5 Comic Book Movies That Deserve A 2nd Chance (And 5 You Should Forget)

5. Barb Wire

It’s a concept that would’ve done a 1970s exploitation producer proud – cast one of Playboy’s most popular models as a leather-clad bad girl in a rip-off of Casablanca. If you approach Barb Wire in an exploitative frame of mind, you’ll have fun with a relentlessly trashy movie that opens with Pamela Anderson being hosed down onstage and spirals into insanity from here.

There’s fun is to be had when you realize that Pam is playing the Humphrey Bogart character, who attempts to arrange a safe passage for an old flame. Set in a post-apocalyptic 2017 (after the election of Donald Trump, you think?), Barb Wire throws in all the explosions, fetish outfits and gratuitous nudity that Casablanca inexplicably left out.

Most critics were unenthusiastic, though Roger Ebert conceded that the movie “has a high energy level and a sense of deranged fun.” While it seems to take its visual cues from previous comic book adaptation The Crow, Barb Wire knows it’s b-grade material and never attempts to take itself too seriously. It promises trash and delivers it. What’s not to like?