There have been plenty of fake movies within movies over the years, but only a few seem genuinely interesting enough to make fans wish they were real. Fake movies have historically been used in a variety of ways, although they're often great for parody. Movies about Hollywood can have fake movies as jokes, and some movies take this idea one step further by making fun of themselves with a fictional stand-in.

For a movie within a movie to be truly memorable, it usually has to stand out as something worth watching. This is what differentiates a fake movie that's little more than a joke from something more interesting. It helps if the filmmakers put as much care and effort into their fake movies as their real ones. Some movies within movies have their own fans, even though they don't exist and nobody will ever see them in full.

10 Metalstorm

The Fall Guy (2024)

The Fall Guy is about a stunt performer trying to locate the star of a huge sci-fi blockbuster before the studio pulls the plug on the movie. Between his investigation and some dangerous chases across Sydney, he also finds time to work on set, and this is where The Fall Guy shows glimpses of Metalstorm. It appears to be an apocalyptic sci-fi actioner that borrows from Dune, Mad Max and Star Wars.

Metalstorm might look like a bland big-budget spectacle at first, but there are a few things which make it stand out. The way that Emily Blunt's director character talks about it suggests a deep and thoughtful analysis of the story, for one. The commitment to practical effects is another appealing element to Metalstorm. The Fall Guy is packed with great stunts, and some of these would be in Metalstorm.

9 The Purple Rose Of Cairo

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

The Purple Rose of Cairo is a great romantic comedy that doubles as a love letter to the cinema. It follows a disillusioned and mistreated wife in the 1930s who seeks out a distraction by going to the movie theater, until one of the characters steps out of the screen and the two fall in love. The fake movie within a movie is a beguiling adventure story about explorers searching for lost treasure in exotic locales, sort of like Indiana Jones, Secret of the Incas or The African Queen.

The fake version of The Purple Rose of Cairo that exists within the movie seems like the perfect kind of movie to fall in love with.

The fake version of The Purple Rose of Cairo that exists within the movie seems like the perfect kind of movie to fall in love with, which serves the plot perfectly. The Purple Rose of Cairo explores the escapism that art can offer, highlighting both the positives and the negatives. Ultimately, it seems to suggest that such fantasies can't have tangible effects on a person's life, but they are still worthwhile.

8 Hail, Caesar!

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

The Coen brothers' Hollywood satire Hail, Caesar has plenty of fake movies parodying the trends of the 1950s, with a Gene Kelly-style musical starring Channing Tatum and a British comedy of manners that the studio shoehorns a young western star into. Hail, Caesar gets its title from the studio's most expensive movie, a swords-and-sandals epic starring George Clooney's overpaid megastar Baird Whitlock.

The fake Hail, Caesar within Hail, Caesar is a riff on Old Hollywood epics like Ben-Hur, Cleopatra and Hercules.

The fake Hail, Caesar within Hail, Caesar is a riff on Old Hollywood epics like Ben-Hur, Cleopatra and Hercules. It looks like it could be a great cinematic spectacle as soon as Eddie Mannix recovers his star from the clutches of a cell of communist revolutionaries. Hail, Caesar isn't often considered among the best Coen brothers movies, but it certainly deserves a lot more attention than it gets.

7 Terrance & Philip: Asses Of Fire

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)

Terrance and Philip often show up in South Park, and the crude Canadian comedy duo provide the show with an opportunity for some self-parody. This reaches its peak in the show's first movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, which starts with Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny becoming obsessed with the new Terrance and Philip movie, a gleefully offensive comedy packed full of fart jokes called Asses of Fire.

With Asses of Fire, the South Park writers managed to predict the moral outrage that their own movie caused. The rest of Bigger, Longer & Uncut is all about how people with no sense of humor overreact to a silly comedy movie and try to turn it into the moral issue of the day. Ultimately, the United States goes to war with Canada over a movie about farting on people. While Asses of Fire looks terrible, the way South Park uses it is brilliant.

6 The 14 Fists Of McCluskey

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood examines the tumultuous period in the movie industry's history when Old Hollywood transitioned into New. It gives Tarantino an opportunity to indulge his love of cinema. He recreates a few old classics like The Great Escape, but he also invents some fake classics to illustrate the career of fading star Rick Dalton. The one that looks the most exciting is The 14 Fists of McClusky, and the flamethrower in the fake movie comes back in the ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Fans of Quentin Tarantino's movies will likely see the similarities between The 14 Fists of McCluskey and Inglourious Basterds.

Fans of Quentin Tarantino's movies will likely see the similarities between The 14 Fists of McCluskey and Inglourious Basterds. Both movies revel in Nazi-bashing action, with scenes in which Nazis are burned to death by the heroes, and Inglourious Basterds is also a fictional fantasy that doesn't pay attention to the true story of World War II. If The 14 Fists of McCluskey is half as good as Inglourious Basterds then it's bound to be a great movie. It's also a great example of the kind of simple, thrilling movies Dalton thrives in, which runs counter to many New Hollywood trends.

5 Birdman

Birdman (2014)

Michael Keaton's character in Birdman is an aging actor famous for his role in a blockbuster superhero franchise from decades earlier who is trying to get some critical prestige to his name. Despite the similarities between Keaton's past as Batman and Riggan Thompson's past as Birdman, the script was written without Keaton in mind. It's a simple coincidence that Keaton shares such a history with his character.

Despite the similarities between Keaton's past as Batman and Riggan Thompson's past as Birdman, the script was written without Keaton in mind.

Birdman doesn't actually show any clips of the fictional superhero trilogy which made Riggan Thompson a global star, so it can be a little hard to guess its quality. However, it's clearly a huge hit, and the context clues suggest that its at least on par with Keaton's Batman movies. The character design is also a big positive. The specifics of the fictional Birdman movies aren't important to the plot of Birdman. If anything, the vagueness is the point, because it suggests hollow spectacle.

4 Hamlet

Last Action Hero (1993)

Last Action Hero stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fictionalized version of himself, and he shows a great sense of humor by poking fun at his public persona. The fake movies that Last Action Hero's version of Arnie star in are only a little more explosive and excessive than real-world hits like Predator and The Terminator. One that stands out is Schwarzenegger's ass-kicking adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

There are already a lot of radical Shakespeare adaptations, like The Lion King and West Side Story, so an action-heavy interpretation of Hamlet could be a genuinely great movie. The Danish prince is out for revenge like many classic action heroes, and he's also dealing with a traumatic past and a troubled love life. Schwarzenegger has the comedic style to make a Hamlet action thriller work for real.

3 Stab

Scream 2 (1997)

Scream works as a slasher movie, but it's also satirizing the entire genre from the inside out. Its frequent references to other horror movies, especially the tropes, show intelligent self-awareness as it toys with its audience. To make things even more blatant, Scream 2 introduces the in-universe Stab franchise, which gives the Scream movies a way of directly commenting on themselves.

Scream 2 introduces the in-universe Stab franchise, which gives the Scream movies a way of directly commenting on themselves.

The Stab movies have been a great running joke throughout the Scream franchise. They provide a way for Scream to laugh at its own self-indulgent tropes, but they can also be used as a way for the filmmakers to have a conversation with their audience. The way people talk about the Stab movies reflects the most common criticisms of the Scream movies. The Scream 7 will likely continue this tradition, as both the Scream and Stab franchises spiral out of control.

2 Tropic Blunder

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Tropic Thunder has a lot of fake movies, most of which are meant to be terrible to satirize the money-hungry but artistically bankrupt Hollywood system. The worst of the worst movies are Simple Jack, an offensive, maudlin Oscar-bait drama, and The Fatties: Fart 2, an intolerable gross-out comedy. Tropic Thunder is about a group of actors trying to make a war movie, but they end up inadvertently making a documentary about their hellish time in the Vietnamese jungle.

The only other fake movie in Tropic Thunder that might actually be decent to watch is Satan's Alley, a queer period romance starring Tobey Maguire.

Tropic Blunder is accompanied by the clunky tagline "The true story behind the making of the most expensive fake true war story ever." It would undoubtedly be a sensation in the real world if a group of A-list actors were forced to become real-life action stars in hostile territory, so it's clear to see the appeal. The only other fake movie in Tropic Thunder that might actually be decent to watch is Satan's Alley, a queer period romance starring Tobey Maguire.

1 Angels With Filthy Souls

Home Alone (1990)

Home Alone is known for the creative booby traps Kevin uses to protect himself from the two burglars, but it's also a movie about the childish fantasy of being completely unsupervised. With his parents and his overbearing siblings temporarily out of his life, Kevin gets to enjoy himself by eating all the ice cream he wants and watching a movie that's clearly not suitable for someone so young.

A sequel, Angels With Even Filthier Souls, appears in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).

Angels With Filthy Souls seems to be a spin on Humphrey Bogart's 1938 crime classic Angels With Dirty Faces. It seems like it could be a genuinely interesting gangster movie, but what's more interesting is how Kevin uses the tape to scare off a pizza delivery guy, and the burglars themselves. Home Alone's fake movie seems completely real, with the right atmosphere and the look and sound of a movie about 50 years older than Home Alone.