Ebook: Badfilm: Incompetence, Intention and Failure

Offers the first in-depth exploration of badfilm as a specific category of bad cinema and cult cinema

• Provides close textual analysis of specific badfilms to demonstrate how failure can be identified and analysed
• Recognises the significance of intentionality in badfilm identification, analysis and potential appreciation
• Provides a framework for future badfilm analysis, including films beyond the period discussed here, opening new avenues for further research
• Takes a pragmatic approach, recognising the benefits of acknowledging extratextual factors such as production contexts, canonisation and reception contexts when conducting textual analysis
• Offers an alternative to more reception-based analyses of cult cinema and badfilm appreciation and engagement by focusing on the characteristics of the films themselves
• Draws on a range of film scholarship to situate badfilms within cult cinema and film studies more broadly, showing relevance beyond cult studies

This fascinating book examines badfilms; a subcategory of ‘bad cinema’ marked by incompetence, and typically exacerbated by material poverty and restrictive production conditions. It develops a framework through which the formal characteristics of failure are identified and analysed, and identifies intentionality as central to how badfilms are appreciated and valued as cult texts. Drawing on debates about cult cinema and film form, the book includes a series of case studies of classic ‘so bad they’re good’ films, like Plan 9 From Outer Space, Robot Monster and The Beast of Yucca Flats, investigating the impact of failures in post-production sound, recycled footage, performance and editing in American badfilms from the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it offers ways to consider how we identify and respond to failure, and how failure itself works.