The Most Ridiculous Horror Movie Bad Guys

There are horror movies with some solid jokes. There are comedies with legit scares. But it's a rare movie indeed that becomes such a fiasco of bad choices and over-the-top mistakes that you can't tell if you're supposed to be laughing or screaming. Such unrelenting killer dookie means you've crossed over into something truly craptastic

Open wide, because this 1996 horror flick isn't shy about filling you with terror.

Playing off our collective dislike of going to the orthodontist, the big brains behind The Dentist knew it was time to take that annoying Tuesday morning appointment from inconvenient to deadly. With Corbin Bernsen, best known for playing a sexy lawyer on L.A. Law at the time, seemingly given carte blanche to overact to his heart's content, this cheap cash grab feels like it was born on a Blockbuster shelf. Thankfully, Bernsen's over the top performance makes this one hard to forget, fully relishing the fact that a trip to the dentist is a necessary evil.

In a genre full of serial killers and supernatural psychos, there might not be anything more terrifying than a dentist gone bad. Honestly, what do you worry about more on a daily basis: a hockey mask–wearing weirdo chasing you through the woods, or that root canal you've been putting off for the last month?

If there's one lesson to be learned from Dreamcatcher, it's that maybe you shouldn't write 600-page novels while smashed out of your mind on oxytocin. At least, that seems to be the moral of Dreamcatcher, the book Stephen King wrote while recuperating from a vicious car accident in 1999. He's gone on to disown the novel, but not before selling the film rights because a spoonful of riches helps the embarrassment go down.

When you look at some of the details here, it's clear something was seriously off during its inception. Perhaps his villain is the perfect metaphor for this project, because much like the book it's based on, a guy literally poops it out. As movie monsters go, a worm coming from a deadly case of diarrhea may seem somewhat relatable, but we don't pay 15 bucks to be reminded of that one trip to Mexico. We pay to be scared. Hell, this butt worm's introduction, complete with a scene full of fart noises, is so ridiculous, not even legendary filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan—writer of Empire Strikes Back and Raiders Of The Lost Ark—and screenwriter William Goldman of Princess Bride fame could save it. This is one big screen baddie that needed to be flushed down the toilet.

Despite being the definitive America horror author of the last century, Stephen King's film adaptations often turn into a more ... untended form of nightmare. With The Mangler, King goes back to one of his favorite tropes: the haunted machine. The only problem is, this isn't a classic killer car like Christine, one full of deadly fumes and righteous chase sequences. No, this time it's a laundry machine. In a basement. Seriously.

It's a laundry press, to be perfectly accurate. But this one has a taste for BLOOD! Ah, who are we kidding? Despite having three horror icons help bring it to life—King, Tobe Hooper, and Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, this immobile hunk of metal is less scary than a red wine stain on white linen. But, of course, because there's money to be made, this story of a haunted laundry service got two sequels. Now that's scary.

Look, man-eating beds can be terrifying. Just ask Johnny Depp, who was devoured by one in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. There's no reason not to fear a bed with a taste for blood. That being said, the murdering mattress at the center of Death Bed is just too goofy to really freak us out.

If convoluted backstories are your jam, this is the movie for you. It takes place from the perspective of a ghost trapped in the wall, watching a canopy bed infested with the soul of a demon who just wanted to seduce a young maiden, but now is forced to feed its hungry coil springs for eternity. Huh? Exactly.

How lame was this posturepedic killer? Well, despite the movie being made in 1977, it didn't get released until 2004. Apparently, the film's director, George Barry, simply forgot he'd made it, which is a reminder to stay off the drugs, kids. And stay off of Death Bed, no matter how sleepy you may get. Thankfully, the one person who didn't forget this movie was comedian Patton Oswalt. A nerd's nerd if there ever was one, Oswalt dedicated extensive time on his album Werewolves and Lollipops to giving this movie more notoriety than it had any right to receive.

What is it about L.A. Law actors, low-rent '90s horror flicks, and the medical profession, that seem to all fit together like a glove? Here we find Larry Drake scrubbing in as a homicidal doctor with a dream: to carve up enough nubile young patients to help bring his dead mother back from the grave. Sure, why not?

But much like The Dentist, the other crappy '90s medical horror that's just lousy with L.A. Law folk, Dr. Giggles is high on camp and low on actual comedy. Not one to run away from their "giggle" moniker, the titular hero spends more time dropping one-liners than bodies. He holds up a golf club and says, "Time to do what doctors do best." He kills someone, before yukking, "If you think that's bad, wait until you get the bill." Hell, he even looks into the camera as he lies dying at the end of the movie and asks if there's a doctor in the house. Not since Henny Youngman has a man relied more on one-liners to kill.

A tip of the hat is due to John DeBello and David Miller, the cowriters of this black comedy/musical head-scratcher about killer tomatoes taking over the world. This movie may not be your typical fruit-based fare, but these guys knew exactly what they were making. Between the disguise expert who dresses up like George Washington, the government agents who spend all their money on bumper stickers, and the song "Puberty Love" being used as a weapon, this movie keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek. Still, nothing is more ridiculous than the sight of angry, anthropomorphic tomatoes in revolt.

The opening scroll of this film suggests that people laughed at The Birds until there was an actual bird attack in 1975. So, sure, why not tomatoes? With enough chemicals, it could happen, you know! That "why not" ethos pervades every frame of this dumb film, leaving you more hungry than terrified by the end.

Perhaps the only Christmas movie to feature an American Pie cast member raped to death by a carrot, Jack Frost is the coal in the stocking of low-budget horror flicks. One can only assume the filmmakers were watching Child's Play over the holidays and realized that if they could rip it off without getting sued, they just might have some gold, frankincense, and myrrh on their hands. Instead, all they wound up with was dung left behind by the donkey in the manger.

The movie tells the classic tale of a serial killer who, after crashing into a truck full of toxic chemicals, fuses with a mound of snow. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the killer's name was Jack Frost before he became a snowman. And, yes, he just happened to kill people in a town called Snowmonton because not everything has to make sense, you logic Nazi. Yet another frightful flick to rely almost exclusively on puns, Jack Frost spends its 89-minute runtime dropping witty dimes like, "I've got a point to make," while making the stabby with an icicle. Even Arnie's Mr. Freeze knew to chill with the cold puns eventually.

Frankly, the funniest thing about this movie is all the confused families who probably tried to rent the Michael Keaton family flick of the same name—released just a year later—only realizing their mistake as Jack Frost's skin melted off his bones in the opening scene. Pretty sure the only thing those kids wanted for Christmas was a therapist.

This movie has a secret weapon that never fails to deliver a heaping plate of ridiculousness: Gary Busey. When you have the most whacked-out weirdo in Hollywood history playing a serial killing cookie, you don't need to do much to make your schlocky horror flick go from lousy to loopy.

With a supporting cast that seems like it was pulled together from Craigslist, and a cinematic style that implies the entire budget was spent on Busey's anti-psychotic meds, this movie is feels like it was shot entirely over one weekend. Even the now-standard puns barely hold together. When a character examines the titular Gingerdead Man and concludes, "I think you overcooked it," the sugary Busey treat cackles, "On the contrary, I baked up just fine." Ummm, that's not so much a pun—it's more a screenwriting punt.

The real joy here is watching Busey do his best Chucky impression, presumably while high in a recording studio deep in San Fernando Valley. Frankly, the opening scene, in which Busey gives a performance that should have earned him the Oscar for Best Actor Who Didn't Know He Was Being Filmed, is worth the price of admission.

Trees. Those are the bad guys here. Maples. Elms. Oaks. Trees. Yes, M. Night Shyamalan clearly thought he was making a Hitchcockian masterpiece along the lines of The Birds, in which he would take some innocuous part of our everyday lives and turn it into out-and-out terror. Suffice it to say, he did not succeed.

When the scariest thing to happen in your movie is a stiff breeze, you might want to rethink why you got into filmmaking in the first place. You're more likely to meditate to this thing than get scared from it. Frankly, the weirdest thing in The Happening is casting Boston bro Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher. He spends the majority of the movie putting question marks at the end of sentences? Where they doesn't belong? He has no idea what is, ahem, happening, and he's not shy about letting us know.

If the thought of a hike through the woods is your ultimate nightmare, this might be the movie for you. If you are a normal person, then the trees that haunt this horrible movie might not be nearly as nightmare-inducing as intended.

If you're looking for the crappiest movie monster of all time, it's hard to look past the Monsturd, a living piece of poop with a serious cow chip on its shoulder. The story is pretty original: a serial killer falls into a vat of chemicals and is fused with the molecules of poop. Remember, we said original, not good.

If you think the Monsturd kills his victims by crawling up through toilets, you're right. If you think the climax of the movie is at a chili cook off, you get what this movie is all about. If you think the evil corporation behind the poop-melding science is called Dutech, pronounced "Doo Tech," then you are really good at guessing. Maybe you should write the sequel. And then burn the script, because nobody wants Monsturd 2.

With the production values of a home movie, and a script that feels like it was written by someone who's seen one too many horror flicks and also happens to be a toddler, this movie might not be for everyone, but there's no doubt your nightmares after watching this ridiculous monster movie will take a turn for the stinky.