America is in a golden age of podcasts about bad movies.

Shows like “We Hate Movies,” “Bad Movie Fiends” and “The Flop House” spend hours poring over Hollywood duds, flops and critical punching bags.

“You get to talk about something that’s so bad it’s good, and so bad it’s hilarious,” said June Diane Raphael, of the podcast “How Did This Get...

America is in a golden age of podcasts about bad movies.

Shows like “We Hate Movies,” “Bad Movie Fiends” and “The Flop House” spend hours poring over Hollywood duds, flops and critical punching bags.

“You get to talk about something that’s so bad it’s good, and so bad it’s hilarious,” said June Diane Raphael, of the podcast “How Did This Get Made?” which has pioneered the genre for more than a decade.

Imagine that.

The podcast recently dissected the “Uninvited,” a 1987 horror film that follows a particularly ornery cat infected with a genetically engineered virus. Spoiler alert: You thought your cat was a pain.

‘How Did This Get Made?’ podcasts hosts Jason Mantzoukas, June Diane Raphael and Paul Scheer.

Photo: Photography by Foster Snell, Artwork by Aaron Nestor, courtesy of Earwolf Media, LLC

Ms. Raphael and her husband and podcast partner, Paul Scheer, had an onstage spat over whether or not the 1991 comedy “Drop Dead Fred” was a film classic. The plot revolves around a woman, played by Phoebe Cates, who returns to her mom’s house after a breakup and job loss, reconnecting with her imaginary childhood friend Drop Dead Fred. Fred spends the film dispensing mischief with a sprinkling of life lessons.

Ate de Jong, the movie’s director, said he’s just glad people are still talking about it.

“When you’re young, you always think that a film is forever. Very quickly you realize that’s not true,” he said. “Most films disappear. And I’ve been extremely lucky that ‘Drop Dead Fred’ somehow survived.”

There is an art to picking movies for the show, Mr. Scheer said. The films need to fuel comedy but not full-on mockery. “It’s a fine line,” he said.

Mr. Scheer drew the line at “The Gingerdead Man,” he said. In case you missed the original 2005 release, Gary Busey stars as a gingerbread man baked with the ashes of an executed serial killer. The oversize cookie monster comes to life after an electrical surge at a bakery. It was followed by “Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust” and “Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.”

Bestselling author Gillian Flynn recently appeared as a guest on “The Flophouse” and spent more than an hour riffing with others on the show about this year’s “The Unholy.” Short take: Miracles in a small town seem divine but start to look suspiciously like Satan’s work. It earned a 26% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Actress Cricket Brown in ‘The Unholy.’

Photo: Screen Gems/Everett Collection

On “Blank Check with Griffin & David,” co-hosted by actor Griffin Newman and film critic David Sims, Mr. Newman went on about how bad Russell Crowe looked in his transformation from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde in 2017’s “The Mummy.” Too much “spooky monster face,” he said.

“He should have claws,” Mr. Newman said. “The back of his hands should be furry. He should have a big brow. He should have an underbite.”

Mr. Newman also can play the contrarian to such critical flops as “Ishtar,” the 1987 Dustin Hoffman-Warren Beatty comedy that became synonymous with big-budget failures.

“This is a movie I adore so deeply, in so many ways,” Mr. Newman said in an episode dedicated to the film. “I don’t think there is another movie that, arguably, gets this many laughs in the opening credits.”

Audiences are filling clubs and theaters to watch the live recording of bad-movie podcasts. In 2019, more than 1,200 people saw the hosts of “How Did This Get Made?” spar over “Drop Dead Fred” at the Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles.

“We Hate Movies” is on the road this month, delivering an analysis of various movies in different cities on the podcast’s tour. Asheville, N.C., gets “Junior,” the 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy about a pregnant man.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny De Vito in ‘Junior.’

Photo: Walt Disney Co./Everett Collection

Hosts of ‘We Hate Movies’ performing at Zanies in Chicago last month: Stephen Sajdak, Eric Szyszka, Chris Cabin and Andrew Jupin.

Photo: WHM

“Blank Check,” which bills itself as “not just another bad movie podcast,” examines every movie in a director’s oeuvre, from the celebrated to the maligned.

Making fun of films has been a longtime pastime, from the Razzies to “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”

“I’m certainly not a movie critic, don’t care to be, but what is fun is to talk about shared experiences and to kind of dissect it together,” said Ms. Raphael of “How Did This Get Made?”

The podcast is integrated into the relationship of Hannah Hembree and Alec Doherty. When the Los Angeles couple dated long-distance, they would watch one of the movies featured on “How Did This Get Made?” together and then listen to the show on the way to the airport, to help soften their goodbyes.

Mr. Doherty proposed to Ms. Hembree during the Q&A portion of a live show dedicated to “The Avengers,” not the Marvel megahit, the 1998 turkey starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman.

“We spend a lot of time watching a lot of sad documentaries and foreign films,” Ms. Hembree said. She and her husband were working in film buying and distribution when they started dating.

“Sometimes it’s really nice to just have a palate cleanser of ‘Monkey Shines,’ ” she said, name-checking George Romero’s 1988 film about a homicidal Capuchin, a primate best known on-screen as the organ-grinder monkey.

Actor Jason Beghe during a menacing moment in ‘Monkey Shines.’

Photo: Orion Pictures/Everett Collection

The three hosts of “How Did This Get Made?” know what it is like to be the target of critics. Each one works in TV and film.

Mr. Scheer co-stars in Showtime’s “Black Monday,” Ms. Raphael is in Netflix’s “Grace and Frankie,” and Jason Mantzoukas has a role in the new “Star Trek: Prodigy” series.

“It’s not like we’re standing atop a mountain in a career that is without bad movies,” Mr. Mantzoukas said. “We’ve all been inside of bad movies. In a way, I feel comfortable talking about it because I understand.”