Hard Boiled is a pretty strong candidate. If you listen to the commentary on the Criterion DVD, they reveal that they literally wrote the script as they went along. The scriptwriter died before the script was completed, so they shot the last 45 minutes without a script.

Scorsese's Cape Fear remake

/thread

Koyaanisqatsi

Starship Troopers
The Fast and The Furious
The Mummy(1999)
The Mummy Returns
Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow
G.I. Joe

Suspiria and Inferno get by on style. Mother of Tears had an equally silly script, but not much style and it didn't fare nearly as well.

People keep answering this like there is an actual answer. Norme answered it on the first page:

A bad script executed well cannot exist; it was bad to start with. A good script executed poorly happens all the time.

A bad script will never result in a great movie, but plenty of entertaining movies started with bad scripts. A good cast, a good director, a good DP, or a good fight choreographer can make a badly-written movie enjoyable. Some people, like Vincent Price, specialize in making bad material sound good.

I disagree, I think a bad script can be made into a pretty decent movie with the right people at hand. Silent Hill, for instance, has an absolutely horrendous script and had the acting to match -- yet the visuals, atmosphere and general mood of the piece made it worth watching once.

Quality visuals, proper mood and good music can go a long way. When I think of movies, I usually think of atmosphere/mood of it before the story or dialog surfaces.

yeah...we see it all the time. Badly scripted stuff that turns out to be a pretty good movie.

Again...they mentioned HK flicks, well Ash did. HK action flicks...specifically the martial arts films....had a writer. I'm pretty sure that script was simple as shit and probably not the best written one either. Think about that. 36th Chambers of Shaolin...imagine reading that. And it's a classic.

Ray Harryhausen films...LISTEN to those people talking and pay attention to what they're doing. Simple as shit and horribly acted. Classics...and they're solid films.

Rocky IV. The script is not that good, but it's one of the most entertaining movies ever made.

It is?

Temple of Doom

Maybe not the worst script ever, but the script is definately the worst thing about the film.

Harison Ford doing the role he was born to play, John Williams best score, great photography, great locations, great sets, incredible special effects, and above all Spielberg's decision to go fast, fast, fast, one thing after another, always raising the stakes, turns a TERRIBLE script filled with cliches, bad dialog, and a tedious love interest character into pure gold. Furthermore, Spielberg gets great performances out of every character actor and even some amateurs (like the Indian elder in the village).

And I say phooey to everyone who is saying "it's impossible". We've sited many examples, from low art like Harreyhausen and HK action flicks to high art like Godard, it's been done.

You had to be a certain age when it played incessantly on TBS. I can recognize it's terrible in many ways, but it's tough through these coke-bottle rose-tinted glasses.

I saw it in theaters when I was 14... twice. I thought it was AWESOME!!! Then a few years later I realized what a hunk of shit it was. A cartoon. A piece of nothingness. Entertaining? Sure. But not what I'd call a good movie. The original Rocky was more entertaining while being significantly less crappy.

No, no read before you post....It's asking for bad scrips but GOOD movies, not piss poor pieces of hokey crap!

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Koyaanisqatsi

There are some people who only recognise a very limited type of movie as being "good". Sometimes they're the same people who used to bitch about The Rock and Armageddon being released by Criterion..

I watched 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN again last night as my last film for the B-Movie Challenge on the DVD Talk board. It's a masterpiece. It was written by I Kuang, who wrote dozens of kung fu films a year. I imagine some of them were just outlines. ("Exterior-Courtyard-Day: The Five Venoms assemble and fight the General and his minions.") Yet 36TH CHAMBER is beautifully written and structured. But, like you say, how would it have looked on the page? Imagine a Hollywood producer reading it. "Who wants to watch someone exercising for an hour-and-a-half?" "This putz does nothing but ring a bell and carry buckets of water uphill. Where's the action?" Or: "Someone pasted fortune cookie sayings together and called it a script!" Yet it works.

I'd say Avatar would be a good example. The script is a completely unoriginal bland mess but the film itself, while certainly not great, is definitely worth watching for the entertaining visuals.

I dunno about that. It might be an average script. Bad? No. Great, well obviously not.

I think Fast Five would fit the bill not that I think of it.

I think Suspiria is a perfect example of a great movie with a bad script. Lady in the Water has a horrible script, but is otherwise a superb film, in terms of acting, direction, cinematography, and soundtrack. I realize a lot of people think it's a bad film because of its weak script, but I think its a good movie nonetheless. Only God Forgives has a bad script and I thought Refn made a very good film out of what he had. Thoughts on these three films?

With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can't possibly make a good film. - Akira Kurosawa

Yeah I was thinking of that Kurosawa quote as soon as I saw the thread title.

The original Night of the Living Dead doesn't have a very good script, but that's not really why people love the movie.