c/bad-movie-night

The $5 VHS tape that saved my movie night in Akron

I grabbed a beat-up copy of 'Troll 2' from a thrift shop last weekend for five bucks, figured it would be a laugh. The tracking was all messed up and the audio dipped every few minutes, but somehow that made the group howl even harder than the actual dialogue did. Has anyone else had a worn tape add more fun than a clean digital copy ever could?

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johnson.ryan•2d ago

Why does nobody talk about the 90 minute rule for bad movie picks?

Used to let everyone take turns choosing whatever they wanted. That led to too many 2 hour plus snoozers where half the group checked out by minute 45. Switched to a hard 90 minute cutoff after a brutal viewing of a 2 hour 40 minute CGI mess last month in Denver. Now we only pick flicks that fit that length, and we get like three movies in a single sitting with better energy. Anyone else run a time limit or do you just power through anything?

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nora10•2d ago

Used to pause for snack refills, now I prep a snack table before the movie

I got tired of missing the good scenes while grabbing chips and dip, especially during the so-bad-they're-good parts. So now I set up a little table with bowls and drinks before we hit play, takes like 5 minutes. We watched Birdemic last Friday and nobody got up once, which was wild because that movie is 90 minutes of nonsense. Anyone else got a pre-movie ritual that keeps the group locked in?

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elliotc10•4d ago

That dollar store stop motion app took me 6 hours to figure out for a 3 minute movie

I was trying to make a silly intro for our monthly bad movie night and the app kept deleting my frames randomly, so I ended up redoing everything twice before I finally saved each frame as a photo and used a free editor instead, has anyone else had worse luck with those cheap animation apps?

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david821•4d ago

Hit 52 bad movie nights this weekend, now I need a new system

We just finished our 52nd Bad Movie Night, one every Friday for a full year. That's 52 terrible movies with the same three friends in my basement in Columbus. We started with The Room and somehow kept going through things like Birdemic and a VHS copy of a movie called 'Rats: Night of Terror.' The milestone surprised me because I didn't think we would make it past month two honestly. Now I need fresh picks because we've burned through all the obvious classics. What's your go-to source for finding hidden gems that are bad in a fun way, not just boring bad? Has anyone else hit a big number like this and hit a wall?

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jesse84•4d ago

The moment I realized I was picking the wrong movies for game night

For like 2 years I've been the one in charge of our Friday bad movie picks. I always went for the big name disasters, think Tommy Wiseau or Neil Breen level stuff. Last month we watched 'Birdemic' for the fifth time and I noticed everyone was on their phones by the halfway point. A buddy finally said, 'Dude, we've seen this one so much we can quote the bad CGI birds.' That hit me. I was stuck on famous cult trash when the real gold is in obscure straight to DVD stuff nobody has ever heard of. Now I dig through Tubi's random horror section and find these gems no one knows about. The group actually talks during the movie now instead of groaning. Has anyone else hit a wall with the classics and found a better source for truly weird finds?

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jordan653•4d ago

Hot take: The 4K remaster made this classic cheese fest worse somehow

I popped in the new 4K disc of that 80s horror flop for movie night last Friday and the cleaned up footage just kills the charm, you can see every fake cobweb and the stunt wires are glowing. My buddy Mike called it 'too crisp to laugh at' and now we're stuck picking which streaming version has the worst color grade for our next bad movie marathon. Anyone else find that fancy restorations ruin the fun of a terrible flick, or are we just weird about our garbage?

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holly_gonzalez61•5d ago

Found out the shark in that one movie was a real dead one, not animatronics

Tbh I was watching the special features on the 1975 Jaws rip-off and read that they literally used a real rotting shark corpse for half the scenes, has anyone else stumbled on a behind the scenes fact that made the bad movie even weirder?

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dylan_patel•8d ago

That $45 haunted house VHS from the flea market was a total bust

Picked up this old horror tape in Pompano Beach over the weekend, thought it'd be a riot for the group. Turned out to be 90 minutes of static and one guy in a cheap mask waving at the camera. Anyone else ever gamble on a mystery tape and lose that bad?

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fiona502•9d ago

I finally saw the worst shark movie ever made and it's not the one you think

Last Saturday we rented a DVD from the library because the streaming apps were all out of the usual junk. It was a 2011 direct to video thing called 'Shark Lake 2' or maybe it was 'Lake Shark' the cover was so blurry it was hard to tell. The whole movie takes place at a public pool in Ohio. The shark is clearly a rubber puppet on a stick and at one point the lifeguard wrestles it for like 7 minutes. My buddy Tim timed it with his phone. The dialogue is all ADR'd and the actors mouths don't match any of the words coming out. We couldn't stop laughing but also we had to pause twice because the sound mixing was so bad we missed actual plot points. Has anyone else found a hidden gem in the library bargain bin that made your group question your own taste in movies?

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fiona_scott44•9d ago

Hit 150 bad movies logged for our Friday crew

Started keeping a shared list last January for our Friday night picks, and this week we crossed 150 total. Turns out the sweet spot for a memorable bad movie night is when the DVD menu glitches on purpose, like the copy of 'Sharkenstein' we got from a pawn shop in Reno. Anyone else keep a running tally or just grab whatever looks terrible on streaming?

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leo238•9d ago

When a buddy said my movie picks were just noise, it stuck with me

Back in 2017, a friend told me I only chose movies with crazy explosions or weird plots, nothing that actually made us laugh together. I started asking people what they hated about a film before adding it to the night, and now we do a quick vote on three options. Has anyone else changed their whole selection process after one comment like that?

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charlie_lane85•10d ago

Picked the sci-fi disaster over the classic horror for movie night, big mistake

Last Friday we had 9 people over and I had to choose between this 80s alien puppet movie and a well-known slasher flick. I went with the sci-fi one because the cover art looked hilariously bad, but it was just boring static shots for the first hour. Everyone kept checking their phones until my buddy finally yelled 'put on something with blood!' We switched halfway and the slasher had us laughing at the terrible deaths instead. Has anyone else let a cool poster trick them into a dud that killed the whole vibe?

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johnfoster•10d ago

Rant: my buddy's 3 a.m. rant about The Room made me hate movie night

Me and this guy Skip from the warehouse were talking pickups and he mentioned he watched The Room alone, no beer, no crowd. He said the worst part wasn't Tommy Wiseau's acting, it was sitting there with nobody to laugh at the spoon pictures or the "you're tearing me apart" scene. That hit me because we always do Bad Movie Night with 6 to 8 people at my place in Tacoma, and I realized the movies aren't the fun part, the group is. Has anyone else tried watching one of these classics solo and found it just falls flat, or do some of you actually prefer the quiet viewing?

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kim.wren•10d ago

Update: got 11 people to watch Samurai Cop last Friday

I've been trying to get my crew into so-bad-they're-good flicks for years, and last Friday it finally clicked at Mike's garage in Akron. We fired up Samurai Cop on a 20 inch CRT, and the dubbed lines plus that hair had everyone losing it by minute 10. Even my buddy Dave, who usually hates subtitles, was quoting "I'm gonna take you to the dentist" for two hours after. Has anyone else had a first-timer flip from skeptic to fan mid-movie, or do I just have weird friends?

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sagey69•11d ago

The Room vs Birdemic, which one deserves the crown?

My crew had a huge fight last Friday over what to screen for our 50th bad movie night in Austin. Half of us said The Room is the gold standard for riffing, the other half swore Birdemic has better unintentional laughs with those terrible CGI birds. We finally picked Birdemic and honestly the first 20 minutes were a slog, but once the flying cardboard showed up everyone lost it. Has your group ever split on a classic and switched sides mid-watch?

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richardfox•13d ago

I used to love MST3K but lately I just prefer the real bad movies with friends

Back in the 90s I used to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 every weekend with my buddy Dave. But after we started doing our own bad movie nights a couple years ago I realized the robot jokes actually get in the way. Last Friday we put on this 1989 horror movie called "The Terror Within" and the silence made it way funnier. You hear every bad line delivery and see every goofy prop up close. With MST3K you miss half that stuff cause they're talking over it. Plus when we're just hanging out we can pause and laugh at our own dumb comments. Has anyone else moved from watching riffed versions to just raw bad movies with a group?

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tylerw92•14d ago

Took me 3 tries to find a bad movie that actually worked for a group night

Last month I grabbed a movie called 'The Room' because everyone says it's the ultimate bad movie. First attempt, my friends just got bored and pulled out their phones after 20 minutes. Second try I picked 'Birdemic: Shock and Terror' and people started making jokes but nobody laughed at the bad CGI birds. Finally on the third night I threw on 'Samurai Cop' and within 10 minutes we were howling at the terrible acting and random plot holes. It took me 3 whole weekends to figure out that not every so-called 'so bad it's good' movie works for a group. What bad movie actually got your whole crew laughing? I'm looking for more sure things.

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matthewperry•15d ago

Hit my 50th bad movie night last weekend

Had a milestone last Saturday. 50th bad movie night with the same group of buddies. We started back in 2018 after I found a copy of The Room at a thrift store in Cleveland. Now we rotate who picks and we have a trophy for the worst of the worst. Anyone else track how many nights they've done?

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nathan_foster60•18d ago

Hit 500 views on our Bad Movie Night channel last night

My buddy and I started a little YouTube channel where we riff on terrible movies from the 80s and 90s. Last night I checked and we hit exactly 500 views on our episode about "The Room" knockoffs. That number surprised me because we only have 12 subscribers and I figured nobody was watching. It made me wonder if any of you have posted clips from your bad movie marathons online and gotten any unexpected feedback.

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tarab54•20d ago

My coworker told me I watch bad movies wrong and now I can't stop thinking about it

I was on break last week and mentioned I was looking forward to Friday night because my friend picked out The Room for our group to watch. This younger guy I work with, maybe 25, looked at me and said "you're watching it wrong if you're just watching it at home. You need to do it in a theater with props and people yelling." At first I thought he was being snobby, but then he explained how he goes to these midnight showings where everyone throws spoons and yells lines. I've been doing bad movie night for maybe 10 years now, just me and a few friends on the couch with pizza. His thing sounds like a completely different experience. Has anyone else gone from a home setup to a theater event? Does the crowd energy really change how you see the movie?

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fiona_scott44•22d ago

30 bucks for a used DVD of The Room, best bad movie night purchase I ever made

I saw people online raving about The Room for years but never watched it. Found a copy at a thrift store in Cleveland for $3 and figured why not. Threw it on with my buddy Dave last Friday, and we couldn't stop laughing at how terrible the acting and plot were. I looked up the cost online and saw it goes for $30 on disc sometimes, which is insane for something so poorly made. Anybody else have a cheap bad movie that became a regular at your viewing parties?

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jesse84•22d ago

Used to hate zombie movies until I watched Dead Alive last Friday

I always thought they were all just slow boring Romero flicks but my buddy forced me to watch Dead Alive and the lawnmower scene had me dying laughing. Has anyone else found a "bad" movie that totally changed their mind about a whole genre?

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caseyw12•22d ago

Vent: That $5 movie from the dollar bin at the gas station in Iowa broke our whole Bad Movie Night group for a month.

I grabbed some random 2006 straight-to-dvd horror flick called "Blood Harvest Moon" or something and it was so laughably terrible with that one scene where the scarecrow falls over mid-chase that nobody could agree on what to watch next and now half the crew wont even pick the next movie, has anyone else had a single bad movie derail their whole group like that?

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jessicamiller•23d ago

Had a guy at a flea market in Ohio tell me my favorite bad movie was actually a masterpiece

I was digging through VHS tapes last weekend at this huge flea market outside Columbus, and this older dude saw me holding up a copy of "The Room" and just started laughing. He said "You know, that movie is so bad it circles back to genius, like a car crash you can't look away from." We ended up talking for like 20 minutes about how Tommy Wiseau's accent makes every line gold. Anyone else have a stranger give you a new way to look at a cheesy flick?

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