The Bad Film Club

You're a hell of an instinctive pilot. Maybe too good. I'd like to bust your butt but I can't. Sharp dialogue like this from 1986's 'breathtaking' salute to male bonding, Top Gun, is one explanation as to why it's a classic for all the wrong reasons. Sure it's an award winning, record breaking blockbuster but it's a perfect fit for Nicko and Joe's Bad Film Club, which tours its masochistic movie joy around the UK. "A good bad film is something done in all seriousness which inadvertently turns itself into comedy," Nicko explains. The concept is simple; go to the cinema and pay for a film that you know is terrible, then laugh yourself silly as comedians add their commentary. "We just wanted to create the atmosphere of a Friday night in; a few beers with your friends, shouting at some shit movie on Channel 5." Yet not everyone can invite the talents of Stewart Lee, Glenn Wool or Tony Law into their living rooms: hence the attraction. But it's not all sneer and jeer; Nicko and Joe are genuine cinephiles when it comes to delinquent 'classics' such as Frankenhooker (1990) and Class of Nuke'em High (1986). "It's been great bringing misery to the world," says Nicko, proud of their connoisseur role. "But it is a battle, because it goes against every fibre in your body to be loud in a movie theatre." With "target rich environments" of recent victims Top Gun and Battlefield Earth, however, who could resist the chance to heckle Hollywood?