The bad special effects, the awful acting, the nonsensical plots — there’s something enchanting about a movie that’s hopelessly bad.

following these three rules is a solid, is an efficient way to determine whether a movie is Good Bad:

1. Enjoyment of the movie must be derived from its badness. Its badness needs to be the thing that creates a sense of bewildered enjoyment.

2. There must be a pervading sense that those who made the film thought what they were doing was great, or at least good. Good Bad Movies have minimal self-awareness.

3. The movie must have been something of a critical failure when it was released. Critics, god bless them, hold movies to a high standard as an art form and generally don’t reward a movie for being of low quality. In that way, they’re a helpful, as-objective-as-possible resource in determining which films are bad, and therefore eligible to be Good Bad.