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Bombs, Disasters and Flops: The Most Notable Examples Part 7 |
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Bombs, Disasters and Flops: The Most Notable Examples Part 7 |
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Note: The box-office figures for domestic grosses and non-USA grosses are fairly accurate, but must be taken as estimates only. |
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Greatest Box-Office Bombs, Disasters and Flops of All-Time
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| Film Title, Director, Studio, Budget Information, Description | |
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Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
This political satire was a watered-down, ill-fated film version of Tom Wolfe's best-selling novel, directed by Brian De Palma. The sanitized film was advertised with the tagline: "An outrageous story of greed, lust and vanity in America." For one thing, it was a major mis-casting mistake (and financial burden with multi-million dollar contracts for the two lead actors, causing budget overruns) to have actor Tom Hanks play the role of slick yuppie Wall Street stockbroker Sherman McCoy, and rising egotistical Bruce Willis star as alcoholic American tabloid journalist Peter Fallow (the character was English in the novel). Melanie Griffith was also featured as Sherman's gold-digging mistress Maria Ruskin, and Kim Cattrall as Sherman's wife. The story involved a hit-and-run car accident in the Bronx that resulted in the death of a black teenager, the efforts of Sherman and Maria to avoid detection and how the story was subsequently pursued. The interfering studio insisted on making the anti-heroic character of Sherman more likable, and the entire script more politically correct (and less anti-Semitic), so it was rewritten to change the character of a white Jewish judge named Myron Kovitsky working in a racially-mixed NYC borough (originally to be played by Walter Matthau or Alan Arkin) to a sympathetic black judge named Leonard White (Morgan Freeman). In the final fabricated scene, Sherman McCoy was exonerated and righteous Judge White lectured the courtroom mob on "decency." Critics hated the ill-conceived film, and audiences familiar with the original novel stayed away, believing all along that Wolfe's book couldn't be properly translated to the screen. The film was so notorious and excessive that Wall Street Journal journalist Julie Salamon wrote a best-selling account of the film's making called "The Devil's Candy." The film was nominated for five Razzie awards: Worst Actress (Melanie Griffith), Worst Director and Worst Picture (DePalm), Worst Screenplay and Worst Supporting Actress (Kim Cattrall). |
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Hudson Hawk (1991)
Columbia/TriStar's action-comedy film was an ill-fated, unfunny, comic-bookish (with awful sound effects) and poorly-executed attempt at an action crime-caper-heist flick (with homage to Cary Grant in Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955), the James Bond films, comic Buster Keaton and Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun (1988)). The absurdist film was misadvertised as an action film, to capitalize on Bruce Willis' recent starring role in Die Hard 2 (1990). The film's budget of about $65 million brought in US box-office of only about $17 million. Much of its expense was due to on-location shoots in New York, London, Rome, and Budapest. The convoluted film starred self-indulgent ex-TV star Willis in this vanity project as the smirky title character - a supposedly-reformed cat burglar named Eddie "The Hawk" Hawkins, with his singing partner-in-crime Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello), as well as Andie MacDowell in a multiple role as schizophrenic nun Sister Anna Baragli, a Vatican art appraiser and an undercover agent. Some speculated that the failed film was cursed by the pope for its sacrilegious depiction of a sexy nun. Just released from a penitentiary after serving a 10-year sentence, Hawk was hired by mobsters, led by the Mario Brothers, to steal priceless Leonardo da Vinci art pieces (including a horse statue with a secret crystal hidden inside, but split into three and hidden in three different art objects, that was part of a mechanism that could turn lead to gold) from an auction house, for a pair of stupid, over-the-top, evil husband-wife billionaires Darwin and Minerva Mayflower (Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard) of Mayflower Industries intent on world domination by devaluing the world's monetary systems. This film included actor Willis' first (and sole) screenwriting story credit (he co-authored the story with Robert Kraft and rewrote large sections of the script). It received six Razzie nominations including Worst Actor (Willis), Worst Supporting Actor (Grant), and Worst Supporting Actress (Bernhard) and won three awards: Worst Director, Worst Picture (Joel Silver), and Worst Screenplay. In the year 2000, it was also nominated for Worst Picture of the 90s Decade by the Razzies, but lost to Showgirls (1995). |
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Nothing But Trouble (1991)
This unfunny, darkly comic, morbidly-twisted and stupidly over-acted film (originally titled Valkenvania - a spoof on the small ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania), comic actor Dan Aykroyd's debut feature film as director, was aptly named. The film was an attempt to comically spoof The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Beetlejuice (1988) and various haunted house and "hanging judge" films. Aykroyd also appeared in the previous year's low-brow, police-buddy stinker comedy Loose Cannons (1990) where he was mismatched with Gene Hackman. After taking a wrong turn off the NJ Turnpike on their way to Atlantic City in his snazzy BMW, traveling NY yuppie businessman Chris Thorne (Chevy Chase) and his new lawyer neighbor Diane Lightson (Demi Moore appearing right after her successful performance in Ghost (1990)) ended up captives of maniacal, deranged 106 year-old justice of the peace Judge Alvin 'J.P' Valkenheiser (Aykroyd) in a desolate place called Valkenvania. John Candy had the unfortunate dual task of playing the town's local sheriff Dennis Valkenheiser and the Judge's mute granddaughter Eldona (dressed in drag). Valkenheiser's lethal mansion was surrounded by a junkyard littered with wrecked automobiles, scrap metal and barrels of toxic waste, and the haunted house itself had spiral slides into the basement, skull and cross-bones, drop-out floors, and a fun-house roller-coaster ride that ended with a flesh-eating death machine called 'Mr. Bonestripper'. One of the most disgusting scenes was Valkenheiser eating a weiner-hot dog during a dinner scene. Thankfully, the film ended with the junkyard exploding from a natural gas leak. It deservedly received six Razzie Awards nominations including Worst Actress (Demi Moore), Worst Director and Screenplay (Aykroyd, co-scripted with his brother Peter), Worst Picture (Robert Weiss), and Worst Supporting Actress (John Candy), and won one Razzie: Worst Supporting Actor (Aykroyd). |
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Hero (1992) (aka Accidental Hero)
This comic drama was a box-office failure, although it was mildly praised, with striking similarities to Preston Sturges' screwball comedy about hero worship titled Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) starring Eddie Bracken, and Frank Capra's populist Meet John Doe (1941). It told about a sleazy Chicago criminal and petty crook named Bernard "Bernie" Laplante (Dustin Hoffman in a reprised Ratso Rizzo role) who helped to rescue passengers trapped in a crashed aircraft on a rainy evening - and lost a size 10B Florsheim shoe, to set up the Cinderella-like search. Credit for his Good Samaritan (Everyman) saintly behavior (with a $1 million reward offered by a TV station for the identity of "The Angel of Flight 104") was claimed by opportunistic homeless Vietnam Vet and slick junk-man John Bubber (Andy Garcia), who had been given the other shoe when he picked up hitchhiker Bernie after the crash. Accident survivor and bright Channel 4-TV news reporter Gale Gayley (Geena Davis) fell in love with the fraudulent imposter, while real courageous hero Bernie couldn't convince anyone of his good deed, until the film's drawn-out conclusion, when suicidally-guilty Bubber, on the verge of being exposed, threatened to jump from the 10th story ledge of the Drake Hotel. Hoffman had already experienced his share of mild to severe flops with Ishtar (1987), Billy Bathgate (1991), and Hook (1991), and then this film. |
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Last Action Hero (1993)
This noisy action-comedy fantasy film (and 'film within a film') was manufactured by studio executives at Columbia to take advantage of the craze for action-hero Schwarzenegger (already famous for snappy oneliners, such as "I'll be back" and action films), but to also spoof the entire action film genre. The satirical parody was a combination of Willy Wonka... (1971), The Terminator films, Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. (1924) and Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), the buddy-cop series Lethal Weapon (1987), and an inner-city version of the Indiana Jones series. To illustrate the difficulties that the film faced, the gimmicky, self-indulgent script full of industry in-jokes was often rewritten and modified (there were four individuals credited for the story and screenplay!). At least one easy-to-accept rationale for the film's flop at the box-office was that it appeared opposite the immensely-popular summer blockbuster Jurassic Park (1993). Other possible reasons for its failure: its soft and sanitized PG-13 rating turned off its main action-film audience, the film was mis-marketed, the media and critics disliked the film and were vocal about it, and the studio mistakenly believed that Arnold's mere presence in this super-hyped film would guarantee success. The wandering, messy, convoluted and drawn-out absurdist plot (with lots of star cameos) told about 11 year-old Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) who was addicted to the escapist exploits of his idol - LA police hero Jack Slater (Schwarzenegger) - at the local movie theatre. During his attendance at a special late-night screening - at the time of the 'real-world' premiere of his latest blockbuster film titled Jack Slater IV, Danny was given a 'magic ticket' by elderly Times Square movie theatre projectionist Nick (Robert Prosky). He was able to miraculously join his fictional hero on-screen as his kid-sidekick - suddenly thrust into the screen's action to appear in the backseat of the hero's automobile during a chase -- to help battle the film's one-eyed villain Benedict (Charles Dance) and another evil psychotic named Ripper (Tom Noonan) through a cliched set of multiple car chases, explosions, shoot-outs, last-minute escapes, etc. To add another twist to the tongue-in-cheek reality-fantasy angle of the film, Slater joined Danny in the 'real-world' when the ticket was stolen by Benedict (who then entered Danny's world) - where the screen's Slater was able to improbably meet the 'real-world' celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film was nominated for six Razzie awards: Worst Actor (Schwarzenegger), Worst Director, Worst New Star (Austin O'Brien), Worst Original Song -- "Big Gun", Worst Picture, and Worst Screenplay. |
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North (1994)
This distasteful "feel good comedy" deservedly received six Razzie Award nominations, including Worst Actor (Bruce Willis), Worst Director and Picture (Reiner), Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actor (Dan Aykroyd), and Worst Supporting Actress (Kathy Bates). Film critic Roger Ebert railed against the film with this statement - which later became an abridged book title: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it." The moralistic, aimless and contrived tale was about ignored, underappreciated and unloved 11 year-old son North (Elijah Wood) with self-absorbed, hard-working parents, pants-inspector (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Through the advice of an Easter Bunny (Bruce Willis, who also played in other guardian angel incarnations as a cowboy, beach bum, and FedEx driver) in a department store, he decided to sue his parents in a court ruled by wacky Judge Buckle (Alan Arkin) - was granted 'free agent' status and divorced them, and then searched the world for a better set of parents. North's journey took him on visits to various auditioning, caricatured father-mother pairings in Texas, Hawaii, Alaska, and elsewhere, including a wealthy Ma and Pa Tex (Dan Aykroyd and Reba McEntire), Governor and Mrs. Ho in Hawaii (Keone Young and Lauren Tom), two Alaskan Eskimo-igloo dwellers (Graham Greene and Kathy Bates), a Parisian pair (with Jerry Lewis on every TV channel), an Amish couple (Kelly McGillis and Alexander Godunov, who were both in the Amish-related film Witness (1985)), an African dad and mom (Ayo Adejugbe and Darwyn Carson), and a white, NY suburbanite Beaver-the-Cleaver-Ozzie-and-Harriett-Nelson version of the "ideal" mom and dad named Ward and Donna Nelson (John Ritter and Faith Ford). But after all his globe-trotting, North returned to his own parents, realizing the cliched -- there's no place like home - when he woke up (his adventure was only in his imagination). The film was nominated for six Razzie awards: Worst Actor (Willis), Worst Director, Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actor (Dan Aykroyd), and Worst Supporting Actress (Kathy Bates). |
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Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
Introduction to Greatest Box-Office Bombs, Disasters and Flops: Films have the potential to skyrocket the profits of a studio, or to send it into ruins and bankruptcy. Sometimes an actor’s or director's career suffers, sometimes not. Films that cost more to make than they take in revenue (both domestic and worldwide) are considered box-office catastrophes or bombs. Movie audiences often love to relish the fact that some films, such as Gigli (2003) or Heaven's Gate (1980), turn out to be monumental flops, and are fascinated by the details of why certain directors/actors and their films fail.
