It’s true, you have to know what’s bad in order to know what’s good.

My friends and I have long been aficionados of the worst that’s cinema has to offer. Before the advent of Mystery Science Theater, we even had a Bad Film Club which would meet on a monthly basis, compare two films of a similar theme, and then vote on such finer points as worst direction, worst special effects, least convincing scientific explanation or theory, and so forth.

Here, then, is a compendium of a bunch of my favorites, arranged in a roughly downward spiral, each one being successively worse than the one that preceded it. As you get towards the bottom half of the list, this creates a certain delirious “circling the drain” effect.

Many of these were difficult to find, and there are significant omissions I would’ve preferred to include, but this is what was freely available on YouTube at the time. For example, the WORST film ever made, in my opinion, is PSYCHED BY THE 4-D WITCH, which was released on DVD as a double feature with the current dead-last entry, MONSTER A GO-GO, but it’s nowhere to be found, probably due to “adult subject matter” and extensive nipple shots.

So enjoy – if that’s the word for it – this voyage to the bottom of the barrel.