A.V. Club Head Writer Ranks the Best-Worst Movies

When A.V. Club head writer Nathan Rabin launched his "My Year of Flops" column in June 2007, he uncorked heady vitriol in the direction of Cameron Crowe's career-damning "Elizabethtown" (an opinion he later recanted somewhat). But he also hatched a recurring series that was destined for paperback companionship.

More than three years later, Scribner allowed the critic-cum-author a chance to compile some of his column-sized reflective treatises on cinema's most baffling disgraces ("Heaven's Gate," "Howard the Duck," et al), along with some original essays, for the just-published "My Year of Flops."

And whereas Rabin's ranking system totems his selections on a scale of "Failure," "Fiasco" or "Secret Success," we were curious to explore the mushy middle -- movies that are neither artfully bad nor willfully cheap, but are driven into fabled "best-worst" territory by the sheer inspired obliviousness of their filmmakers, cast and crew.

After the jump, the Chicago-based cultural analyst/satirist offers five examples of big screen debacles that have unwittingly charmed their way into his personal favorites, including a look at the phenomenon of the archetypal best-worst movie, "Troll 2."

Boat Trip (2003)
One that I have been quietly, guiltily beating the drum for as long as I've seen it is "Boat Trip," starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as a man who tries to get over his heartbreak by going accidentally on a gay cruise ship with his best friend, Horatio Sanz. And hilarity ensues! The world did not seem to appreciate the subversive, tricky, ironic genius of "Boat Trip," but I saw it and said, "Oh my God, this is a pitch-perfect parody of these desperate, wacky, convoluted, 1980s sex comedies."

And one of the things that I think makes a great-bad movie a great-bad movie is a sort of lunatic conviction, where the actors commit wholeheartedly to it, as if appearing in "Citizen Kane" or some sort of Martin Scorsese epic. And Cuba Gooding Jr. is sort of the king at committing wholeheartedly to projects that no one in their right mind would appear in, let alone give their heart and soul to. God bless Cuba Gooding Jr. He gives it his all in "Boat Trip."

Disco Godfather (1979)
The great thing about ["Disco Godfather"] is Rudy Ray Moore, who's like a god to me. He decided he wanted to go mainstream. He was gonna make a PG-rated disco movie just like "Saturday Night Fever." And to make it even more palatable and wholesome, he was gonna have an anti-PCP message.

It's not like pot, where if you have a completely ridiculous scene involving pot, people are gonna call bullsh**. But if you have a ridiculous PCP scene, it's not like a whole bunch of moviegoers are like, "Now, I smoke a lot of PCP, and I don't think that this is an accurate representation of what it's like to smoke PCP for the first time."

Every scene is jaw-dropping in its miscalculation. And it doesn't even have a happy ending. That's how bad-good he was at making a family-disco-anti-PCP musical.


The Room (2003)
What makes it great is that [director] Tommy Wiseau thought he was making "Last Tango in Paris." He thought he was making this really personal, powerful meditation on the faithlessness of women. And there's this tragic-yet-hilarious gulf between the film he thought was making and the film he actually did make.

There's almost a sad vulnerability to it, where he really is laying his soul bare, and he also seemed to overlap pretty tremendously with a Cinemax soft-core erotic-thriller circa 1988. A lot of people are like that, where their imaginations or their psyches have been colonized by popular culture. As one of my friends pointed out, it not only seems to be made by someone who's never seen a movie before or a screenplay, but it appears to be made by someone who's never actually interacted with human beings, the product of an alien intelligence.
The Apple (1980)
I bought it on a videocassette at a thrift store, and I'd never heard of it before. It's this very blatant attempt to make a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" for the disco era. But the guy who directed it, Menachem Golan, who I think is a warped, sort-of genius in his own right, would sell movies based on their title and their poster.

Menachem Golan, who was Israeli, made Israeli-type movies. They're shameless and aggressive and pushy and in your face from start to finish. And according to Hollywood legend, the audience at the preview was so horrified by "The Apple" that they hurled their promotional copies of the soundtrack at the screen. It's also kind of shameless to name a musical that shares a name with the Beatles' record label. It's more "1984" than "54," but god bless it. It became a much bigger cult movie than I ever imagined."
TROLL 2 (1990)
"Best Worst Movie" ["Troll 2" star Michael Stephenson's 2009 documentary on the film's cult following] is such a great movie, because when you watch "Troll 2," you think, How on Earth did this happen? Who are all these people? Are they all completely insane? And you watch the movie, and you're like, Yes, they all were completely insane. The story behind it is even more ridiculous and sad and funny and larger than life than you could have imagined.