What Makes a Movie So Bad, We Can’t Look Away?
Here at The Turkish Diplomats present Charming Noise, we don’t just review bad movies—we dig them up, dust them off, and gleefully throw them under a magnifying glass until they smolder like an ant beneath a cruel child’s lens. But not every stinker earns our affection. No, we follow a sacred code—eight time-tested, hangover-approved points of cinematic catastrophe—that must be met before a film earns the full Turkish Diplomats treatment.
A movie doesn’t just need to be bad. It needs to aspire to greatness and fail in ways so ambitious, so spectacular, that it wraps around the quality scale like a boomerang made of duct tape and regret. These aren’t your everyday flops—these are the beloved disasters, the joyful calamities, the celluloid crimes against humanity that leave you dazed, confused, and asking: “Who let this happen?”
And now, dear reader, we present to you…
The Criteria
1. The film must be devoid of coolness and charm, except the coolness and charm due to its being so godawful.
2. It should inspire some sense of anger in normal people, the kind of anger that can only be deadened by alcohol.
3. It should be cast with people who clearly are not professional actors. At least some of the cast must be such bad actors that the question is raised as to whether they have ever seen a film.
4. All special effects should be laughable. It isn’t enough to merely use a string to lift the rocket…you should be able to see that the SFX person was too lazy to cut away the excess.
5. All aspects of the production should appear to be done by amateurs. It should arouse the belief that cameras and lights were handed to chimpanzees hopped up on Mountain Dew.
6. If the producers try to show a moral to the film, it should benefit no one. If anything, you might be a worse person for having watched it.
7. There must be moments in the movie that are so bad that the video must be stopped and rewound to confirm how bad the scene was. In some cases, no amount of review will relieve the disbelief.
8. At the end of the movie, the viewer should feel emotionally damaged. The way to measure that damage is to see how long it takes the viewer to look at a clock or watch to determine how much of their life was just wasted.
My choices are: Torture Dungeon, Monster-a-Go-Go, Vampire Cavemen of the Lost Planet I have always differed with you and Calvin, in that I felt “Monster-a- Go-Go” is actually worse than “Torture Dungeon.” At least flubbed lines and entire scenes were not IMMEDIATELY REPEATED ON FILM without edits. However, I think it did achieve sentimental favorite among us. We have all felt perversely proud of finding that piece of crap.
Why We Suffer So You Don’t Have To (But You Should)
So why do we do it? Because someone has to? No. Because bad movies are a cultural treasure trove of misplaced confidence and accidental brilliance. Because watching them together—like combat veterans with a shared trauma—is the foundation of true friendship.
If you find yourself nodding in pain, laughing through the tears, or screaming at your screen in disbelief, congratulations—you’re one of us now.
Welcome to The Criteria. May it guide your eyes, guard your soul, and remind you that art is subjective—but suffering, when shared, is sublime.
