How could this not be number 1? How indeed. Tommy Wiseau's masterpiece of utterly incomprehensible storytelling may well be the best-known bad movie of the modern age, a reputation it justly deserves. Selling itself as a dark romantic drama, The Room features the bizarre Wiseau (who also wrote and directed) as Johnny, a man of many catchphrases ("Oh, hi!" "That's the idea!") who experiences the doldrums in a love triangle between himself, his fiancee and his best friend Mark. Audiences adore the contradictions in dialogue, abrupt changes in tone and muddled motivations that pepper the film, but perhaps most engaging is Wiseau's mercurial performance as Johnny, a man who can one minute be screaming in denial of committing domestic abuse and the next be cheerfully laughing about Mark's friend having been brutally beaten. The Room is so compelling a film, in fact, that it's played at theatres all over the world to packed houses regularly since its release in 2003. Greg Sestero, the actor who played Mark and was friends with Wiseau before making the film (which cost an astonishing $6 million to make), has even written a book about the bizarre, mysterious experience of making the film, The Disaster Artist. That story is itself set to be adapted into a feature by James Franco, bringing Tommy Wiseau's story to a stranger place than even he himself could have possibly imagined.
