MOVIES THAT ARE SO BAD THEY'RE GOOD
MOVIES SO BAD THEY'RE GOOD
DOLLMAN (1991)
Thirteen inches with an attitude. Brick Bardo is a hard-boiled cop from another planet who finds himself miniaturized on Earth.
This is peak Albert Pyun—gritty, weird, and surprisingly violent for a movie about a guy the size of a GI Joe.
What makes Dollman a dystopian masterpiece isn't just the 13-inch height—it's the Groover, Bardo’s massive hand-cannon that literally vaporizes anyone unfortunate enough to stand in its path.
To pull this off in 1991, they relied on old-school practical magic.
They used "forced perspective" sets and oversized props to make Tim Thomerson look tiny while keeping the grime of the Bronx feeling dangerously real.
But the lore gets deeper. Bardo eventually stepped into the ultimate B-movie multiverse in Dollman vs. Demonic Toys.
It’s a crossover that feels like a fever dream, pitting our pint-sized lawman against a possessed teddy bear and a killer baby doll.
FORTRESS (1992)
If you think modern prisons are tough, you haven't seen the "Men-Tel" maximum-security facility.
Set in a dystopian 2017 where a strict "one-child policy" is enforced, Christopher Lambert plays John Henry Brennick, a man imprisoned for the "crime" of a second pregnancy.
Fortress is legendary for its "Intestini-checks"—a brutal internal tracking device that causes excruciating pain or explosive death if the inmates step out of line.
The film is a masterclass in 90s industrial set design, featuring a subterranean prison that looks like a high-tech slaughterhouse where the cells are suspended over a bottomless pit.
The real standout is Kurtwood Smith (famous for his role as the villain in RoboCop, and later as the indomitable Red Forman) as the cold, calculating prison director who is literally obsessed with the inmates' dreams.
It’s a gritty, claustrophobic ride that explores the terrifying idea of corporate-owned human beings.
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINATOWN (1986)
Jack Burton is the All-American man. He might be a bit of a goofus, but he's our, timeless goofus.
Big Trouble in Little China is the ultimate "accidental" hero story.
Kurt Russell plays a truck driver who thinks he’s the star of an action movie, but he’s actually just the bumbling sidekick to the real hero, Wang Chi, who he knows from his bouts of gambling while in Chinatown in San Francisco, where the movie takes place.
Jack is a no-nonsense cowboy, who gets sucked into an ancient feud between rival gangs who also have superpowers (some of them anyway).
The film is a glorious collision of 80s Americana and Chinese dark magic. For many of us Xenials, this movie was played on repeat and quoted endlessly.
You’ve got The Three Storms (Thunder, Rain, and Lightning) causing supernatural havoc in the streets of San Francisco, and the ancient, cursed sorcerer David Lo Pan—played by the legendary James Hong—who just wants to marry a girl with green eyes so he can regain his physical form, because that's how magic works.
It's silly, its absurd, but it's also quite a good action movie beyond that, with some really great choregraphed fights and cutting edge special effects (for the time) that never get as much credit as they should.
DEATHSTALKER (1983)
There's been a few "Deathstalkers" (I recently saw the reboot and it was great), but here we are talking about the 1983 low-budget epic that started it all.
Forget the polished, poetic world of Tolkien—this isn’t a walk through Rivendell, this is a whole different vibe altogether.
This is a sweat-soaked, sword-swinging fever dream where the budget was clearly spent on hairspray and monster prosthetics rather than, you know...a coherent script.
Our "hero" is less of a chivalrous knight and more of a wandering rogue who looks like he’s about to be kicked out of a 1983 hair metal band.
But the real star is the legendary poster art, which is a total cinematic cat-fish—it promises a $100 million epic and delivers a movie that looks like it was filmed in a very dangerous backyard.
Between the literal Pig-Men, the sorcerer Munkar (who seems to be having the time of his life), and a tournament to find the "Greatest Warrior" that feels more like a chaotic Renaissance Faire brawl, it’s a pure 80s cult classic.
It’s greasy, it’s nonsensical, and it doesn’t take itself seriously for a single second—which is exactly why it’s a masterpiece.
JOHNNY MNEMONIC (1995)
Johnny Mnemonic is the peak "1995 vision of the future," where the internet looks like a bad Nintendo 64 game and the height of technology is a guy carrying a massive 320 gigabytes in his head.
In 2026, that’s barely enough for a few Call of Duty updates, but for Keanu Reeves, it’s a lethal case of "synaptic leakage" that makes him scream for room service while being hunted by the Yakuza.
This film is a glorious, glitchy mess of high-concept cyberpunk and "we have CGI at home" execution.
You’ve got a dolphin named Jones who is a world-class hacker, Dolph Lundgren playing a street-preacher assassin who looks like he wandered off the set of a Mad Max parody, and Keanu delivering lines with the intensity of a man who actually has a hard drive melting in his skull.
It’s the definitive "so bad it's good" cyberpunk trip.
