The last entry covered the Category I bad movie, also known as the run-of-the-mill bad movie. Today we discuss the Category II bad movie, which pushes past the mediocre-bad barrier all the way through to funny-bad:

• Type: Category II
• Also known as: The “so bad it’s funny” movie
• Example: Hercules in New York
• Circumstances for watching: Inebriation, being in college, watching MST3K (preferably all three)

If Category I movies are the cinematic equivalent of background noise, the Category II movie represents one of those awesome and rare moments when you discover that the noise is the signal. As in, oh my God, that’s not pigeon shit — that’s the temperature of the universe! Now in the case of the Cosmic Background Radiation, it takes specialized equipment to tease out the structure behind the noise, such as SIS junction mixers and sub-1K pumped liquid helium refrigeration systems. Likewise, Category IIs are best observed with specialized instrumentation: namely, a healthy supply of mind-altering drugs.

In other words, a Category II is bad enough that it actually might have some merit, although not, perhaps, the merit that the filmmakers intended. Category IIs are usually worse than the typical Category I by most criteria: the acting is worse, the dialogue lamer, the plot more preposterous, the special effects cheaper, and so on. And yet when viewed in a certain light, the Category II can become more than the sum of its parts.^[1] This is not to say that Category Is can’t have Category II-like moments. The key difference is that watching a Category I movie deadens your soul, while watching a Category II movie merely deadens your brain.

Because they have the potential to be entertaining, Category IIs might at first glance seem to be “better” than Category Is. But that’s the insidious thing about the Category IIs; they’re really just better at suckering you into watching fundamentally piss-poor entertainment. My attitude towards Category IIs has evolved over the years, but right now it’s summed up by the classic Onion article, “Aging Gen-Xer Doesn’t Find Bad Movies Funny Anymore“:

“I used to be able to take great pleasure in not enjoying things,” Erdman said. “But these days, the only things I like are things I like.”

Given that our fellow human beings have produced so many great works of art, and a nearly unlimited number of really good ones, why bother with the stuff that sucks? A little cheesiness never hurt anyone, but when you get right down to it, life is waaay too short to waste watching truly bad movies.^[2] 😉

1. Category IIs are good candidates to become “cult” movies, although this is not to say that all cult movies are Category IIs.

2. Notice how I cleverly buried the key point of this entire series of essays right in the middle of the text? You journalists out there can take your inverted pyramid style and suck it!