Horror Movies With Terrible Rotten Tomatoes Scores That Are Actually Worth Watching

In an interview for Yahoo! Movies, "The Guest" screenwriter Simon Barrett summed up the reaction of audiences to "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" upon its release and the three-decade about-face that transformed the film into a cult favorite. "I saw 'Halloween III' when I was 10 or 11, during that period when I'd rent everything from the horror section in the video store," he recalled. "I watched it with a couple of friends, and they were like, 'This is bulls***! Where's Michael Myers?' Then you get to the end, and you think, 'Wait, that was actually pretty cool!'"

Released to negative acclaim and tepid box office returns in 1982, "Halloween III" was blasted for its bizarre storyline: A Halloween mask company owner (Dan O'Herlihy) implants fragments of Stonehenge in his products to sacrifice children for ancient rituals. Audiences and critics disliked its downbeat ending and, most importantly, its lack of Michael Myers, despite John Carpenter and Debra Hill returning as producers. While it seems like some audiences are still unhappy over that omission — resulting, perhaps, in its 50% critic rating and 29% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes – others find its mix of chills and cracked conspiracy theories a satisfying horror experience, even without Michael Myers. As director Tommy Lee Wallace told Yahoo!, "'Halloween III' found its audience. There are a lot of us out there who think it's a pretty darn good movie."

What's the deal with the middling response for "The Strangers"? The 2008 thriller from Bryan Bertino, about a couple who is terrorized by a trio of masked intruders, was a modest hit upon release and enjoys a cult following today. It's even spawned a franchise with "Strangers: Prey at Night" and a new trilogy from Lionsgate. With that longevity, why does the original "Strangers" only rate 49% on Rotten Tomatoes? The most likely answer is negative reviews from squeamish critics, who found the psychological games played by the Strangers unpleasant, like NPR's Bob Mondello, who called it a "sadistic, unmotivated home-invasion flick."

"The Strangers" is intense, but its reputation is built on its nerve-rattling suspense and the horror of its premise, which was reportedly inspired by disturbing real-life events. The actual gore is surprisingly low, so if that's the factor keeping you from watching the film, put your worries aside. You should be prepared, however, to remain on the edge of your seat for the full running time; as Michael Rechtshaffen with The Hollywood Reporter noted, it's a "spare, creepily atmospheric psychological thriller with a death grip on the psychological aspect."

1985's "Hellraiser" marked novelist Clive Barker as major figure on the rise in horror movies. However, that ascent was cut short with his second film, 1990's "Nightbreed." Barker's story is a fantasy-horror hybrid about a troubled man (Craig Sheffer) who flees the influence of his serial killer therapist (David Cronenberg) for an underground community of monsters. The film baffled 20th Century Fox, which forced Barker to trim nearly an hour from his cut and released it to without critical previews. As a result, "Nightbreed" flopped, and the truncated version sits at 53% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Barker's fervent wish for the release of his original edit came to pass in 2014 with a Blu-ray release from Shout! Factory. That's the version that's worth seeing: It reduces Cronenberg's presence and offers an intriguing conclusion that foreshadows Barker's intention to form a trilogy around "Nightbreed." The Director's Cut also places greater emphasis on the Nightbreed themselves, transforming them into full-fledged characters. Recently, critics have praised the story as an effective allegory for the queer community. "The director's cut allows us more time with the creatures and ups their number, emphasizing that they're only fearsome to those afraid of difference," wrote Charles Bramesco for The A.V. Club.

Shortly before striking box office gold with "The Mummy" in 1999, Stephen Sommers wrote and directed 1998's "Deep Rising," a modestly budgeted science-fiction horror film. A host of negative reviews — including one by Roger Ebert, who later featured it on his Most Hated list — sank the film upon release, so you aren't to be faulted if you haven't heard of it. However, if you liked the action, creature feature thrills, and humor in "The Mummy," you'll enjoy "Deep Rising" as well — despite its 34% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

Like "The Mummy," "Deep Rising" follows a blueprint from classic Hollywood and B-pictures: There's a fast-talking hero (Treat Williams) and a clever heroine (Famke Janssen), a host of bad guys (including Wes Studi, Anthony Heald, and Djimon Hounsou), and an insurmountable monster: a colossal, Lovecraftian sea creature with a taste for passenger ships. The dialogue is breezy, the action briskly paced, and the monster scenes appropriately gross. If there's an issue with "Deep Rising," it's the budget, which can undermine its special effects and production design. If you can see past that, you'll most likely agree with Ty Burr's assessment for Entertainment Weekly: "It's pretty darn wonderful — a tightly written, often howlingly funny 'Aliens' knockoff that, in its portrayal of tough men and tougher women under pressure, favorably recalls the work of Howard Hawks."

The first of two official theatrical movies spun off from HBO's "Tales from the Crypt" series (2002's "Ritual" was repackaged as a "Crypt" movie), "Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight" stars William Sadler as a drifter who fends off the demonic Collector (Billy Zane) with a sacred artifact. Loaded with gory violence and special effects, "Demon Knight" was dismissed upon release. But it's not short on talent, with acclaimed cinematographer Ernest Dickerson as director and a cast that included Jada Pinkett, CCH Pounder, Thomas Haden Church, and cult movie legend Dick Miller.

Its 42% rating on Rotten Tomatoes doesn't do "Demon Knight" justice. If you're looking for the same level of carnage as the best episodes of the "Crypt" series, it absolutely delivers: Heads and limbs are torn from bodies, and demons are blown apart with abandon. It's also true to the dark humor and hyper-stylized aesthetic of the '50s horror comics on which the series was based: as Stephen Holden with The New York Times noted, "What 'Tales from the Crypt' does best is sustain a look and tone that bring a comic-book's broad strokes into the realm of a live-action movie without seeming too mannered or arty." Most importantly, it's way better than the second "Crypt" movie, "Bordello of Blood."

Much of the reason behind the 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for Tobe Hooper's "Eaten Alive" is due to what it's not rather than what it actually is. The 1976 film is not Hooper's intensely disturbing masterwork, "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." "Eaten Alive" has more polish than its predecessor: It was filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, stars veteran Hollywood actors like Neville Brand and Carolyn Jones (as well as a young Robert Englund), and features a tone similar to the dark, "sick" humor of '50s-era horror comics. Audiences didn't like it, and even Hooper abandoned the film over conflicts with the producers.

But "Eaten Alive" has its own barely controlled energy that makes it worth a second look. The soundstage allowed Hooper to experiment with surreal lighting — sickly pinks and crimson reds — that roots the film somewhere between "Tales from the Crypt" and experimental theater. The huge cast of characters all seem on the verge of an anxiety attack as they attempt to kill or be killed; Brand's greasy lunatic, in particular, can't stop screaming about the crocodile that lives under his backwoods motel or cleaning its filthy rooms. As Stephen Thrower noted in "Nightmare USA" (via Acidemic), "In all its malformed glory it still commands respect for its unrelenting weirdness, its vicious hysteria, and Neville Brand's wonderful performance."

If you know the cult indie director Ray Dennis Steckler at all, it's probably because of guilty pleasure horror films like "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies," which veers from melodrama to horror to musical, often within the same scene. Steckler made films very quickly and for very little money, and the eccentricity of his output was a chief selling point. They aren't very good by Hollywood standards, but there was (and remains) nothing else like them. But Steckler could, under the right circumstances, turn out a film with mainstream appeal, such as his 1966 shocker "The Thrill Killers."

"The Thrill Killers" features Steckler's hallmarks: strange forays into other genres, a fragmented plot, and curious directorial choices determined by budgetary restraints. That explains its Rotten Tomatoes audience rating of 36% and two "Rotten" reviews out of three total. But once the film focuses on a couple (Joseph Bardo and Liz Renay, later the star of John Waters' "Desperate Living") caught between a psychopathic killer (Steckler) and three escaped mental patients — it becomes surprisingly suspenseful, thanks to stark black-and-white photography and the unfettered performances of the villains. Of course, Steckler can't completely reel in his odd aesthetic — the film ends with a motorcycle/horse chase — but as genre critic Nathaniel Thompson noted for Mondo Digital, "[This] film is shot far more skillfully than you'd expect with a handful of really fascinating visual touches scattered throughout."