I have an issue with year-end best-of lists. Or, I should say I have an issue with making them, myself. Every year I think about giving in to the tradition, but then I stop myself when I realize that I haven't seen enough movies. There are the last-minute releases of late December to wait for. There are films I missed earlier in the year that haven't yet arrived on DVD. And ever since I took a hiatus from reviewing films, it has gotten worse, because I see fewer movies than I normally do. Typically I don't discover my favorite pic of a given year until the following year or later.

So, rather than write up a list that may change tomorrow or the next day or 10 years from now, I've decided to reflect on the bad movies I saw. I've definitely seen more bad movies than good movies, anyway. But rather than make a list of the worst of '06 -- I probably haven't seen the real worst any more than I've seen the best -- I fondly recalled the movies that were crap, but were enjoyable, nonetheless.

Some of the movies on my list are wholly guilty pleasures, while others have one or two specific aspects that I found more guiltily pleasurable than the movie itself.

• 10.) Cobra Starship's 'Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)' video from Snakes on a Plane - Sure, Snakes on a Plane is a guilty pleasure -- it was made to be. But it is just too obvious to mention it as a whole, and anyway it really wasn't as enjoyable as it should have been or was meant to be. The music video during the movie's credits, though, is another story. In my opinion it overshadows the actual movie by a long shot. It may be as self-consciously intent on producing irony and camp, but it succeeds where SOAP doesn't. Maybe because it is catchy, maybe because the band looks like a parody of contemporary hipster bands, or maybe because it is shorter -- I am far more likely to return to the video for a good laugh than to the movie (not that I'll turn off the movie on a lazy Sunday with nothing better to do; it is still a guilty pleasure, itself).

With the remake of Black Christmas due to hit theaters on Christmas day, here's another yuletide horror flick from the early 70s that deserves to be rediscovered. Silent Night, Bloody Night doesn't play up the holiday connection nearly as much as the aforementioned Black Christmas, or the killer Santa movie Silent Night, Deadly Night, but it is a grim little grade-z body count movie with some great atmosphere, genuine suspense, and above-average acting. If the feel-good holiday stuff is getting to be too much for you, then this movie should help you gain some perspective. Also, since Silent Night, Bloody Night was released in 1973 (according to The Overlook Film Encyclopedia horror edition, which contradicts IMDb), and the film itself sports a 1972 copyright, it looks like this film beat Black Christmas to the horror holiday game by at least a year.

Yup it's the holiday season, and while The Specials is not a Holiday movie, it is an oddly endearing comedy about family, albeit a dysfunctional "family" of superheroes. The Specials are the world's sixth or seventh greatest superhero team. According to the film's opening scrawl, they have spent many a day fighting both natural disasters and super villains, but today is not one of those days. This is because -- with the exception of a brief CGI sequence -- the film's meager budget does not allow the characters to demonstrate their amazing powers. What we are left with is a day or so in the life of a superhero team struggling for respectability, and it seems they're on the verge of attaining it. Kosgro Toys is about to unveil its new line of Specials action figures, which will finally put them in the same league as The Crusaders, The Annihilators, and The Anti-Evil Gang.

The team's newest member is Night Bird (Jordan Ladd), a plucky young lass with bird powers and wide-eyed idealism. We meet most of the team members as she does, and they are, at best, a quirky bunch. The group is lead by the laser-shooting Strobe, played with Shatner-esque nuances and supreme arrogance by Thomas Haden Church (who switches sides and becomes a super villain in Spider-man 3). The Strobe's wife, Ms. Indestructible, played by Paget Brewster, is carrying on an illicit affair with the team's most popular member The Weevil, played by Rob Lowe. Following a truly disastrous roll-out of The Specials' action figures, Strobe learns of the affair and dissolves the team.

Take a healthy dose of The Poseidon Adventure, mix it with an unconvincing (but still effective) dash of Indiana Jones-ism, sprinkle the concoction with a goofy sense of humor -- and then throw in a whole lot of guns, gore and amazingly goopy creatures. Voila! You've just made a movie that's just as good as Stephen Sommers' Deep Rising! (Heck, maybe better!)

Starring the rectangle-jawed and entirely likeable Treat Williams as a typically rascally hero-guy, the never-more-beautiful Famke Janssen as a mega-sexy thief, and a whole bunch of colorful character actors who are given maybe eight lines of dialogue and one personality trait apiece, Deep Rising is the flick Sommers made before he hit the big-time with his off-kilter rendition of The Mummy -- which he promptly followed up with two certifiable dung-heaps: The Migraine Returns and the unwatchable Van Hellstink. (Prior to Deep Rising, Sommers directed a pair of flicks for Disney: The Adventures of Huck Finn and The Jungle Book.)

So that's six whole movies that Stephen Sommers has written/directed, and yet the only one I can go back to for repeat viewings is 1998's Deep Rising. Ostensibly a monster movie in a disaster flick suit, DR benefits from a quick pace, a good deal of action, some strong doses of very visual viscera and a bunch of actors who are clearly playing the piece with tongue planted firmly in cheek. You want to talk about plotholes, lackluster editing and a general lack of actual story, I'd listen and probably agree; Deep Rising is a genre flick that wears its glitches firmly on its sleeve (and some of the CGI is really weak) but it still moves forward with such playful abandon that I'm more than willing to overlook the rough spots (most of which arrive in Act III and during a powerfully chintzy-looking epilogue) and just enjoy the flick as snack food for the cerebellum.

Plus it stands as a reminder that Sommers can get a little gritty and nasty sometimes ... when he's not beholden to a $200 million budget and forever chasing the Holy Grail that is the PG-13 rating.

I did not realize until I posted a Vintage Image of the Day for Shock Treatment that the "not a sequel" to The Rocky Horror Picture Show was one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Two days after I posted the photo, I bought the DVD and threw out my old VHS copy, so I can enjoy the highest resolution, most gorgeous images and sound possible when I indulge my secret love for the 1981 cult classic.

In my Vintage Image of the Day post, I called Shock Treatment the sequel to Rocky Horror. As others have noted, this isn't strictly true. However, some of the characters are the same. Remember Brad Majors and Janet Weiss? (Keep your audience-participation nicknames to yourself.) In Shock Treatment, the happy couple is now married, but something's wrong with their relationship, something they themselves can't quite express. The characters are played by different actors -- Cliff De Young and Jessica Harper take over the roles held by Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon in Rocky Horror. On the other hand, cast members from the first movie also appear in Shock Treatment, but as different characters.

In honor of writer/director/composer John Carpenter's return to his roots with an updated version of his classic film Halloween (which, sadly, he won't be directing) and as I've already expressed my fondness for wrestlers-turned-actors, it should come as no surprise that one of my favorite films of all time is John Carpenter's classic They Live. Even though I love the movie, I do have a bit of a problem here. This is supposed to be a "guilty pleasure" piece, but I'm not so sure They Live qualifies. I do get a certain amount of pleasure from watching it, but I don't ever really feel guilty about it.

Dictionary.com defines "guilty" as "having or showing a sense of guilt, whether real or imagined" and "pleasure" as " enjoyment or satisfaction derived from what is to one's liking; gratification; delight." So, thinking about it in those terms, maybe we can call They Live a guilty pleasure after all. Here's why: the film is so good that you want to watch it over and over again spending quite a bit of your time with the movie and far less time on other things like taking out the garbage, work or talking to your family. You should probably feel guilty about not doing those things, so taking it that way, They Live does qualify. Glad we got that sorted. Now, let's get on with it.

They Live, which stars "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Keith "Don't call me David" David, George "Buck" Flower and Meg "No Nickname" Foster, is equal parts action, sci-fi and social commentary on the state of politics and the influence of the media in modern society. The story of the film is pretty simple. A drifter with a "checkered past" named Nada, played by Piper, arrives in Los Angeles looking for an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have too much luck with that plan.

Piper soon comes to realize that things in the City of Angels are not exactly what they appear to be. In fact, far from it. It seems an alien race has taken over the city with its sights on world domination. Their plan is to subjugate the human race through the use of subliminal messages all over the city forcing the humans to "marry and reproduce", realize that money is their "god", and above all, "obey." Piper stumbles on the alien's plans and with the help of a group of resistance fighters (and some cool sunglasses that allow him to see the aliens for what they are) he's off to work and ready to "chew bubblegum and kick ass." It's bad news for the aliens though, because he's " ... all out of bubblegum."

How many horror movie series start with a good movie and then just get worse and worse? I'm talking mainly horror movies that move past the "trilogy" stage, like Halloween, The Exorcist, Hellraiser, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.

What sets the Friday the 13th series apart is that it started in mediocrity and continues in mediocrity. No one has ever been disappointed by a Friday the 13th movie; each and every one delivers exactly the same thing. A friend of mine, a beer connoisseur, once explained to me that even though Budweiser beer is bland and horrible, it's apparently a difficult task to continually brew beer with the same taste. There's something admirable, even comforting about that. When one comes to a Budweiser or a Friday the 13th movie, one attains the illusion of stability in an unstable world.

Following in the tradition of horror film anthologies like Dead of Night, Tales from the Crypt, and Creepshow; 1985's Night Train to Terror provides an interesting spin by having each of the film's three stories distilled from a feature film. Granted, packing a full-length movie into a twenty-five minute or so segment doesn't leave a lot of room for characterization, motivation, or plot even. The film distills the horror elements of these three features into a concentrated and highly flavorful B-movie paste that goes down well with nachos and beer. The disjointed narratives lend a dream-like quality to the stories, and while they ultimately don't make a lick of sense, they sure make for a fun ride.

To connect the three tales, God and Satan are meeting on the titular train to discuss the damnation or salvation of a handful of mortal souls. The train is also carrying a jaw-droppingly awful pseudo-80s pop band, resplendent in their headbands and Flashdance-style sweatshirts. The young musicians seem perpetually stuck in music video mode, repeatedly singing an infectious (though certainly not good) tune that you'll be humming for days.

Hey, we might not be the biggest film snobs here at Cinematical, but when it comes to Jackass Number Two, we seem to be above it. Erik was surprised and a little bit scared to see it rise to the top of last weekend's box office. James, also shocked, suggested a reason for its successful opening. Even I thought it was too stupid to bother with, and had even planned to avoid phone calls from those friends who might attempt to peer pressure me into seeing it with them. Alas, I'm an easy one to break, and on Saturday night we got boozed up with Texas-size margaritas at Dallas BBQ, headed to the theater with the liveliest crowds in Brooklyn, and watched Jackass Number Two. And, of course, I laughed my ass off. Why? Because I'm a normal human being with a sense of humor. And no attempts at being cynical, snobbish or above it could keep me from splitting my sides for almost 90 minutes straight.

I won't go so far as to say Jackass Number Two is the funniest movie of the year; I'm still sure that I'll laugh more during Borat, but it is at least the funniest thing I've seen this year. And let me point out that without the tequila and the rowdy audience, I would probably have laughed just as much. It isn't simply the ridiculous stunts and pranks and gross-out gags that makes the film so funny, either. It is the wonderful group of guys, who are constantly as curious, afraid, amazed and yes, even above the bits as their audience is. The fact that some of them occasionally show disdain for the whole project and swear off even thinking of doing a third film shows that these aren't just a bunch of idiots who like playing with fire (and snakes, sharks, terrorism, riot weapons, horse excrement and semen and, best of all, Busby Berkeley musical routines); they are witty entertainers who can take a lot of pain and suffering for the enjoyment of the viewer.

Besides, if Murderball's Mark Zupan can allow himself to be shot off a pier into a lake, then surely we can all sit through a silly film like Jackass Number Two for an hour and a half.

Unlike our own Scott Weinberg, I am not a fan of horror films. At all. Not only do they not scare me, they typically bore me like nothing else. That said, I will admit to being scared as a child by two films, Poltergeist and Poltergeist III. The former is not that surprising to you, I'm sure, but the latter may have you questioning my credibility once again. Sure, it isn't a good movie (evidenced by its 15% on Rotten Tomatoes and its 3.6 rating on IMDb, not to mention Scott's claim that it's, "easily one of the worst movies ever made"), but it is really creepy, and it still continues to hold a unique power over me. Every time I watch it, I do double-takes at mirrors for days -- I just have to make sure that my reflection doesn't stay behind when I walk away. Okay, so really it's just that early scene with Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen that gives me the willies, and I admit that I often lose interest half-way in, but I really do love the premise and I can't say I never watch the movie all the way through.

The thing I don't understand is how Poltergeist 2: The Other Side is lauded as being the better of the sequels. That movie, aside from giving me an early fear of tequila, isn't scary, nor does it have an interesting plot. Yes, it introduces us to the whole Reverend Kane storyline, but only as a set up to part III, in my opinion. The thing is, you can't beat any pic that primarily takes place in a tall building, especially when it deals with frightening creatures. This was the '80s, and the time had come for the haunted house to become the haunted skyscraper. It works for Ghostbusters, it works for Gremlins 2 (which came later, in 1990) and it works for Poltergeist III. I know I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.