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The 9 Most Unintentionally Funny Movies Ever

Who needs Animal House when there are directors churning out comedy gold like The Happening…

  1. Star Crash (1978)

    Like one of those unbranded chocolate bars you only find in discount stores, this Italian-made space actioner has all the same ingredients as the real thing, but give it a bite and it tastes like feet. Very cheesy feet. Imagine George Lucas’ 1977 space epic recreated from memory by an amateur dramatics group, with special effects powered by a Commodore 64 and Harrison Ford’s duties taken by “The Hoff”. 

  2. Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)

    megalodonSometimes, a good-bad movie just comes together, and this blatant every-big-fish-movie-ever rip-off succeeds by aiming high, almost making it, then scattering its wreckage across six states. This boasts some of the best-worst bystander reactions to terror ever committed to film. As for the shark itself, the film-makers appear to have painted a wedding marquee grey, towed it out to sea, and dangled John Barrowman in the door flap.

  3. Nine Months (1995)

    5_largeHugh Grant’s Hollywood debut might have had the funniest script ever committed to 103 sheets of A4 but no-one laughed at the jokes. Released just after the then Mr Liz Hurley was caught in a car near Sunset Boulevard with ‘stunner-for-hire’ Divine Brown, all any film-goer could do was point at the screen and sniggerd. It didn’t help that Grant’s brand of stuttering, face-pulling English awkwardness made it look like he was constantly getting a “hummer”’ just out of shot. 

  4. The Specialist (1992)

    the_specialist_1994_1002x1500_133940When Stallone killing Eric Roberts with an exploding tea cup isn’t the highlight, you know it’s a giver. The crowning glory here is the least-sexy sex scene ever. Forget Psycho, in the 90s it was the thought of finding Sly and Sharon Stone slopping around like two oiled show-seals in your en suite that made the idea of taking a shower terrifying. Presumably the studio hoped for ‘Die Hard-on’. What they got was ‘Droop Zone’.

  5. The Giant Claw (1957)

    dulqU7parpWjIAUsCv62iFHVbGgLooking like Big Bird’s alcoholic older sister, this flying beast is the most guffaw-inducing movie monster of all time. It would have actually been scarier if they’d just filmed the puppeteer’s bare hand floating through the air, crushing buildings, and sitting nonchalantly on the White House picking its nails. As it is, the creature’s about as intimidating as Justin Bieber’s ball-sack.

  6. Pearl Harbor (2001)

    pearl harbor picJerry Bruckheimer woke up one day, looked up into his ceiling-mounted Top Gun mirror, and decided it was he who could nail this “tragic history at sea shit”. Thus he embarked upon a $140m dick-swinging contest. That’s our version of how these 183 minutes of po-faced guff came into being. Never has such a silly movie, been taken so seriously, by so many actors, for the enjoyment of so few. To not laugh at it feels like disrespecting the events of 7 December 1941.

  7. The Room (2003)

    Tommy-Wiseau-The-Room-laughingThe deafening awfulness of this relationship drama has entered legend. The whole melodramatic, ineptly made turd-soup doesn’t just make your toes curl, but bend back like corkscrews and burrow down into the tops of your feet. But wait a second… With a play, a book, and even a video game spin-off all doing the rounds, is it such a fluke? Could it be that writer/director/actor/ Tommy Wiseau is actually a fictional creation of Spielberg, Scorsese, and Lynch, just having a laugh? No.

  8. Project Kill (1976)

    project-kill-1976--645-75The only thing funnier than bad fighting, is bad fighting in light-blue slacks by men who look like civil engineers. Leslie Neilson is a government-trained ninja killing machine, who… actually, that’s probably all anyone needs to know. Made four years before Airplane! reinvented spoof, the cast play it totally straight, making ‘authentic kung fu noises’ as they grapple with each other like actual blokes outside bars everywhere. Crouching Zucker, Hidden Drebin.

  9. The Happening (2008)

    the-happeningSo the story goes, M Night Shyamalan’s printer screwed up duplexing his final draft of this disaster epic, leaving every other page blank. Luckily not even the ‘king of twisty shit’ himself noticed. Well, how else can we explain this joyous mess? The bees, the wind, the talking to pot plants… It’s no wonder Mark Wahlberg looked so confused. Presumably determined not to be pigeon-holed by his Oscar nomination for The Departed, he turned in a performance so wooden it had to be creosoted.

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