Space Chase nearly made it into this post, too. Be thankful that it didn't.

One of the things that I always used to like doing when I was younger was to flick through the Radio Times' film section, searching specifically for the films with one-star ratings. Why? Because star ratings, useful though they are, are deep magic.

This may be difficult to believe, but it's true. A scale that looks like your average five-point rating scale actually conceals considerably more nuances and subtleties than you might think. Now, towards the top end of the scale this is less true; there's not very many five-star ratings, considerably more four-stars, and a veritable ocean of three-stars. This is as you would expect - a three-star rating is usually labelled "average", so the normal statistical workings of the bell curve come into play. It is as you descend into the lower reaches of the star system that things start to get strange.

The reason for the strangeness is that a film needs to meet a certain (albeit small) level of quality to make it to two-star level, but there is no such requirement for one-star level. The obvious result is that the one-star rating is applied to everything below two-star standard, and this is a large and varied assortment. Join me as we move down through the various levels of awfulness.

Bad Films
Plain old bad films can be produced in a number of ways - too much money spent on special effects and too little on script is a favourite one, but other very simple things like poor acting from just one person can easily push a perfectly good movie right down into this classification. In a sense, this type of film is the worst - it's bad enough that you don't want to watch it again, but not bad enough to be interesting. Most summer blockbusters are perfect examples. Remember Alien³? The film started out poorly by trying to pretend that it wasn't a second sequel (a superscript in the title? Really?), then compounded a horribly slow script with a performance by Sigourney Weaver that clearly said "I don't want to be here", producing a film that made you desperately try to erase it from the franchise. Come to think of it, most sequels fall into this category; how I wish I could live in a world where The Matrix was never given a sequel, let alone two.

Mindless action flicks are in this section too. I saw the end of Steven Seagal's Half Past Dead last night, and yes, I freely admit that I watched it solely because of the title. Well, that, and the fact that a man called Morris Chestnut played the main villain. How can you not love a film starring an actor called Morris Chestnut?

Quite easily, it turns out. Seagal's movies are entertaining in their own way, I suppose, but once you've seen him blow up the enemy complex while apparently preserving a deep respect for the environment and the ways of the US's native peoples once, you don't really need to see it again. Unless you're really into the theory and practice of martial arts, the action sequences have nothing you haven't seen a thousand times before, and if you do know the faintest thing about combat then they just get ridiculous. (Anyone in my living room last night would have heard "She's standing in the middle of an open hallway! Why don't you just shoot her?" being shouted rather loudly.) As such, they aren't good enough to be decent pieces of cinema, and not bad enough to be funny.

So Bad It's Good
The hallowed island of awesomeness, this is a very special place. For a start, it lies in a different place for each person (I fully expect that you're going to violently disagree with at least one of my opinions in this post); what makes it even more special is that it's impossible to find it unless you're not looking for it. Even the laziest film-maker who can't be bothered to get a decent script or actors doesn't try to shoot for So Bad It's Good, he's trying to produce something as good as possible within the very low standards required.

The difficulty in reaching this nebulous category is reflected in the difficulties found when trying to define it. Poor characterisation, scenery, effects or acting aren't enough; the disparate elements have to combine to produce something that's either funny, or poignant, or have some other completely unintended effect. Take Ebirah, The Terror of the Deep (or Gojira, Ebirâ, Mosura: Nankai no daiketto, to give it the original Japanese name), for example. I've only ever seen the dubbed version, and this has only added to the hilarious awfulness of the finished product. Godzilla and Ebirah, the giant lobster of the title, have a duel in the ocean by throwing wobbly animated rocks at each other, Mothra, the giant moth, comes along to help, and in the midst of this four poor young Japanese actors try to work out what on earth they are doing in the middle of this cinematic travesty. The dubbing was apparently carried out with only four voice actors, meaning that "Eh?" and "Uh?" make up a very significant proportion of the dialogue, and the enormous chorus of dancing girls worshipping Mothra for no apparent reason are able to say nothing other than "Moth-a-raaaaa" for the duration of their inexplicable scene. The finished product is very highly entertaining and causes you to laugh throughout the whole thing. The only slight snag is that it was supposed to be a thriller...

So Bad It's Bad
This is a very sad category. Films where the director simply wasn't trying, or everyone takes themselves far too seriously, are very likely to find themselves here. It is in So Bad It's Bad that you'll find action stars who reckoned they were capable of directing or screenwriting (step forward again, Mr. Seagal). Also present are no-budget hack-and-slash thrillers, "teen comedies" which are neither comedic nor appealing to teenagers, and Death Train.

Death Train is deserving of special mention here. It's another film that I watched only for its title, which was handy as there's no way I'd watch it for any other reason. Nominally a suspenseful action film, it starred Pierce Brosnan with a bizarre attempt at an American accent, trying to get on board the eponymous train in order to disarm the nuclear bomb on board. If that actually sounds quite exciting, allow me to list some reasons why it wasn't.

• The film opens with a nuclear bomb being set off in the middle of Germany, presumably incinerating several million people. The hand-wringing and "oh how terrible" speeches last all of two minutes, then we're back into action, making this perhaps the film with the largest unnecessary body count in the first act ever.
  
• The villain of the piece is Russian and played by Christopher Lee. He wants to set off the bomb to restart the Cold War. This plot was tired and overused before the Cold War even ended in the first place.
  
• I know I've already mentioned it, but: Pierce Brosnan's American accent. Why would you do that, Pierce? Why?
  
• The ending is not only contrived, it is also completely devoid of tension. When your film leaves the audience thinking "Huh. So they didn't all die in a nuclear holocaust. Well, there we go," you know you've got a problem.

If you thought that a film starring Brosnan, Lee, Patrick Stewart, Terrence Hardiman and several other quite good actors couldn't fail to be good, allow me to introduce you to the reason why this film is So Bad It's Bad.

Good Grief What On Earth Were They Thinking
Oh no, SBIB wasn't the last category. There are other films, worse than that. And it is into this classification that Hercules in New York proudly strides. A film that must be the product of either a drunken bet or the drunken gambling away of the entire budget (alcohol was definitely involved at some point), never before has a film been so very, very impressively bad. Arnold Schwarzenegger, almost sinking his career before it began, provides the perfect justification for closing the international borders with his portrayal of Hercules - yes, Greek demi-god Hercules - and his adventures in New York. Arnie was dubbed in the original release, but that couldn't save the movie; if anything, it's better when you can hear his oh-so-authentic Greek accent ("NO VUN IZ SUPEEERIOR TO HAERCULEES!"). The film also boasts repetitive and over-frequent fight sequences - there's only so many times you can see Schwarzenegger push people around with a plank before it gets dull - and, in a great moment of glory, manages to take the crown from Point Break in the category of "Least Convincing Day-For-Night Sequence Ever Filmed".

If you can't work it out, Day-For-Night is a cinematic technique in which "night" scenes are filmed in broad daylight and filters are used on the camera lens to make it look as though it's actually night-time. In Point Break it simply doesn't work - the night surfing scene is spoilt by the fact that the sun's reflection is clearly visible in the water, and everyone is glowing in the sunlight. In Hercules in New York, they don't bother with the filters. Interior scenes, which clearly were filmed at night, are intercut with exterior scenes bathed in golden sunlight, the only concession to the concept of night being that one of the characters is holding a lit torch. This is way beyond bad - this is jaw-dropping.

And this sequence leads in to what is quite possibly the very worst - and most brilliantly hilarious - scene ever committed to film. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...the bear attack.

No, I don't own this video, obviously - it's part of the film. Do I have to tell you people everything?

Hey, look on the bright side. There's nowhere to go from here except up.