James Franco’s well received and highly entertaining comedy The Disaster Artist has given a new lease of life to the egregious film The Room which it deftly lampoons.

The Room has a longstanding reputation as the worst film ever made. Written, directed, starring and self-produced by the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau, it was made on a budget of $6 million. The film was then shown at one theatre only taking $1,800 with a prominent sign from management advising No Refunds would be given.

Then a few years after disappearing without trace, and in a twist similar to the plot of The Producers, it began to be shown in midnight screenings and gained an audience of people curious to see how bad the film could actually be. And it’s bad. Truly, truly bad.

It’s near impossible to critique the film – everything about it is awful. I’ll mention only the plot strands started then swiftly abandoned and the truly cringeworthy dialogue, especially from the female characters, and leave it at that.

But that’s the fun of it. Last night, early this morning I watched it at a sold-out theatre of 200, most, if not all of whom, had visited Carlton’s fashionable bars before heading to the cinema armed with plastic spoons and a few footballs.

The cinema helpfully provided a program explaining the traditional audience interactions which accompany the film: the spoons being thrown at the screen in ever greater number; the chorus of ‘Because you’re a woman’ on hackneyed female dialogue; repeated cries of ‘Alcatraz’ whenever the prison is in shot or Tommy seen behind bars. That’s only a small selection – there are many more. The repeated chants of ‘Do your face, Do your face’ as an actor received fellatio was side-splittingly funny.

It’s pure pantomime and if you go along with the joke, you can’t fail to have a good time. I’ll be going again now I know better where to join in.

And who has the last laugh? Well the film’s now turned a profit so that goes to Tommy Wiseau.