Gallery: Piranha 3D's Painful Predecessors: The 24 Cheesiest Movies Ever Made
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What is it about science-fiction and horror movies that unleashes the cinematic cheese? From hilarious atomic monsters to UFOs dangling from strings, the history of genre films is riddled with patently absurd imagery. With [Piranha 3D](http://piranha-3d.com/) chewing its way into theaters Friday, the flesh-ripping–fish franchise — which got its start in the '70s at the hands of schlock-shock producer [Roger Corman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Corman) — aims for a bloodletting upgrade by showcasing the carnage in three-dimensional splendor. Director Alexander Aja's modern-day reboot brings to mind a welter of predecessors that made melodramatic mincemeat from mutant DNA, flimsy rocket science, stiff acting and hilariously un-special "special effects." To assemble this round-up of sci-fi's cheesiest hits, Wired.com recruited [Pyschotronic Film Society](http://psychotronic.info/) founder Mike Flores, a specialist in B movies. Also weighing in are the movie-mocking madmen from *Mystery Science Theater 3000* spinoff RiffTrax. (For more cinematic high-larity, RiffTrax's Mike Nelson and company are staging [*RiffTrax Live: Reefer Madness*](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2010/08/rifftrax-reefer-madness/), which will be broadcast live by satellite to 500 theaters at 8 p.m. Eastern Thursday, tape-delayed at 8 p.m. Pacific.) __Above:__ Piranha ------- After Roger Corman saw Jaws smash box-office records in 1975, he produced the original *Piranha*, his own cheapo aquatic horror story. Keep reading for a run-down of sci-flicks so bad they're good. Or something.
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The Creeping Terror ------------------- RiffTrax member Mike Nelson describes 1964's The Creeping Terror as "a very, very cheap movie. The director couldn't afford the traditional 'dialogue' seen in many other movies, so he just shot it without dialogue and added narration in post-production. The creature? A carpet sample. I'm not kidding. It's a large section of carpet, probably pulled out of a dumpster behind a bowling alley."
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Killer Shrews ------------- Mike Nelson recaps the perverse appeal of this 1963 mutant epic: "The guy who played Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane is stranded on an island with a boring scientist and his hot daughter. It sounds like the setup to a joke, and it pretty much is, as they are soon attacked by the 'shrews,' which are really just badly behaved dogs draped in bathroom rugs and wearing bad Halloween masks."
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Troll 2 -------- The sequel to *Troll* is "pretty great, because there are no trolls in the movie, only goblins," says Mike Nelson of RiffTrax. "And they look like pieces of chewed gum rolled in coffee grounds and hair. The biggest 'reveal' in the film is that the town infested with goblins is called 'Nilbog.' It takes a good long time for our heroes to puzzle out the fact that 'Nilbog' is 'goblin' spelled backwards!"
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The Giant Spider Invasion ------------------------- RiffTrax member Bill Corbett, who skewered The Giant Spider Invasion on *Mystery Science Theater 3000*, remembers the flick as potentially dangerous. "Aside from the silly premise that a meteor could cause some sort of interdimensional gateway, which leads (somehow) to an army of Brobdingnagian spiders — well, by the end of the movie the giant spider is *obviously* a car with a spider float glued onto it. Scary! But only in that you might laugh until you choke."
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The Horror of Party Beach ------------------------- Bill Corbett mocks this 1964 flick, "which blames our old friend toxic waste for the creation of lumbering half-human, half-fish monsters. Slow-moving, dopey-looking and easily killed with a handful of sodium (yep, sodium), they are poor excuses for horror. Luckily the jaunty beach music of scrawny trio The Del-Aires saved this movie from being a total snooze."
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The Happening ------------- Bill Corbett ripped this 2008 movie for RiffTrax. "I wondered if director M. Night Shyamalan might be involved in one of the slowest, slyest hoaxes of all time: *What if* a once-reasonably respected auteur just kept producing more and more ridiculous work?" Corbett asked. "But no. There is no meta-joke here, just the sad joke of this movie's premise: The monster is the wind. Yes. *The wind*. I have nothing more to add."
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Robot Monster ------------- "I'm particularly fond of creatures meant to strike terror into our very souls, but who instead fill our hearts with laughter and love," says Kevin Murphy of RiffTrax. "To wit: Ro-Man from Robot Monster. Suspiciously hairy, no doubt matted, probably redolent of dead bear, Ro-Man summons lightning and oversized terrarium lizards at will. Those are his powers. His liabilities? Watch how he lopes along like Shaggy in *Scooby-Doo*. He's got a boner for the female lead. He has issues working his ham radio. By the end you just want to hug the big guy, minus the smell and the boner of course."
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The Amazing Colossal Man ------------------------ For this 1957 black-and-white picture, Kevin Murphy singles out Glen Manning for ridicule. "I'll be brief: A giant, be-diapered baby throws a tantrum and destroys most of Las Vegas. Why this is not already a [Happy Madison](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Madison) remake starring Rob Schneider is one of life's most puzzling mysteries."
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Cloverfield ----------- Kevin Murphy has his own pet name for the monster in 2008 monster movie [Cloverfield](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2008/01/cloverfield-rev/). "I call him Clovie cause it just fits, like Toxie from *Toxic Avenger*," Murphy says. "He might be the lamest CG monster not to appear on a sci-fi movie, but keep in mind he's systematically killing every douchebag in Manhattan. This is why I love him so."
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The Brain That Wouldn't Die --------------------------- B-movie expert Michael Flores likes the fact that the antihero of this 1962 flick haunts strip clubs to find body parts as transplants for his dead-but-still-yapping wife. "Science marches on!" Flores says. "The wife is a decapitated head nagging you from the tray on the table her head rests on. Even after decapitation, she is going to get the last word!"
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Barbarella ---------- French director Roger Vadim cast his girlfriend Jane Fonda as a nubile "astronavigatrix" dispatched by Earth to track down a "positronic ray weapon" in 1968's Barbarella. "Wonder what a striptease would be like in a weightless situation?" Michael Flores muses. "Jane Fonda moved science forward by showing us in the opening credits. Kind of brings a tear to your eye, don't it? "The film's plot has everything but the kitchen sink and still doesn't connect. Barbarella is a glorious car wreck of a movie. The film managed to waste the talents of mime Marcel Marceau — not even Terry Southern and seven writers could save it. Without Jane Fonda, sexually confident beyond her years, it would be among the most awful failed films of all time."
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Piranha 3D ---------- The film's flavor comes across in actress Jessica Szohr's account of her [on-set *Piranha 3D* experiences](http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/08/jessica_szohr_was_grabbed_by_g.html). "There were times when fish were grabbing me, and so they put people with green gloves on underneath the water and had them grab at my ankles," she told New York Magazine. "They were actually really grabbing me." As for the action sequences, Szohr recalls, "There's a scene where I'm in a boat that's sinking, and I have to fight these piranhas off with a frying pan. A couple of stunt guys shot water guns at me so I knew where to aim with the pan."
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Galaxy of Terror ---------------- Galaxy of Terror's descriptor — "Hell has been relocated," courtesy of schlockmeister Roger Corman — ranks as one of the better B-movie tag lines of all time. The movie, also known as Planet of Horrors and the more scholarly sounding MindWarp: An Infinity of Terror, gives production-design credit to *Avatar* director James Cameron for his low-budget spaceship effects. Robert Englund makes a pre–Freddy Kreuger appearance. The plot? On a planet, named Morgenthau for no discernible reason, astronauts tries to find crew members from the missing starship *Remus*.
