Memeing Classic Movies: The Best Terrible Movies For Memes

Great movies bring joy to our lives, but we often forget that bad movies do so as well. Of course, a bad movie like Jaws 4: The Revenge might not entertain you, but the truly horrible ones definitely will. There are some movies out there that are so bad they’re hilarious, and many of these have sparked numerous memes. Here are three of the best worst movies that bring us top-quality meme material.

Troll 2 (1990)

Don’t be deceived by the name; this movie actually has nothing to do with trolls whatsoever. Instead, Troll 2 follows a group of goblins destroying a family’s vacation in the town of Nilbog ("goblin" spelled backward — how creative). Stop-motion LEGO movies made by a 7-year-old have better special effects than this, and there’s no coherency to the plot, which most notably includes inexplicable threats of public urination.

This movie is a favorite among the meme community because of its truly horrible acting, which is probably the worst you’ll ever see. All other flaws aside, this film is perhaps best known for a scene in which a boy gazes up at goblins eating a slimy corpse and proclaims, "They’re eating her! And then they’re going to eat me! Oh my God!" with the last word drawn out for quite some time in a never-ending monotone. This scene was memed numerous times, often without the caption, and is typically a reaction image displaying unexpected distress, which is what you will feel while watching Troll 2.

The Wicker Man (2006)

The Wicker Man is a remake of a 1973 movie of the same name that stars Nicolas Cage, propelling him into meme infamy. In this film, Edward Malus, a cop who is searching for his missing daughter among a cult-like group of pagans. It is impossible to be attached to the plot or characters in any way, especially since Cage is completely unrecognizable as the protagonist and just looks like a frustrated Hollywood actor the entire time, even when he is awkwardly tortured by bees later in the movie.

While it’s supposed to be a horror movie, The Wicker Man became known as a comedy due to its poor execution, and it’s one of the funniest bad movies out there. It is full of uncomfortably long pauses, too many flashbacks and every scary movie cliché you can imagine. But everything turns hilariously chaotic toward the end of the movie when Cage has bees poured onto his head, to which he reacts by screaming, "Not the bees!" and shows us cringeworthy acting from a genuinely famous actor. This line became a particularly famous GIF and meme, as did "How’d it get burned?" which he screams many, many times while cradling a doll in a graveyard.

The Room (2003)

Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is often referred to as the worst movie of all time — and it’s difficult to argue with this assessment. This is the story of an oddly greasy banker named Johnny, whose fiance Lisa cheats on him with his best friend Mark for no reason at all. The rest of the film consists entirely of unresolved subplots involving a teenager’s drug addiction, Lisa’s mother’s cancer diagnosis, a bad birthday party and playing football in tuxedos. For nearly two hours, the viewer is hypnotized by the sight of Johnny’s descent into madness, listening to Wiseau spit out incoherent lines with a bad recreation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent.

Everything (believe me — everything) in this movie is done wrong. It has the aesthetic quality of a low-budget simulation that aliens would use to theorize about human interaction. There’s nothing that couldn’t become a meme here, especially when it comes to Wiseau and his unexplained passion for the film. However, The Room is infamous for memes created by the bad dialogue. If you handed a typewriter to the evolving apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey, you would get a better script than this. This movie is what brought us the lines, "I did not hit her! I did not … Oh, Hi Mark," "You are tearing me apart, Lisa!" and "Anyways, how is your sex life?" There’s really no limit to the memes you could make from this movie alone.

Meme Insider is a Know Your Meme publication and the world's leading internet culture magazine. Find out how to get your first print copy for free, and check out the Meme Insider website for more info.