A good bad performance: Completely ridiculous and unbelievable and awful, in a delightful way. The actor is completely untalented and struggles at saying the lines without messing up, much less appearing to be a real human being. Memorable examples are Valeria from Robot Holocaust, the little brother from Teenage Strangler, and most of the cast of Skydivers.
These are fun to talk about, but I’m more interested in bad good performances. These come from real actors with actual talent… but who have made such bizarre, inexplicable choices that their characters seem like they’re from another dimension.
My favorite examples:
The psycho murder kid from The Beatniks. Y’know, the one who shot the fat barkeep.
The evil bald sorcerer from Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, who later reprised the same character(??) in Wizards of the Lost Kingdom. He wavers between Shatnerian angst and just looking privately amused, with nothing in between.
And my top pick, the clearly disturbed tape recorder guy in Twelve to the Moon. He delivers utterly random lines with such paranoid intensity, it becomes fascinating. “I don’t believe there are… moooon people…”
These are the best things about bad movies, in my opinion. What are some others I missed?