks, of Sandra Bullock’s value as a lead. But it’s funny to watch this misunderstanding play out as a sincerely dumb send-up of the original Speed that Lorne Michaels might’ve dreamed up first.

9. ‘Over the Top’ (1987)

GBS: 1,596

RT: 43%

Serrano: Sylvester Stallone’s movie characters have faced a lot of impossible things. They’ve stared down a foreign super boxer built in a laboratory (Rocky IV), an endless supply of Vietnamese soldiers (Rambo: First Blood Part II), gravity (Cliffhanger), the industrial prison complex (Lock Up), and more and more and more. None of those things, though, was ever as impossible a task as what he faced in Over the Top, which was: rekindling his relationship with the son he abandoned as a baby by being really, really, really good at arm wrestling. That’s the real and actual plot. And here’s the even better part: IT FUCKING WORKS. After having been gone for 10 years, he shows back up, hangs out with his son for a couple of days, wins an arm-wrestling tournament, and then they’re best friends. They bond so thoroughly over arm wrestling, in fact, that neither one of them seems to care that the kid’s mother dies while they’re hanging out, which is incredible.

8. ‘Final Destination’ (2000)

GBS: 1,657.8

RT: 34%

Claire McNear: Someday you will die, and it will probably happen in a boring way. You’ll trip over your rug or your feeble immune system will give out or you’ll slip on some ice and bonk your head and that’ll be that. What Final Destination proposes is … what if your death was intensely, acutely interesting? What if death itself were coming for you, but it cared so much that it wasn’t content to mix up a garden-variety aneurysm or E. coli outbreak? Final Destination is basically a rom-com starring lovely young people and the Grim Reaper, who will do whatever he/it (??) can to impress them. I have recounted characters’ deaths to concerned loved ones in the breathless over-detail that a 5-year-old might use to describe a particularly riveting playdate. "She filled her coffee cup with vodka … but it was cold so it cracked the cup … and then it left a trail of vodka … and the computer sparked … and then suddenly she was on the ground and she reached for a towel but there was a knife on it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Final Destination is all you’ll ever need.

7. ‘Anaconda’ (1997)

GBS: 1,681

RT: 38%

McNear: What if Brazil … but bad? What if snakes … but big? What if J.Lo … but 1997? Jon Voight gives an all-time performance, Danny Trejo shows up, Ice Cube does his thing. The villains are the villainiest and the snake-crushings are the snake-crushingest. The special effects have aged like … well, not fine wine, but like "H.A.G.S." messages in your sixth-grade yearbook. How sweet, were things ever so simple, look how hard they tried, etc. It’s an entire movie of yelling BUT WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, DON’T GO IN THE WATER, NO, STOP, LOOK OUT at your TV — which, really, is what all the best horror movies should aspire to.

6. ‘White Chicks’ (2004)

GBS: 1,789.1

RT: 15%

Luckerson: The early 2000s featured a curious comedic subgenre of "cops dressing in drag for weeks/months to solve cases" that probably wouldn’t fly in 2017. White Chicks was the most absurd of these films. Disguised as the mega-rich Brittany and Tiffany Wilson (complete with ghoulish whiteface), FBI agents Shawn and Marlon Wayans are taking such obvious swings at issues of race, class, and privilege that you’d be hard-pressed to classify this film as "social commentary." Forget the message and stay for the musical numbers, including the breakdance battle between the Wayans Crew and another cadre of New York socialites, and most iconically, Terry Crews belting out "A Thousand Miles" with the passion of a thousand teenagers. Mean Girls may be the iconic 2004 movie about the white-girl experience, but White Chicks, released just two months later, is broad and dumb and obvious enough to make you laugh in spite of yourself.

5. ‘Batman & Robin’ (1997)

GBS: 1,918.2

RT: 11%

Dobbins: "Look, I apologize," director Joel Schumacher told Vice recently. "I want to apologize to every fan that was disappointed because I think I owe them that." That’s fine. It’s probably wise to apologize to superhero fans, because they are a deeply vengeful community with a disproportionate influence on internet message boards. But we’re not here today to apologize; we are here to honor the movie that asked George Clooney to wear rubber bat-nipples and cast a damn ice luge as a villain. Alicia Silverstone as an extremely miscast Batgirl! Uma Thurman as a poisoned vine making out with people so they die! This movie is a two-hour-long recreation of an acting class exercise: "Now imagine you are a cartoon character! Feel the bright colors; feel the little squiggly lines that are meant to convey slapstick humor." I vividly remember arguing for the excellence of this movie, because I was 12, in love with Chris O’Donnell, and dumb. It’s OK, Joel Schumacher; preteen girls and train wreck enthusiasts have your back.

4. ‘Masters of the Universe’ (1987)

GBS: 2,845.7

RT: 17%

Gruttadaro: This 1987 adaptation of a Mattel toy line has everything a Good Bad Movie needs: Dolph Lundgren, a villainous turn by a future Oscar-nominated actor, an utter lack of a budget, an astonishing amount of terrible special effects, and an ability to truly make you question how the movie was ever green-lit. From conception to execution, everything seems like an unmitigated mistake. Taken as a whole, though, it’s just a remarkable thing to behold.

3. ‘Congo’ (1995)

GBS: 3,323.9

RT: 23%

Fennessey: A signature trope of the Good Bad Movie is the bland white guy who is ostensibly the star but has been completely blotted out by the miasma engulfing his surroundings. Think Thomas Jane in Deep Blue Sea, or Freddie Prinze Jr. in She’s All That. In the case of Congo — a gloriously stupid Michael Crichton adaptation that trivializes civil war, animal rights, and the search for King Solomon’s mines — that guy is Dylan Walsh. Surrounding Walsh, and obviating his entire existence, is a ludicrously talented cast devouring a ham sandwich of a script artisanally crafted by Oscar-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley. Laura Linney tightens her ponytail as heiress-archaeologist Dr. Karen Ross, Ernie Hudson chomps his way through 10,000 cigars as Captain Munro Kelly, and Tim Curry does career-best/worst work as mythology-hunting explorer Herkermer Homolka. These folks quest to the titular African region with Walsh and Amy, a gorilla with advanced learning that allows her to communicate via a sign-language-assisted speaking computer. Seriously.

Congo had a long run as a "It’s 4 p.m., what’s on HBO?" movie that led to countless viewings for a latchkey teen like me. There are still remnants of it — particularly Delroy Lindo’s "Stop. Eating. My. Sesame Cake." rant — that have etched themselves in the creases of my brain. Nothing says good-bad like unforgettable, inexplicable dialogue, gorilla warfare, and Tim Curry.

2. ‘Wild Wild West’ (1999)

GBS: 3,425.6

RT: 17%

Gruttadaro: In 1999, Will Smith was the biggest movie star in Hollywood. By then, Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh were already Oscar winners. Salma Hayek was Salma Hayek. What could possibly screw up a movie featuring those heavy hitters? Turns out, a gigantic mechanical tarantula. Wild Wild West is an epic misfire with overly bombastic special effects and next to no coherence. Watching it now, it may be the film that is most capable of eliciting the question, "What were these people thinking?" But all of that chaos — bearing witness to such an utter failure in filmmaking — makes for quite a fun viewing experience. Plus, the Will Smith–Sisqo collab that accompanied the movie, "Wild Wild West," is an iconic BANGER.

1. ‘Godzilla’ (1998)

GBS: 3,480.6

RT: 16%

Luckerson: The first major Hollywood adaptation of the iconic Japanese franchise transformed Godzilla from the bipedal terror of Tokyo into a Jurassic Park stunt double that really, really wants to have babies in Madison Square Garden. Yes, this movie has a shoestring-thin plot barely held together by Matthew Broderick and two Simpsons cast regulars (Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer). Sure, the special effects — that mostly involve a giant lizard’s feet smashing Manhattan taxis — no longer impress. Fine, the idea that a horde of baby Godzillas trapped in the Garden would raid the concessions stand for popcorn may not pass biological scrutiny. I don’t care — Godzilla, the movie, was as big and dumb as its title character, but for a generation of reptile-obsessed children, it was also thrilling. Director Roland Emmerich has said kids love it more than his other films. I, for one, am still waiting for the full trilogy that was originally planned.