Perhaps it's the electrocuted dwarf or the school principal peddling child porn, the notion of serving a breakfast buffet in a strip club or the cameo by Justin Bieber in an orange prison jumpsuit, but it's clear that Behaving Badly is very bad indeed.

So bad that the 2014 teen gross-out film – which stars Selena Gomez as a saintly, straight-A student, and Nat Wolff as the slacker who wants to get her in bed – was not liked by any critic, anywhere. It's a raunchy comedy without all the funny or sexy bits.

Movie site Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates the opinions of hundreds of film reviewers, gives Behaving Badly a rating of 0 per cent – rendering it utterly unredeemable. One critic called it "as fresh as a stiff tissue and even less appealing".

It's almost impossible to score 0 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The site's "Tomatometer" rating system represents the percentage of reviews by professional critics that are positive for a particular film. Anything more than 60 per cent gets a fresh red tomato rating, anything under that earns a rotten green one. Invariably, someone, somewhere, will have something good to say about a movie, even if it is indigestible.

But a 0 per cent film is unloved by everyone who sees it, which is no mean feat. As an indication of just how hard it is to score 0 per cent, please note that no Adam Sandler film has ever rated so poorly. When even Jack and Jill scores 3 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, you know just how low a filmmaker must go to hit rock bottom.

So what does it take to make a film that no one likes? A film so bad it doesn't even have cult appeal? So bad it's just really, really bad? To find out, The Shortlist packed its blindfold, popped an anti-nausea pill and settled in to watch some 0 per cent films, if only so you never have to.

There are more than 100 films with a zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes, ranging from the 1963 shocker They Saved Hitler's Brain through to animated film Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, The Undefeated (a documentary on the life and times of former United States vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin) and Police Academy four, five and six.

Film franchises feature heavily in the list, which hasn't deterred Hollywood from plotting endless superhero series. Other common features among great unloved films include woeful scripts, cheap production standards, terrible acting and poor editing. Mums are always portrayed as sad harlots in a 0 per cent film. And everyone seems to shout – in lieu of having anything good to say.

Superbad movies are a mishmash of cliches and stereotypes. Men are gross or sex-crazed or stupid (see: 10 Rules For Sleeping Around). Women are doe-eyed innocents or over-sexed or stupid (Sex Lives of the Potato Men). Australian towns are filled with quirky people who say "bloody" and "thieving mongrel" (A Heartbeat Away). Eastern Europeans have bad hair and basements for burying bodies (I Spit On Your Grave 2).

Film reviewer Michael Adams, author of Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest to Find the Worst Movie Ever Made, says what unifies 0 per cent films is how boring they are. "Boredom is the cardinal sin," he says. "A movie that is really, really bad but is still fast paced or silly can still be entertaining. But if you bore an audience, then you are going to lose them."

Sharks are merciless beasts with a sophisticated appreciation of family lineage. Or so it was told in the 1987 film Jaws: The Revenge, the fourth outing in the monster-shark saga. The film asked audiences to accept that the same beast who had been blown into rubbery shark pieces three times before, was somehow back in the water and intent on eating every member of a single family.

Other strange twists include the shark's ability to navigate the length of the Atlantic seaboard in three days, and the appearance of actor Michael Caine in a film of which one reviewer said "the performances range from the mortifying to the merely immemorable". By the time the credits roll, even the shark looks happy to be put out of its misery.

Caine missed out on accepting an Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters to star in the shark flick but famously insisted he had no regrets. "I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific."

It's reassuring that the mere presence of a big-name actor will not save a turkey. Robert Downey Jr and Uma Thurman joined the zero-percenters with the 1987 teen film Johnny Be Good – a film so bad that critic Roger Ebert said: "The people who made this movie should be ashamed of themselves."

Also on the 0 per cent list are Oscar winners Kevin Spacey (in Father of Invention), Halle Berry (Dark Tide) and Adrien Brody in InAPPropriate Comedy – a film so rotten it also scores 1 per cent on rival film review site Metacritic, which is as low as its scores go.

Berry's 2004 film Catwoman (9 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes) often features in lists of the worst movies ever. But worse still is Dark Tide, a 2012 thriller that's likely the least interesting film ever made about shark attacks. Highlights include dialogue on "anal fins" and unresolved plot points, such as: Why would a shark expert take a novice scuba diver into shark-infested waters, in the dark, in high seas, at feeding time? And what nationality is Olivier Martinez anyway?

It's curious how few 0 per cent films feature on worst-ever movie lists. Notable exceptions include the 1966 low-budget Manos: The Hands of Fate ("Horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible," was one critic's assessment).

Many so-called "worst films" rate above zero on Rotten Tomatoes, proving that at least one reviewer didn't detest Battlefield Earth (3 per cent), Gigli (6 per cent), Batman and Robin (11 per cent) or Showgirls (19 per cent). The 1998 cult film The Room (famously described as "the Citizen Kane of bad movies") scores a relatively healthy 33 per cent.

Some bad films become cult classics because we can't help but watch, like rubberneckers at a car crash.

"A film like The Room is a cult sensation because the director set out to make a serious melodrama and unintentionally made a ridiculous, hilarious comedy – like ordering a steak in a restaurant and getting pizza instead," Adams says. "But bad-bad films have absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever."

Manos: The Hands of Fate was made after an El Paso fertiliser salesman bet that anyone could make a horror movie. It's alarming to think how many more worse films (and some potentially good ones) are never made, Adams adds. "You are getting the cream of the crappy crop."

What makes some 0 per cent films so bad is that they try too hard to be good. In lieu of a strong script, fine acting or a good plot, they try to shock people into submission or at best meek acceptance.

Among them is the 2011 Australian film A Heartbeat Away, a painful pantomime complete with cardboard cut-out villains, kooky locals and sunsets that are just too pink. Watching it is like bathing in golden syrup and Weet-Bix. "Everybody is trying too hard," wrote The Sydney Morning Herald film reviewer Sandra Hall.

"Symptomatic is the finale, which comes tricked out with allusions to The Blues Brothers and Nirvana. It smells like desperation to me."

Then there's the recent stinker Behaving Badly. The film "wants to have it both ways", one reviewer reckoned: trying to be a gross-out comedy – with bodily functions spewing forth and naked girls and dirty mums – and to have a serious sweet side, where Wolff finally gets a kiss with the girl of his wet dreams.

Perhaps if the filmmaker had settled on one storyline, it might have scored 10 per cent or at least 5 per cent. It's a fine line between bad and desperately bad. Ultimately, the best clue to what makes a 0 per cent film might be how utterly forgettable it is. So lame it is destined never to be remembered. So average that it falls off the vine unnoticed, becoming the cinematic equivalent of compost. A film so mundane that by the time a dwarf is electrocuted on screen, it's not clear anyone is watching anymore.

The Room screens as part of The Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum Now presented by ANZ festival on March 13 at the Cremorne Orpheum. Go to  spectrumnow.com.au for details.

GOOD LINES FROM BAD FILMS

Manos: The Hands of Fate "I am Torgo. I take care of the place when the Master is away."

Jaws: The Revenge "I have always wanted to make love to an angry welder."

Killing Me Softly "I could break your neck I love you so much."

Sex Lives of the Potato Men "I like cauliflower. I like cheese. But I don't like cauliflower cheese."

A Heartbeat Away "You're a dancer. Not a lawyer."

Dark Tide "You have beautiful eyebrows you know, stunning."

InAPPropriate Comedy "I spent years drowning in a pool of semen."

I Spit On Your Grave 2 "I know how to catch me some vermin."

10 Rules For Sleeping Around "I want to worship your arse."

Behaving Badly  "I'm more a grower than a shower."