Action movies like Die Hard and Terminator 2 are proof that a film can be full of violence, gunplay, gore, witty catch-phrases and Arnold Schwarzenegger without being an awful B-Movie. With a motivated director, a solid cast, excellent choreography and a novel screenplay, even the silliest macho shoot-em-up flick can become a movie icon.

Most of the time, however, that’s way more effort than the producers are willing to put into their shitty low-budget action flick. It’s okay though, because there’s an easy way to make even the worst action movie worth watching; badass boat chases.

Why boat chases, you ask? Because a badass, over-the-top boat chase is a hell of a lot easier to shoot than a badass, over-the-top car chase. People are familiar with cars, most of us use them every day. When a director tries to do something ridiculous with a car, like make it fly off of a ramp and into a helicopter, people are liable to call ‘bullshit!’

Oh yes, this looks entirely physically possible.

But the vast majority of people in the U.S. have little-to-no experience piloting boats. Because they don’t know what how things actually work in a nautical setting, they’ll fall for whatever insane stunts the director decides to throw into his chase.

Below are 5 of the worst movies ever made that just happen to contain six of the best boat chases in the history of film. With any luck, some aspiring B-Movie director will take note and make “BOAT CHASE: THE MOVIE” before another summer passes.

1. The Protector

Released: 1985

Starring: Jackie Chan, and a bunch of people who didn’t end up nearly as famous as Jackie Chan.
Plot Overview: A rich white girl is kidnapped by a ruthless Hong Kong drug kingpin. NYPD Cop Billy Wong (Jackie Chan) and his partner (Not Chris Tucker) are dispatched to Hong Kong to track down the kingpin and free the pretty girl.

Apparently, no one bothered to remind the director that local police departments don’t have jurisdiction over, y’know, China.

Above: Not New York City.

Tagline: “Now, New York has a new weapon – A cop with his own way of fighting crime.”

In case you haven’t already guessed, Jackie Chan’s character fights crime the same way he fights everything else. With his fists.

The Big Chase: On the whole, The Protector is a pretty standard 80s action flick. Guys get their arms ripped off and bleed more than an entire truckload of Russian princes, tiny handguns blow people back ten feet in the air, and the acting is roughly on par with Seth Rogan circa 2006.

What saves The Protector is its gigantic boat chase scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsO2kViL96M

Highlights include:

-Jackie Chan taking both hands off the wheel to put on his sunglasses. Because looking badass is more important than “safety.”

-A crazy bearded man responding to a volley of gunshots with “Damned Chinamen don’t give up!”

-At 4:00 minutes in, Jackie climbs up onto a helicopter in mid-chase. This might seem like a wimpy way to get out of a car chase, but Chan only does it in order to…

-Aim his speedboat like a missile at Beardo’s boat. (4:20) The instant both boats make contact, they detonate in a spectacular fireball. That’ll teach drug dealers to build their smuggling ships out of anti-matter!

2. Live and Let Die

Released: 1973

Starring: Roger Moore, the worst James Bond that wasn’t George Lazenby.

Honestly, Moore wasn’t that bad. It’s just that no one can live up to Sean Fucking Connery.

Plot Overview: James Bond must travel to New York in order to stop a major heroin producer named Mr. Big from taking over the world. In order to stop Mr. Big, Bond has to seduce a tarot card reader and murder dozens of nameless henchmen. Also, for some reason he has to walk over a bridge made of fucking crocodiles. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABBuCnaGW2U)

Seriously.

Like every Bond movie made that doesn’t star Daniel Craig or Sean Connery, Live and Let Die was terrible. Fortunately for us, it was terrible in the unique way that only a Bond movie can be, which makes it a hell of a lot of fun to watch as long as you’re sufficiently inebriated.

Tagline: “Roger Moo7re is James Bond.”

This is what passed for wit in 1973.

The Big Chase:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P9fbQik8Wg

-At .21 seconds in, we get a look at how the British view American police officers. An enormous pot-bellied redneck.

-At .45 seconds in, Officer Big-Belly says what sounds like, “Flibberty gibberty hoogly doogly fastest boat in the river!” Oh, Louisiana.

-At 1:09, Shaft knocks the fuck out of a Cajun hillbilly ranger named, no shit “Billy Bob” and steals his boat. I am beginning to think the British have a low opinion of the American south.

-At 2:50, Bond tries to escape a Shaft by skipping his boat through a Bayou wedding.

-At 4:00, Bond and Shaft skip over the road and in front of a police chase, before plunging back into the river. Because James Bond is incapable of so much as pissing without causing $10,000 in property damage, this causes a 4 car pile-up.

-At 5:32, Bond maces Shaft with a bucket full of chemicals, and sends him careening into a cargo ship which, obedient to the laws of movie physics, instantly explodes.

3. Moonraker

Released: 1979

Starring: Roger Moore. Notice a pattern?

Plot Overview: A mad scientist builds a space station and tries to wipe out the planet with a deadly nerve gas in order to create a perfect society. James Bond has to fight people with laser guns and a 7 foot tall man with metal teeth in order to bang this movie’s Bond girl (Holly Goodhead) and save the world from annihilation.

Big man, tiny pistol.

Also, there are space marines. Seriously, the only way this movie could have been worse is if they’d hired the infuriating pig-tailed girl from those Arby’s commercials to play the love interest of a 7 foot tall murder machine.

Oh.

Tagline: “Moonraker Is Out Of This World”

The next time you trick yourself into believing in a just universe, remember that someone got paid actual money to write that.

The Big Chase:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-EL1-0MxFs

-The chase starts off with a boat-mounted mortar. Hell yes. THIS is why we watch Bond movies.

-At about 1:17, Bond deploys sea mines from the back of his bitchin’ jet-boat. He blows up a whole dinghy full of henchmen.

-At around 1:31, we get our first glimpse of Jaws, wearing a dress shirt, suspenders, and an enormous Uzi.

-At 2:10, a homing missile hits some guys right in the face. Their boat explodes from multiple angles, which is the best kind of explosion.

-At 3:00, Bond busts out the roof-mounted hang-glider, which I am convinced needs to be mandatory safety equipment on all boats, cars, and baby carriages.

-This is the only chase thus far that doesn’t end with an explosion. Bond totally tricks a boat full of bad guys into flying off of a gigantic waterfall though.

4. Face/Off

Released: 1997

Starring: John Travolta and Nicholas cage. That right there says all you need to know about the “quality” of this film.

Nicholas Cage is terrible, and Wicker Man is the proof.

Plot Overview: An FBI agent apprehends a violent terrorist, but in order to stop his vile plot to destroy L.A. from succeeding, the agent must take on his sworn enemies appearance and infiltrate his organization. He does this by literally switching faces with the terrorist. Unfortunately, the terrorist (who now looks like the FBI agent) escapes, and begins to ruin the agent’s life.

How could this story possibly take 2+ hours to tell?

Tagline: “In order to trap him, he must become him.”

This tagline actually does an excellent job of summing up the whole film. If only they’d stopped there.

The Big Chase:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NdWKdlue-Q

-At .27, Travolta and Cage begin to ram each other in slow motion, accompanied by badass action movie music.

-At .46, the two men’s gunfight is interrupted by a boat full of cops, who yell at them with a megaphone. This is exactly as effective as you’d expect.

-At .58, Travolta wipes out an entire boat full of cops with a long burst from his sub-machine gun, despite the fact that, moments before, he was unable to hit Cage even once at point blank range.

-At 1:16, Cage’s boat collides with the police boat, which instantly explodes. Since Cage is a hero, and thus immune to “exploding movie boat physics”, his craft sails through the boatsplosion unharmed.

-At 1:48, Cage leaps from his doomed boat onto Travolta’s.

-A massive hand-to-hand battle on a moving boat ensues. John Travolta attempts to beat Nicholas Cage to death with an anchor. For a brief moment, I know true happiness.

-At 4:00, Travolta and Cage sail through the air and barely avoid a slow-motion explosion. This is the 90s at its finest.

5. The World Is Not Enough

Released: 1999

Starring: Pierce Brosnan. Well at least Goldeneye wasn’t too bad.

The best I can say is, he’s not Roger Moore.

Plot Overview: Blah, blah, blah, oil heiress abducted, blah blah, villain who can’t feel pain, blah blah blah Bond saves an oil pipeline from destruction and fucks the Bond girl with the worst name yet. Seriously, Christmas Jones? At least ‘Octopussy’ was naughty.

There is almost nothing erotic about Christmas.

This is pretty much a generic action film, except it stars as James Bond. Lots of chases, lots of explosions, a barely coherent plot, and some neat but unrealistic gadgets.

Tagline: “As the countdown begins for the new millennium there is still one number you can always count on.”

DOUBLE OH SEVEN.

The Big Chase:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Tdmxx54PY

-The chase starts with Bond hijacking Q’s heavily armed vacation boat in order to chase after a pretty assassin.

-Bond pursues the (dripping wet) super-model assassin through the Thames river, under bridges, and in-between buildings. Enticed yet?

-At 2:20, Bond ramps off of the assassin’s boat and jumps ahead of her. One of the few times in movie history where two boats collide and don’t explode.

-At about 2:45, the assassin’s boat deploys mortars. Bond is not perturbed.

-At 3:10, she whips out a grenade launcher.

-At 3:38, Bond dives underwater to avoid a bridge. His hair remains perfectly coiffed.

-At 4:00, the assassin rams a boat. We finally get to see an explosion, but it doesn’t kill anyone. What?

-At 4:51, Bond ends up riding his ridiculous jet-boat down the streets of London. Hilarity and the requisite millions of dollars in property damage ensues. The police attempt to chase him but, as he is James fucking Bond, they fail.

-At 6:04, Bond drives through a fancy restaurant and greatly offends a French waiter. Hilarity and property damage once again ensue.

-At 7:15, Bond ramps off of the assassin’s crashed boat, leaps out of his craft, and grabs onto a rope dangling off of an airborne hot air balloon. The eight-year-old within me cackles with glee.