Few people take pleasure in watching a lame TV show, listening to a terrible album or attending a dull sporting event.

But most folks admit there is something perfectly entrancing about sitting through a bad movie.

“It’s a special kind of backward joy,” says John Wilson, founder of the Golden Raspberry Awards. “If it’s the right bad movie and the right bad actor — and you have the right people in the room with you and the right kind of liquor — it can really be a lot of fun.”

For a quarter of a century, Wilson has honored Hollywood’s weakest efforts with a ceremony that mocks the Oscars by calling attention to the yearly dubious feats of the industry.

“Some of the appeal of watching bad movies is knowing how much money got flushed down the toilet to achieve this wretchedness,” he says.

The Razzies have plenty to celebrate this year. To commemorate their 25th anniversary, Wilson has organized a particularly garish bash at Hollywood’s Ivar Theatre — just down the street from where the Oscars are being held the following night.

“We will open with a musical number that is a tune from the song that won the Academy Award the night we did the first Razzies. The original lyric was ‘Fame’; our lyric is ‘Lame.'”

But unlike the Oscars, there won’t be a galaxy of stars in attendance.

“I don’t expect Halle Berry will be ‘catwalking’ down our carpet that night,” he says.

So far, only three nominees have taken part in past ceremonies. Bill Cosby flew Wilson out to Lake Tahoe so he could present the comedian the Worst Actor award for the disastrous spy spoof, “Leonard Part 6.”

The initial one to actually attend the event and accept the honor before an audience was “Showgirls” director Paul Verhoeven.

“He’s Dutch, and he was very funny,”

Wilson recalls. “He said, ‘In Holland I was chased out of my homeland for being sick and disgusting. Then I come to America and I win an award for it.'”

Most recently, comedian Tom Green turned up to receive Worst Actor and Worst Picture for 2001’s “Freddy Got Fingered.”

“At the very end of the ceremony we literally had to pry his hands from the podium and carry him off the stage,” Wilson relates, “or he would still be standing there doing a harmonica solo.”

Interview with John Wilson, founder of the Razzies What’s the first bad movie you remember seeing? What do you have planned for this year’s Razzies show? Do any of the nominees ever show up to your awards show?

But others haven’t been such good sports.

Faye Dunaway “flew into a litigious rage” when she learned of her Worst Actress win for “Mommie Dearest.” While multiple Razzies winner Sylvester Stallone has frequently condemned the event. Ben Affleck even refused to accept the Raspberry statuette (for his performance in “Gigli”) when presented with it on “Larry King Live.”

Wilson countered by placing the unclaimed item on eBay, though he disclosed it only had a street value of $4.97.

Within three days it had received bids up to $1,750. Wilson ended up using the money to pay for this year’s rental fee of the Ivar Theatre.

An idea that snowballs

Wilson

Wilson, a Chicago native, recalls his first experience with a bad flick when he was a 7-year-old.

“I saw a little thing called ‘Snow White and the Three Stooges,'” he says. “It didn’t even have the real Three Stooges — it had that really obnoxious one they had at the end. It featured a skating star that someone at (20th Century) Fox thought would be another Sonja Henie. I just remember even at 7 thinking, ‘Boy, what a bunch of dreck.'”

A graduate of UCLA’s film/television studies program, Wilson became involved in the promotion side of the industry. He helped craft dozens of movie ad campaigns including the original three “Star Wars” pictures and “Superman.”

While hosting an Oscar party in 1980 he introduced the idea for the Razzies as a lark. (The Village People’s ill-fated musical “Can’t Stop the Music” scored the first such victory.) After three years cultivating this private joke, he turned the awards into a public affair.

“Given that it started in my living room alcove a quarter century ago, I myself am surprised how big this thing has gotten and how long it has lasted,” he confesses.

The Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation boasts an eligible membership of 675 individuals who vote in nine categories. (Note: There will also be four retrospective categories this year, including Worst Musical, Worst Drama, Worst Comedy and Worst Razzie Loser of Our First 25 years.)

The awards are voted on by a combination of industry professionals, film journalists and the general moviegoing public.

Of the latter third, Wilson says, “They either have a sense of humor or are actually quite angry they paid money to see some of this stuff.”

Knee-deep in bad

While Wilson calls “The Incredibles” the best movie he saw in 2004, he asserts there are plenty of bad ones he suffered through that didn’t land among the five Worst Picture nominees.

“There are two that I’m surprised got away scot-free,” he cites. “I can’t believe ‘Troy’ did not get anything. Somebody sent me a very angry e-mail that Brad Pitt did not get nominated. I agree with them. The other one that almost everyone saw and knew was wretched is ‘Van Helsing.'”

In January, Warner Books released Wilson’s “The Official Razzie Movie Guide.” The tome coincides with the 25th anniversary and documents some of the cinematic lows and lowers in Razzie Awards history.

When pressed to name the most awful acting performances he saw during that span, the 50-year-old points to a pair of Oscar winners.

“The worst female performance I have ever seen is Sofia Coppola in ‘The Godfather Part III,” he says of the novice actress-turned-director who went on to win a screenwriting Oscar for “Lost in Translation.” “I saw it on a studio lot at a screening with Academy members, and I have never seen Academy members burst into applause at someone’s death before.

“The worst male performance is from ‘Inchon,'” he says of the notorious Korean War drama funded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.

“Laurence Olivier is spray-painted pink wearing a black boot-polish wig as Douglas MacArthur, doing a truly strange English-Yiddish-Nebraskan accent.”

As for the all-time worst movies. Well … that depends on one’s definition of “bad.”

“If you’re talking bad, horrible, no one could actually sit through it, probably ‘Freddy Got Fingered,'” Wilson says. “If you’re talking the other kind — fun, wildly off the mark and very entertaining — I would say it’s a three-way tie between ‘The Lonely Lady’ with Pia Zadora, ‘Mommie Dearest’ and ‘Showgirls.’ Those are old reliables.”