9 MST3K/Rifftrax Movies Worse Than Plan 9 From Outer Space

Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space is often regarded as the worst movie ever made.  But after watching a boatload of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax over the last few months, here are 9 movies actually worse than it!

9.  Ring of Terror

This black-and-white 60s movie features a group of college students who look in their 40s.  This movie is ridiculously short even with commercial breaks.  Basically the whole thing is about one of these "kids" goes to a graveyard to retrieve a ring and ends up dying of fear or something.  It's hopelessly boring for what was supposed to be a horror movie.

8.  The Starfighters

From the title you might think it's a cheesy ripoff of Star Wars or something.  But it's not.  It's about F-104 Starfighter pilots in the early 1960s.  But it's pretty much the opposite of Top Gun.  The movie is full of stock footage of midair refueling and the occasional nice double-date.  There's nothing like drama or romance or anything interesting.  At least you can say there's something interesting in Plan 9.

7.  Fun in Balloonland

I'm not sure this was even really a movie.  Most of it is a really creepy Thanksgiving parade in Philadelphia from the 1960s.  Though first there's a little boy who "dreams" he's shouting at balloons with different themes like Mother Goose, the Wild West, or Triton's kingdom, in which the little kid is wearing only shiny gold underwear.  (So I guess pedophiles would enjoy it.)  On New Year's Amazon trolled people with a Rose Parade narrated by Will Ferrell and Megan Mulally but I don't think this was supposed to be a joke.  The woman who narrates it frequently sounds drunk, slurring words and overemphasizing words.  Imagine Kelly Anne Conway narrating a parade. It's a pretty wretched parade even without the awful narration.  Plan 9 has vampires, zombies, and aliens, but at least it doesn't have creepy clowns and kids in only their underwear.

6.  Rocket Attack USA

This is a black-and-white 50s movie that seemed to be in response to the Sputnik launch.  Much of it is kind of a lame sort of thriller where some secret agent has to go to Russia to stop a nuclear missile.  But guess what?  He fails!  And New York is destroyed by a nuclear missile.  Then a message pops up saying "We Can't Let This Be The End!"  Wow, what a downer.  And you thought Planet of the Apes was bad with that Statue of Liberty thing, right?  Plan 9 had a happy ending--plus you got to stop watching it, which was also a happy ending!

5.  Monster-A-Go-Go
Yet another black-and-white 50s movie.  It's about an astronaut who returns from space and becomes a radioactive monster.  Or something.  There's a lot of stock footage that's cobbled together to kind of make for a narrative.  Like Rocket Attack USA, though, the ending is really awful.  In this case it's not depressing so much as confusing and pointless.  A bunch of army jerks go into a Chicago sewer to find the monster and...they don't.  Then a narrator says the astronaut they thought was the monster has been found safe and sound on the ocean.  So who was the monster?  Who knows?!  As dumb as Plan 9's ending was, it made a slight more sense than this.

4.  Manos the Hands of Fate

This is one of those with the distinction of being on both MST3K and Rifftrax because it's just that freaking terrible.  It was self-funded by a manure salesman and gee how appropriate.  A family of idiots gets lost on a country road and winds up at an old house where they're met by a weird little dude named Torgo who works for "the Master" who has numerous beautiful women (his "wives) chained up and wants to claim one more.  A ridiculous story with terrible acting, pathetic effects, and crappy music.  Ed Wood probably shook his head sadly upon seeing it.

3.  Roller Gator

This 90s "film" makes SnapChat videos of babies look like art.  This low-rent production features a scantily-clad girl usually on roller blades who finds a talking purple rubber alligator puppet that is annoying as fuck.  It sounds like Patton Oswalt doing a Gilbert Gottfried impression.  Because people really want to pay to see that, an evil carnie played by Martin Sheen's brother Joe Estevez wants to steal the gator and put it in a cage.  To that end he employs a "ninja," because ninjas are just waiting around like Mexican day laborers, right?  Meanwhile a "swamp farmer" wants to find the gator.  I'd just be glad it was gone.  And how do you farm a swamp?  The "soundtrack" for most of the movie is acoustic guitar noodling that's usually louder than the dialog.  It's annoying and honestly I think the movies I made for my sister's Spanish and English classes had better production values.  Ed Wood used a rubber squid in Bride of the Monster but at least he didn't make the fucking thing yap obnoxiously the entire movie.

2.  Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny

This is another bizarre movie that I'm not sure was really supposed to be a movie.  It was sponsored by "Pirate World," a now-defunct Florida theme park, back in the 70s.  Santa Claus' sleigh is stranded on a Florida beach and the reindeer have taken off, leaving Santa behind.  So instead of going for help, Santa summons children, who bring a number of impractical animals to try to get the sled out.  Then about 60% of the movie is a lame production of Thumbelina.  The story is pretty creepy as tiny Thumbelina ends up with a female mole who wants to marry her off to a creepy old male mole, which is probably how Trump got his wives.  After the story-in-the-story is done, the kids summon the "Ice Cream Bunny," or a guy in a crappy white bunny suit who drives an old-timey fire engine.  A lot of WTF going on.  Ed Wood loved splicing footage together, but at least it was all one story, not an entirely tangential story.

1.  Birdemic

If you thought Sharknado was terrible, you never watched Birdemic!  The first twenty minutes are a guy driving into town, a creepy meet cute with a "supermodel," and then driving home for I guess a second breakfast?  There's a pathetic romance between two of the dumbest people on Earth before it finally gets to the "birdemic" that features ridiculously badly created digital birds hovering in front of people and occasionally dive-bombing and exploding like they're full of nitro.  I don't think the director ever saw a bird before in his life.  Meanwhile in background shots everything is hilariously normal.  For a "birdemic" it's pretty much no big deal for the rest of the world!   It's so dumb in every possible way.  Ed Wood would've at least used stock footage of birds that would have looked more realistic than Birdemic's hovering and exploding "eagles".

Well there you go.  Did you like my little fake clickbait article?  All I need to do is separate it into 10 pages with a bunch of ads and it'd fit right in on Comic Book Resources or one of those other clickbait sites.