ABSTRACT
Badness is a well-established characteristic of cult cinema. Although cult films are frequently thematically or aesthetically innovative, they can also be bad – even simultaneously (Mathijs and Mendik 2008: 2). Badness can manifest in various, sometimes overlapping ways: cult films can be aesthetically or morally bad, critically disreputable or in “bad taste,” or belong to “illegitimate” genres like pornography. With cult films traditionally positioned in opposition to the “mainstream,” badness can be transgressive, challenging standards and conventions of taste, style and quality. This chapter examines films that are identified, distinguished, and potentially valued for their incompetence and technical failure – a category known as badfilm. This is less a thematic category than a stylistic one, with films appreciated for deviance born from a “systematic failure … to obey dominant codes of cinematic representation” (Sconce 1995: 385). Badfilms are those in which viewers can recognise, or claim to recognise, the failed intention to achieve certain standards of cinematic representation.
