On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.

First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult film actually worth recommending?”

The Bait: A (Free!) Bestiality Rom-Com Kind of Like “The Room”

Abandoned for free on YouTube in 2011, writer/director Fen Tian’s truly rancid “Love on a Leash” has since slipped its collar to become one of the internet’s most notorious “bad” movies. A rom-com so baffling, it’s routinely described as one of the worst films ever made. Yes, that’s a major claim — even narrowed down to other low-budget indies about magic, love, and part-time zoophilia.

But starting with two minutes of dead air (yep, there’s no audio!), this cinematic oddity has as much bite as it does bark. Over the last decade, “Love on a Leash” rose to cult status less through sincere affection than the aimless endurance it saw across niche streaming. From the popular “How Did This Get Made?” podcast to a series of bewildered Letterboxd reviews, it has been revisited endlessly by scattered audiences who broadly agree that the viewing experience itself is weird and unpleasant.

And yet, this cracked meet-cute, between a struggling human woman and a toxic, cursed man-dog, is widely cited by people who admit they haven’t seen it lately… or ever. The story’s gnarly reputation arrived well before most viewers did, having been thrust into the exact moment film bros were obsessively hunting for the next “The Room” online. Now, a decade later, the question that lingers is whether “Love on a Leash” is the right kind of bad to keep at home, or the sort of misbegotten mutt that should’ve stayed lost?

When a cursed golden retriever named Prince, who sometimes transforms into a human man named Alvin Flang (voiced by Stephen Kramer Glickman, embodied by Aneese Khamo), pursues a relationship with his reluctant new owner, Lisa (Jana Camp), what might play out as a whimsical fantasy instead unfolds as a queasy portrait of domestic manipulation. Hostile to viewers and profoundly tone-deaf in its politics, “Love on a Leash” isn’t just man’s best friend gone bad. It’s a phenomenal knock against canine-kind.

If you had plans for an uncomfortable Valentine’s Day anyway, watching “Love on a Leash” lets you do it on purpose. Part of what makes it such an uneasy sit is its sincerity. Tian’s technical limitations are obvious from that radio-silent first act, but so is an eerie sense of belief in the story she’s telling.

Unlike “The Room,” which benefited from Tommy Wiseau’s aggressive celebrity myth-making and lack of self-awareness, Tian vanished from the narrative around her film. The result is an almost reluctant cult object without a handler — possibly lovable but with a manginess that leaves you unsure whether to laugh, cringe, or get it checked for rabies. —AF

“Love on a Leash” (2011) is available to stream for free on YouTube.

The Bite: Where’s a Waymo When You Need One?

Normally, when we see a dog onscreen, there’s always this lizard-brain response to sympathize with that dog. But at exactly one minute, 35 seconds into “Love on a Leash,” the opening credits voiceover (I truly did not think we would be starting this story from a canine POV and that’s on me) instructs some people-petting Prince, the man turned into a dog who can still turn into a man at night, to “Lay off, man, I’m not GAY.” And I turned on this dog. I turned on this dog so fucking hard, Ali.

What follows is, as far as I am concerned, a cautionary tale worthy of the morality plays of Medieval Europe. A bewildering world of magic springs and fart jokes, where a fair virgin (named Lisa) toils under the burdens of working in a thrift shop and owning a green VW bug as all serfs of the 2010s surely did. She battles the temptations of a shape-changing devil (Prince the Dog, more like Prince OF DARKNESS) meant to draw her from Christ, and then suffers the sexy, sexy consequences inherent to a woman’s nature: falling from grace into sin (and also some light bondage).

I will say this for “Love on a Leash”: If this movie has a joke, it tells it. It’s bursting at the seams with a relentless, middle-school enthusiasm for setups and gags and “South Park”-inspired one-liners. It’s trying to find the most playful, creative ways to explore its core concept, which is not a thing you can say about films with much larger budgets and more, um, polished storylines. But man, you gotta give me something at the beginning to not hate this fucking dog. Every time Prince crossed the street, I was rooting for the cars. —SS

Read more installments of After Dark, IndieWire’s midnight movie rewatch club:

• Are You Scared of the U.S. Government Turning on Its Citizens? Try 1971’s ‘Punishment Park’
• You Know Video Game Adaptations Are Cooked When ‘Silent Hill’ (2006) Has Aged This Well
• We’re Failing Our Boys… if They Haven’t Seen 1971’s Rat-Obsessed Incel Horror ‘Willard’
• Miss the Golden Age of Weird Netflix? Try ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein’
• Found Footage ‘Savageland’ Should Be Mandatory Viewing for I.C.E. Agents