"Heaven's Gate"(1980)
Director Michael Cimino, hot off his 1978 Best Picture winner "The Deer Hunter", found his fortunes radically reversed with this reviled Western 'epic'- the most resounding failure the industry had EVER seen circa 1980. It's since been suggested that Cimino should have to give back his Oscar, after three hours and thirty-nine minutes of pointless meandering, set against the (mostly-fictional) backdrop of 'The Johnson County War' of the 1890s. Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken and Jeff Bridges watched helplessly as the unrecoverable budget swelled to $44 million(it's $3.5 million gross bankrupted United Artists). "Gate" became a cautionary tale for overly-ambitious filmmakers with unchecked egos, as the fabled artistic freedom of the 1970s fell in favor of the studio's carefully-constructed crowd-pleasers. The era of self-indulgent directorial excess was officially over.
And you thought "Superman III" and "IV" were bad. The embarrassing adventures of Clark Kent's cousin set the female superhero sub-genre back about twenty years. A 20 year old Helen Slater brings blue-eyed blonde beauty and little else to her not-so Supergirl, while Faye Dunaway parted ways with the A-list as a campy witch villainess worthy of the '60s "Batman" TV show. "Jaws 2" director Jeannot Szwarc has them fighting over a random hunk(Hart Bochner), a puerile plot that couldn't even pull in preteen girls. Producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind were deservedly dropped into the Phantom Zone as "Beverly Hills Cop" crushed Kara Zor-El at the ticket counter, a $20 million loss that kept the feet of all involved in this fiasco firmly on the ground.
"Revolution"(1985)
With the obvious exception of a certain iconic gun-toting, coke-snorting Cuban, the '80s was a difficult decade for Al Pacino. He largely struggled to maintain the standards of excellence he set with FFC and Sidney Lumet, and the immense pressures even drove him into a four-year hiatus following the release of "Chariots of Fire" director Hugh Hudson's historical heartbreaker. The American Revolution is ripe material, but Al just seems too contemporary for the 1776 setting, and his needless voiceover narration took viewers(all eight of them) out of the movie immediately. Hudson's battle scenes never bother "Braveheart", and the disastrous box office($360,000 on a $28 million budget) meant that junior high history teachers would be subjecting sleepy students to "Ghandi" instead.
"Howard the Duck"(1986)
The first chink in George Lucas' armor was this wildly ill-fated comic fantasy about a wisecracking, extraterrestrial duck who crash lands on Earth and befriends a young female rock 'n' roll singer(Lea Thompson). The legendary "Star Wars" creator didn't direct, but he was the producer and driving force behind the first movie ever based on a Marvel comic(no wonder it took nearly fifteen years for their key properties to reach the big screen). It wasn't easy to forget the noisy special effects, clumsy plot, awful dialogue and Marty McFly's mom getting intimate with a child actor in a duck suit(a horrified Thompson broke out in tears at the film's premiere). It's gotta be tough going straight from one of the decade's best films into one of it's worst. "Howard" laid a massive egg at the box office, and legend has it that two Universal Studios executives got into a fistfight in the aftermath. They both should have taken a swing at the 'genius' who later gave us Jar Jar Binks.
"Pirates"(1986)
It's extremely rare for an expensive effort from a top-tier filmmaker to be totally and completely forgotten. Well, that's exactly what happened to the shipwrecked shit-fest that left me wishing Roman Polanski had been apprehended by U.S. authorities. It's unclear whether the exiled "Chinatown" director intended to make a serious movie. If so, Walter Matthau was woefully miscast as the scruffy seafarer at it's center(Roman's first choice Jack Nicholson wisely refused). I have a much greater respect for what Johnny Depp did after watching this grumpy old man gargle indecipherable dialogue for two hours. Heck, I'll take "Cutthroat Island" over this cock-up. "Pirates" walked the plank in July of '86, taking over $30 million and a chunk of Polanski's credibility with it.
"Ishtar"(1987)
The second-biggest money drain of the decade behind Hell's Gate, teamed two A-list leading men that looked like they had a lot more fun fumbling around in Morocco than anyone in America had watching it. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are Oscar winners that like to get PAID, and that's how a comedy about struggling musicians in the Middle East ended up costing WAY more than "Predator" and "Robocop"(both released the same summer). The problem is it made A LOT less, and Columbia execs were deeply displeased with the overpaid pair. Hoffman's card-counting abilities rapidly restored his respectability a year later, while Warren had to wait until 1990's "Dick Tracy" to make the late night jokes stop. Director Elaine May("The Heartbreak Kid") never called the shots on another film.
"Leonard Part 6"(1987)
In recent years, there's been mounting evidence that Bill Cosby might be a bad man. Yet while the rest of the world waits for the TV titan to face the music for(allegedly) drugging and raping scores of wannabe starlets, I'm still waiting for charges to be filed over the equally felonious spy spoof that begs a reevaluation of his long, storied standing as one of the late 20th Century's kings of comedy. When I was seven years old, I knew this wasn't funny. The Cos couldn't even pull "Part 6" off in the middle of his sitcom peak, painfully illustrating why he rarely strayed from the relative safety of the small screen(he saved all future straying for his wife). Fun fact- Bill is rumored to have bought the TV rights to "Leonard", making it his one skeleton that stayed buried.
"Caddyshack II"(1988)
This top contender for the title of worst sequel of all time didn't lose as much $$$ as some other films listed here(it made roughly $12 million on a $20 million budget), but it inspired a level of hatred that may trump every one of them. There's never been a kind word spoken about "Caddyshack II". In fact, it's considered so unholy and evil, that it's barely been spoken of AT ALL in the last 25-plus years. Chevy Chase was the only returning cast member from Harold Ramis' much-loved golf comedy willing to sell his soul to this lazy, laugh-free enterprise, while Dan Aykroyd did some early reputation-ruining of his own in a cringe-inducing attempt to fill the void left by his pal Bill Murray. Speaking of voids, are there any Jackie Mason fans out there? I didn't think so.
"Mac and Me"(1988)
I know "E.T." was the biggest movie of all time and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this is ridiculous. Is there a more blatant knock-off in film history? Spielberg could have sued if this calamitous carbon copy had actually made money. Mac(Mysterious Alien Creature) is our wrinkled puppet protagonist and he enjoys MacDonald's, Skittles and Coca-Cola(a more erroneous example of product placement, you will not find). If only enough kids had enjoyed his suburban hijinks to kickoff the sequel that producers had the nerve to announce in a pre-credits sequence. Fortunately, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" massacred "Mac" at the '88 summer box office, sending this abysmal alien out of our orbit for all eternity.
"Red Scorpion"(1989)
Moviegoers paid the price for(briefly) embracing muscle-bound Swede Dolph Lundgren. Ivan Drago was fun and all, but the fifty-or-so starring roles that followed left me feeling like Apollo Creed in the second round of what was supposed to be an exhibition. The public's complete rejection of this sweaty, rancid "Rambo" rip-off couldn't call off plans to position the mumbling, monotone mauler into a poor man's Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dolph's Soviet Spetsnaz superman didn't draw a crowd during the most action-friendly era in history, making the likes of Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme look like world-beaters by comparison. The producers of "Scorpion" were soon seeing red, with a $4 million gross on a $16 million budget.
More huge flops
"Brainstorm"(1983)
"Dune"(1984)
"Legend"(1985)
"Red Sonja"(1985)
"Malone"(1987)
"Masters of the Universe"(1987)
"Rent-a-Cop"(1987)
"Switching Channels"(1988)
"Pink Cadillac"(1989)
"We're No Angels"(1989)
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