Image via Complex Original
When film critics insult B-movies, the written jabs often feel unfairly mean-spirited. By definition, motion pictures classified as B-quality were made with less resources than major studio blockbusters and prestigious, A-list-heavy dramas. How can you blame them if they suffer from shitty special effects or have acting so awful that it makes Keanu Reeves look like Marlon Brando?
Then again, so many of these low-budget works are comparable to Illegal Aliens,independent writer-director David Giancola's 2007 babes-versus-E.T.s misfire starring Anna Nicole Smith. In the new documentary Addicted to Fame, also directed by Giancola (who now runs a car rental agency), he puts the wholly inept production of Illegal Aliens front and center, showing how a not-so-talented filmmaker churned sci-fi stool out of little money and inept performers.
By and large, Giancola's Illegal Aliens is only memorable for the fact it was Smith's final acting role before her untimely death. All of the flicks included in the following list of The 25 Worst B-Movies from Outer Space, on the other hand, quickly implant themselves into viewers' brains, for all the wrong reasons. Or, if you're the type of person who'd choose a splendidly bad Ed Wood film over a splendid Natalie Wood performance, it's probably the right reasons.
RELATED: The 50 Best Sci-Fi Movies
RELATED: The 50 Best Bad Movies
RELATED: The 50 Worst Special Effects of All Time
Review by Matt Barone (@MBarone)
25. Flash Gordon (1980)
Director: Mike Hodges
Stars: Sam Jones, Melody Anderson, Topol, Timothy Dalton, Ornella Muti, Max von Sydow, Brian Blessed
As evidenced by this summer's box office smash Ted, from Family Guy mastermind Seth MacFarlane, the warmth and nostalgia directed toward Mike Hodges' campy sci-fi/action flick Flash Gordon will never die.
The most realistic of fans, however, are able to acknowledge the film's B-grade campiness. For anyone who can tolerate unconvincing uses of green-screen technology, stilted fight choreography, and the ridiculous sight of esteemed Swedish actor Max von Sydow slumming it as the villainous Emperor Ming, Flash Gordon is the best kind of bad movie.
24. Starcrash (1978)
Director: Luigi Cozzi
Stars: Caroline Munro, Marjoe Gortner, Christopher Plummer, David Hasselhoff, Joe Spinell, Robert Tessier
Yeah, Starcrash is horrendously made and yet another example of a hack director foolishly aping everything imaginable from George Lucas' Star Wars (1977) and Barbarella. But who cares? Just check out star Caroline Munro in the image above. Now, tell us you wouldn't watch the hell out of a movie in which the English beauty (who's also a classic horror movie "scream queen") runs around in a skimpy two-piece outfit and knee-length leather boots shooting laser guns, fights giant robots, and submissively falls under the control of scantily clad lady captors.
And if that's not enough, there's also the strangely diverse supporting cast, including a young (and still overacting) David Hasselhoff, Maniac's creepy Joe Spinell, and future Oscar winner Christopher Plummer.
23. Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe (1990)
Director: Damian Lee
Stars: Jesse Ventura, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Damian Lee, Jerry Levitan, Marjorie Bransfield, James Belushi
Jesse "The Body" Ventura is many things: a Vietnam War veteran, a former WWF superstar, the one-time Governor of Minnesota, and the star of one truly cornball sci-fi/action flick. In Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe, Ventura plays, you guessed it, Abraxas, a police officer from the planet Sargacia whose job of guarding said universe requires him to defeat an old friend, Secundus (Sven-Ole Thorsen), who's hell-bent on impregnating Earth's women by simply touching them.
Ventura must've intended to use Abraxas as the launching pad for a successful action hero career, but, like NFL star Brian Bosworth and Stone Cold one year later, those hopes were killed by scathing reviews and poor box office performance.
22. Iron Sky (2012)
Director:Timo Vuorensola
Stars: Julia Dietze, Udo Kier, Christopher Kirby, Gotz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Stephanie Paul
It seems like a foolproof concept: As World War II ended, a bunch of Nazis retreated to the moon, set up shop, and spent 70 years building weapons and spaceships; and now, in the present day, it's time to return to Earth and destroy everything in sight.
Iron Sky features arguably the year's best plot, so it's a damn shame that director Timo Vuorensola handles the picture like a modern-day Ed Wood blessed with a decent budget and game actors. The performances are snappy, albeit largely amateurish, but that's really all the film has going for it. Meant to be a comedy, Iron Sky is painfully unfunny, existing more as an obviously manufactured, wannabe "cult classic" than a worthwhile motion picture.
21. Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997)
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Stars: Warwick Davis, Brent Jasmer, Jessica Collins, Tim Colceri, Miguel A. Nunez, Jr., Debbe Dunning
To be fair to our boy Warwick Davis, star of Life's Too Short, Leprechaun 4: In Space is much better than the similarly intergalactic horror sequel Jason X. At least this one's enjoyable for its unabashed poor acting, rampant cheesiness, and twisted imagination.
Look no further than the scene in which Davis' wisecracking killer gold-lover kills a guy by emerging out of his penis (seriously). Later into the flick, the leprechaun goes undercover by taking over the sick body of a gorgeous, totally naked female doctor (blonde stunner Jessica Collins). Well, there are worse ways for a movie to suck.
20. Hobgoblins (1988)
Director: Rick Sloane
Stars: Tom Bartlett, Paige Sullivan, Steven Boggs, Kelley Palmer
If you ever happen to watch Hobgoblins and promptly want to beat the piss out of everyone involved in this horrible Gremlins knockoff, blame the Mystery Science Theater 3000 team for bringing director Rick Sloane's dire production to light.
Without MST3K's hilarious episode dedicated to viciously insulting Hobgoblins, the 1988 display of terrible actors and badly employed A Nightmare of Elm Street influences (the goblins uses characters' dreams against them) would've most likely been stuck in cinematic purgatory. Or the garbage bins outside of recently closed mom-and-pop video shops.
19. Laserblast (1978)
Director: Michael Rae
Stars: Kim Milford, Cheryl Smih, Gianni Russo, Roddy McDowell, Keenan Wynn
The filmmakers responsible for Laserblast probably intended to comment on the issue of bullying and the effects on those who get bullied through a science fiction conceit. The movie's protagonist, Billy (Kim Milford), uses a laser gun he finds in a desert (left by a couple of hideous-looking, stop-motion-animated aliens) to get payback against the jerks who've pushed him around at school, eventually turning into a poor man's Incredible Hulk as a result.
It's an admirable attempt, yet any hopes of inspiring changes in teenage tormentors are dashed about 15 minutes into the incoherent and poorly fleshed-out Laserblast. The reasons for why Billy goes all batshit are only surface-level, which actually works in the movie's favor, since the script is a jumbled mess. Best of all, the gun Billy uses looks like a child's water pistol.
18. Transmorphers (2007)
Director: Leigh Scott
Stars: Matthew Wolf, Griff Furst, Eliza Swenson, Amy Weber, Shaley Scott
Clearly, the people responsible for movies like Snakes on a Train and The Da Vinci Treasure have no shame. In 2007, that wonderfully unimaginative production company The Asylum took director Leigh Scott's existing sci-fi flick, then called Robot Wars, and gave it a new, ready-to-capitalize-on-Michael-Bay's-Transformers title: Transmorphers, even though Scott's movie had little in common with the Hasbro-backed box office titan.
Don't misconstrue that as sympathy for Mr. Scott, however. Regardless of what The Asylum did to his film, it's still a steaming pile of cinematic fecal matter. Rather than give audiences any cool money-shots, Scott dedicates most of Transmorphers to insufferable characters annoyingly bickering indoors, and when the time finally comes for some action, the robots are mostly left off screen. Probably because even the filmmakers couldn't bear to look at poorly rendered CGI anymore.
17. Barbarella (1968)
Director: Roger Vadim
Stars: Jane Fonda, John Philip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea, Marcel Marceau
With the endlessly watchable Barbarella, "worst" is a loose term. The film's air of robust cheese is unavoidable, ripe with '60s campiness, silly-looking outer space sets, and a bizarre sense of humor that's never as funny as it is endearingly unsubtle.
All of Barbarella's faults are easily dismissed whenever star Jane Fonda is on screen, though, which happens for the majority of the movie's running time. An overt sex object dressed in skimpy outfits and written into provocatively physical situations (see above), Fonda's title character—a government rep who heads from Earth into another galaxy in order to find a missing inventor—is the ultimate dreamgirl for tech geeks, comic book heads, and other kinds of pre-pubescent nerds. In other words, guys who couldn't care less that she's in a not-so-good movie.
16. Time Walker (1982)
Director: Tom Kennedy
Stars: Ben Murphy, Nina Axelrod, Kevin Brophy, James Karen, Austin Stoker, Antoinette Bower
There's one glaring problem with the mummified alien at the center of Time Walker: The damn thing doesn't even walk. Technically, this janky 1982 horror dud's monster hovers around from location to location, emoting just as much as the lifeless actors drifting through the movie playing its human characters with the gumption of 1,000-year-old dead corpses.
Not to mention, the mummy isn't even seen all that much, since director Tom Kennedy presents large stretches through the villain's first-person POV, for which he slathers the camera's lens with what looks like green slime. The problem with that? The sludge makes it unfairly difficult to see the hot naked chick it's leering at in one of the film's most uncomfortably voyeuristic scenes.
15. Rocketship X-M (1950)
Director: Kurt Neumann
Stars: Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, John Emery, Noah Beery, Jr., Hugh O'Brian
Feminists would have a field day with Kurt Neumann's Rocketship X-M, an adventure flick about a mission to the moon that goes awry and sends five astronauts to a hostile, radioactive Mars.
Of the five travelers, only one is a woman (played by Osa Massen), and the film's predominantly sexist script is largely devoted to making her feel increasingly uncomfortable by the page. In one scene, Lloyd Bridges's character charms her with, "Why does a woman need to go on space trips and fill her pretty little head with facts and figures for?" If only Bridges realized that Massen's "pretty little head" is the only thing that makes the altogether dull Rocketship X-M even remotely endurable.
14. Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Director: Jimmy T. Murakami
Stars: Richard Thomas, Robert Vaughn, George Peppard, John Saxon, Darlanne Fluegel, Sybil Danning
James Cameron really has come a long way. Thirty years before he revolutionized visual effects in Avatar, the always ambitious filmmaker was an upstart art director and set designer, and one of his earliest projects was the Star Wars ripoff Battle Beyond the Stars. It's definitely not Cameron's finest hour.
Produced by the tireless Roger Corman, Battle Beyond the Stars follows a heroic space traveler (Richard Thomas) who recruits a motley crew of mercenaries to take down an evil overlord (John Saxon). With reasonably impressive special effects, director Jimmy T. Murakami's B-plus-movie is infinitely better than every other one on this list.
So what's the problem? Try the overly campy acting from most of the cast and the overall feeling that Battle Beyond the Stars so desperately wants to be another Star Wars, or even a Star Trek, that it blatantly lifts concepts and plot devices directly from its biggest movie influences.
13. Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
Director: Lamont Johnson
Stars: Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Michael Ironside
Bounty hunter Wolff (Peter Strauss) should be every dude's role model. Armed with cool space-guns and operating nifty spacecrafts, he's a heroic badass tasked with defeating blob creatures, dragons, and homicidal mermaids all while rescuing three beautiful prisoners and hanging out with a young Molly Ringwald.
There's just one problem: Wolff is blander than an American cheese sandwich on white bread. As a whole, director Lamont Johnson's 3D-released turkey is flat-out dull, wasting some decent effects and a fun premise on its mission to induce sheer boredom.
12. 2001: A Space Travesty (2000)
Director: Allan A. Goldstein
Stars: Leslie Nielsen, Ophelie Winter, Peter Egan, Ezio Greggio, Alexandra Kamp
Get it? It's meant to spoof Stanley Kubrick's brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's funny, right?
Chances are, you're not laughing, nor will you at any point during 2001: A Space Travesty, a real low point for star Leslie Nielsen, who lazily went back to the old Naked Gun/Airplane drawing board for this science fiction send-up. The late Nielsen obviously didn't give a damn about anything other than his paycheck—why else would he willingly play a character named Richard Dix? Or, for that matter, allow a female co-star to portray "Cassandra Menage"? Money talks, people.
11. Galaxina (1980)
Director: William Sachs
Stars: Stephen Macht, Avery Schreiber, James David Hinton, Dorothy Stratten, Lionel Smith
As much as we'd love to cruelly trash everything about Galaxina, the film's tragic legacy is impossible to ignore. Shortly after the movie opened in June of 1980, sexy star and former Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten was murdered by her husband.
So, for the sake of decency, let's ignore Stratten's unmemorable performance as a mostly silent robot (the Playboy Bunny doesn't even get naked) and focus on how writer-director William Sachs totally misunderstood the concept of "comedy." Hoping to cleverly spoof sci-fi staples like Star Wars and Alien, Sachs approached the light-hearted Galaxina from an in-the-know standpoint. Little did he know, though, that his film would go on to rival more recent creative disasters like Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans in terms of disposable, unfunny lampoon jobs.
10. Space Mutiny (1988)
Director: David Winters
Stars: Reb Brown, Cissy Cameron, Cameron Mitchell, James Ryan, John Philip Law
As the story goes, Space Mutiny director David Winters had to leave the film's set early into production after a family member passed away, and, in the process, he left the shot-calling duties to his assistant director. Which, in Winters' mind, explains why this all-around excruciating exercise in cheap-o sci-fi hilariously has actors playing characters who die on screen and then showing up later into the movie as background extras. Or why the hero's spaceship, obviously filmed inside a building and not on a constructed spacecraft set of any kind, sports brick walls and household windows.
9. AvH: Alien vs. Hunter (2007)
Director: Scott Harper
Stars: William Katt, Dedee Pfeiffer, Whitly Jourdan, Randy Mulkey, Jennifer Couch
If you're going to shamelessly copy a bigger-budgeted, major studio release, you might as well focus on a Hollywood blockbuster that's actually good. In the unfortunate case of 2007's AvH: Alien vs. Hunter, those hack artists working for the production company The Asylum were compelled to mimic the piss-poor Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, somehow making a film that's drastically worse.
At least Requiem maintained H.R. Giger's iconic monster design; in AvH, the aliens are basically Giger knockoffs with spidery appendages, except, sadly, though, no middle fingers to accidentally wave at director Scott Harper.
8. Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
Director: Edward Cahn
Stars: Steven Terrell, Gloria Castillo, Frank Gorshin, Raymond Hatton
Invasion of the Saucer Men director Edward Cahn and his collaborators deserve some credit for coming up with one of the more original ways for aliens to kill humans: by injecting already drunk people with excessive amounts of alcohol. It's a method of execution that's pointless yet chuckle-worthy, much like the film itself, a schizophrenic mess that can't decide if it's a horror-comedy or a teen comedy occasionally interrupted by aliens with papier-mâché heads. The only thing that Invasion of the Saucer Men is for certain is unintentionally comedic, as well as an inadvertent commercial for booze.
7. Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
Director: Arthur Hilton
Stars: Sonny Tufts, Victory Jory, Marie Windsor, William Phipps, Douglas Fowley, Carol Bewster
Yes, those are supposed to be "Cat-Women." Can't you tell by the way they're all impersonating a hissing feline? Other than that physical manipulation, which any 5-year-old kid can do, the eight antagonists in director Arthur Hilton's silly 1953 science fiction snoozer show no signs of being cat-like. They do, however, have telepathic abilities, a knack for teleportation, and a fondness for black leotards. They should've just called this Freaky Ballerinas of the Moon.
6. Robot Monster (1953)
Director: Phil Tucker
Stars: George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royle, John Mylong
See, filmmakers were making bad 3D movies as far back as the early 1950s. Presented in three dimensions for no good reason, the infamous 1953 junk-fest Robot Monster was made without a shred of panache, resulting in hokey dialogue, laughable acting, and not a second of suspense whenever the titular alien attacks.
Really, Robot Monster would be entirely forgettable if it wasn't for Ro-Man's costume design, which is supposed make us believe that intergalactic killing machines look like gorillas wearing fishbowl helmets with antennas.
5. Queen of Outer Space (1958)
Director: Edward Bernds
Stars: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming, Dave Wilcock, Laurie Mitchell, Lisa Davis, Paul Birch
Sorry, Twilight Zone fans, but we've got some bad news: The great Charles Beaumont, who wrote some of Zone's best episodes (including "The Howling Man," "Person or Persons Unknown," and "Number 12 Looks Just Like You"), didn't pass away in 1967 with a flawless professional history. In 1958, one year before his first Twilight Zone assignment, Beaumont penned the perfunctory Queen of Outer Space, about astronauts who befriend a bunch of horny alien women living on a Venus that's ruled by a bitchy dictator and devoid of any male inhabitants.
What sounds like a great time for any dude is, unfortunately, an incredibly lazy piece of schlocky science fiction that steals ideas and visual cues from older, and far superior, movies like Forbidden Planet (1955). Even funnier, for the film's opening sequence, director Edward Bends used pre-existing rocket launch footage instead of trying to use some movie magic to build a vessel.
Throughout this cinematic time-waster, the men constantly refer to the sexy E.T.'s as "dames," which, in addition to showing just how dated Queen of Outer Space is, doesn't help curb any anger from female viewers shouting, "This movie's sexist!" Frankly, though, who'd actually expend such energy on crap like this?
4. Monster a Go-Go (1965)
Directors: Bill Rebane and Herschell Gordon Lewis
Stars: Phil Morton, June Travis, George Perry, Lois Brooks, Peter Thompson
Monster a Go-Go's production history is almost funnier than the film's goofy title. Original director Bill Rebane proved unable to finish shooting once he and his team ran out of money in 1961. Four years later, schlock master Herschel Gordon Lewis stepped in and, using different actors, filmed more scenes.
Thus, characters' appearances change throughout the course of the film, and, best of all, Lewis' inability to shoot additional scenes with the eponymous astronaut-turned-creature led to him closing Monster a Go-Go with a long, lame-brained bit of narration that convolutedly explains how the monster was never there to begin with: "The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?" And, lastly, are you fucking kidding us?
3. Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)
Director: Tom Graeff
Stars: David Love, Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B. Dunn, King Moody
Not everyone can work with Steven Spielberg's budgets, but anyone can be resourceful. So don't feel bad for the team behind 1959's cheaply made Teenagers from Outer Space—it's their own fault that the film is hilariously shoddy.
Stricken with minimal cash, director Tom Graeff and company didn't even bother hiding the film's inefficiencies. The aliens' costumes, for example, were simply flight suits with strips of masking tape applied in V-shapes across the chest and stomach. Every dead body is "played" by the same skeleton model, and the aliens' disintegrator ray is visibly a toy kids could've have purchased in nearby novelty shops.
2. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Director: Nicholas Webster
Stars: John Call, Leonard Hicks, Vincent Beck, Bill McCutcheon, Donna Conforti, Pia Zadora
Apparently, on Mars, it's not easy being green. Well, make that "terrible actors covered in puke-green body paint and wearing silly headgear to make it seem like they're martians."
In the notoriously rotten Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, alien parents kidnap Old Saint Nick in order to brighten up their little kids' lives. And on the foreign planet, Mr. Claus meets extra-terrestrials who think one of his reindeer's names is "Nixon" (a moronic script oversight, no doubt), has to make toys using a machine that appears to be made of plastic, and entertains kids who use ping-pong balls as weapons.
Sound crazy enough? If watched as a so-bad-it's-good oddity, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is actually a good time. Just keep any concerns over logic, filmmaking, and general aptitude at bay.
1. Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
Director: Ed Wood
Stars: Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson, Vampira, Bela Lugosi, Tom Keene, Dudley Manlove, Joanna Lee
The name Edward D. Wood, Jr. is synonymous with terrible filmmaking, and 1959's Plan 9 from Outer Space is the man's crowning achievement in awfulness. In fact, it's widely regarded as "the worst movie ever made." A bit harsh? Actually, no, not at all. One day, studies will prove that watching Plan 9 from Outer Space legitimately kills brain cells.
Until then, though, doing so is highly recommended, if only to witness the unbelievably bad craftsmanship firsthand. The plot is simple enough: Aliens want to prevent humans from creating a weapon that will bring about the world's end, so they use their self-designed "Plan 9" to bring Earth's dead back to life. So it's part Armageddon and part Night of the Living Dead, except without any of either film's most basic levels of skill.
Where to begin with what makes Plan 9 from Outer Space so shitty? For starters, scenes go by with actors very clearly holding scripts on their laps and reading from them, while boom microphones can be seen in Wood's shots. There's an opening narration that idiotically states "future events such as these will affect you in the future," and, to replace co-star Bela Lugosi (who died early into production), Wood cast his wife's chiropractor, despite the fact that the doctor was much taller than Lugosi and looked absolutely nothing like the former Dracula actor.