Myra Breckinridge (1970)
Director: Michael Sarne
Studio/Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Budget: $5 million
Domestic Gross: $3 million
Rentals: $4.3 million

Novelist Gore Vidal, who helped to adapt his own satirical 1968 novel about gender stereotypes and Hollywood into this odd, unusual, and controversial cult film, has since disowned this perverse X-rated (reduced to R) film. The racy, incoherent, vulgar and irreverent film was unintentionally funny and seriously chastised upon its release, although it was intentionally thought by Fox that it would be popular with hip, young film-going audiences who had seen unconventional, liberal films during the permissive sexual/political revolution (of the late 60s/early 70s) such as X-rated Best Picture winning Midnight Cowboy (1969), Easy Rider (1969) and M*A*S*H (1970). The drag-themed, debauched comedy was thought to be the voyeuristic, dreamy hallucinations of a male wishing to be a female siren.

Writer/director Michael Sarne's incompetently-made film (only his second feature) told about a New York gay film fanatic/writer named Myron Breckinridge (real-life film critic Rex Reed) who had a sex change operation (performed by chain-smoking mad doctor John Carradine). Myron refused circumcision: "Let's get it over with! Myra's waiting!" - and was transformed into the statuesque, busty, trans-sexual, male-bashing beauty Myra Breckinridge (Raquel Welch in a self-parodying performance). He/she then appeared at the Hollywood/Westwood acting school-academy of her lecherous cowboy uncle Buck Loner (John Huston) and demanded her inheritance, claiming that she was Myron's widow. She also vowed: "My purpose in coming to Hollywood is the destruction of the American male in all its particulars."

The film's tasteless plot featured aging, double-entendre-spouting, over-sexed, and campy 76 year-old Mae West as talent agent Leticia Van Allen for hunky males, two outrageous bi-sexual seduction scenes (to "realign the sexes"): an outrageous, emasculating sodomy-dildo rape scene on an infirmary examination table between domineering, star-spangled Myra and handsome aspiring star-pupil Rusty Godowsky (Roger Herren), and a lesbian scene with Farrah Fawcett (pre-Charlie's Angels fame) as dumb blonde Mary Ann Pringle, and another scene of Myra jumping up on a table and exhibiting herself without panties to prove that she had a sex-change operation. There was also an unexplicit scene of Myra delivering fellatio to Myron. Critics (and some of the stars themselves) also derided the film for its gimmickry -- arbitrarily including archival clips from old Fox Studio films to 'comment upon' the action/characters, including Shirley Temple, Loretta Young, Tyrone Power, Peter Lorre, Marilyn Monroe, Carmen Miranda and Laurel and Hardy - and as a result of lawsuits, some of the clips were removed.

The unprofitable, unqualified-disaster and embarrassing film disappeared for many decades until it was finally released on video/DVD.

Lost Horizon (1973)
Director: Charles Jarrott
Studio/Distributor: Columbia Pictures/Ross Hunter Productions
Budget: $12 million
Domestic Gross: $3 million
Rentals: $3.8 million

This awkward and unimaginative film has often been rated as one of the worst films ever made, although it was planned to be a prestige production by its studio. Dubbed "Lost Investment", it was a remake of Frank Capra's non-musical Lost Horizon (1937) -- reinvented as a two and a half-hour, colorful, big-budget musical with a tone-deaf all-star cast, including Charles Boyer as the High Lama, Peter Finch as Robert Conway, John Gielgud as Chang (in a racially-stereotyped portrayal), Olivia Hussey as Maria, Sally Kellerman as neurotic pill-popping newsmagazine journalist Sally Hughes (originally a prostitute in the earlier film), Bobby Van as nightclub "entertainer" Harry Lovett, and Michael York as George Conway. It featured a forgettable musical score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The film's musical action in the middle Shangri-La portion were in Technicolor, while the framing portions of the film at beginning and end were non-musical and in black/white.

The unbelievable, disappointing and misguided film flop lacked dramatic intensity, precise choreography (by the legendary Hermes Pan), and was embarrassing to watch. In fact, some of the actors had their simplistic songs obviously dubbed (only two of the lead actors sang their own songs, Sally Kellerman and Bobby Van), with inept lip-synching. Further controversy arose over Gielgud's portrayal of Asian Chang, by the Japanese-American Citizens League. After preview screenings by the studio, the film was vainly re-edited (a 'fertility dance' number with bikini-clad muscle men was deleted, along with 23 other minutes of content) and has basically disappeared from existence in subsequent years (except for a limited laserdisc release).

At Long Last Love (1975)
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Studio/Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Budget: $6 million
Domestic Gross: $1.5 million

Writer/director Bogdanovich believed that he could successfully revive, recreate and pay homage to the look and feel of the great 30s dance-musicals (with Astaire and Rogers) with this musical romance, featuring 16 songs (by an uncensored Cole Porter). It was also notable as the first film since the "Golden Age of Hollywood" with live-recordings (not pre-recorded) of the musical numbers instead of using lip-synching. Although its tagline proclaimed: "IT'S THE TOP!", it was quickly regarded as one of the worst films ever made, and referred to as a major "debacle". Soundly trashed and criticized when released, the fiasco still boasted expensive production values and art-deco sets, great costumes, and beautiful cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs.

Its two main miscast stars, Burt Reynolds as bored playboy millionaire Michael Oliver Pritchard III and Cybill Shepherd as spoiled, icy-blonde indigent heiress/debutante Brooke Carter, were atrocious as singers/dancers (both slightly off-key and clumsy), and the dialogue was often stiltified. The trivial plot was typical of frothy musicals of the 30s -- three mismatched couples and their ensuing romantic entanglements and complications as they changed partners. Non-musically talented former beauty queen Cybill Shepherd was unwisely cast in one of the major roles, undoubtedly because she was Bogdanovich's lover at the time who had starred in another of his lesser disappointing films, Daisy Miller (1974) the year before. Supporting cast members, such as Madeline Kahn (as Broadway star Kitty O’Kelly), Eileen Brennan (as Brook's maid Elizabeth) and John Hillerman (as Michael's valet Rodney James) fared better with critics.

The film is largely non-existent for viewing, and has never been released on video/DVD to date, although bootleg recordings can be found. Bogdanovich's career began to decline (after early 70s acclaimed successes such as The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up, Doc? (1972), and Paper Moon (1973), when he suffered three major flops in a row: Daisy Miller (1974), this film, and Nickelodeon (1976). When this film opened in the spring of 1975 at Radio City Music Hall (NYC) at Easter time, it was so soundly blasted that Bogdanovich wrote an open letter (full-page ad) in the trade magazine Hollywood Reporter to apologize. The film lost millions, soured the major studios on Bogdanovich (labeling him a megalomaniac), and the relationship between Shepherd and her Svengali-like director likewise ended by 1978.