There’s something about the movie flops of the 1990s. These films, by and large, aren’t like flops of any other decade, exerting a fascination that remains unique.
To clarify: by “flops” I’m referring not to respected films like ED WOOD, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS or MAGNOLIA, which were initially rejected by audiences but have gone on to assume classic status, nor to filler like WELCOME HOME ROXY CARMICHAEL, SHORT TIME or 8 HEADS IN A DUFFLE BAG, low-to-medium budgeted productions whose only evident reason for existence was to fill a distribution quota. No, what I’m focusing on here are uber-expensive four-alarm disasters whose stench remains in the air three decades after the fact.
…uber-expensive four-alarm disasters whose stench remains in the air three decades after the fact.
It’s often claimed that the 1980s was the “age of excess,” but in truth it was the nineties (in the entertainment industry at least) when the excess really set in. That was evident in the insanely inflated star salaries, with the $12 million paycheck earned by Sylvester Stallone for ROCKY IV, which sparked mass outrage back in 1985, becoming the norm in the succeeding decade. Movie budgets also increased exponentially as TERMINATOR 2’s unprecedented $100 million price tag (overheard while emerging from a 1991 T2 screening: “Good movie!” “Yeah, but was it worth one hundred million dollars?”) became the average movie budget; when TITANIC doubled that number in 1997 few people were surprised, much less upset.
The decade’s overall outlook was crystallized in a popular 1940s catchphrase, “Go Hard or Go Home,” that in an early 1990s advertising document was given a very period-specific updating: “Go Big or Go Home.” See also a blurb for LAST ACTION HERO, “It’s Bigger, Better, Funnier than anything you’ve Ever seen on the screen” and the infamous tagline of 1998’s GODZILLA: “Size Does Matter.” Both those movies, FYI, were among the four-alarm floperoos to which I refer.
The decade’s overall outlook was crystallized in a popular 1940s catchphrase, “Go Hard or Go Home,”
Other overblown nineties disasters include HOOK, SUPER MARIO BROS., SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL and SHOWGIRLS. HOOK and SPEED 2 I can do without, but the others, I’ve found, are looking far more interesting than they previously did. Indeed, I’ve come to regard them as old friends—obnoxious and unruly friends, yes, but friends nonetheless who I’m always happy to see.
That’s in contrast to nineties films I consider great, such as LEAVING LAS VEGAS, BREAKING THE WAVES and FARGO, which now register as brief and intense love affairs from which I’ve since moved on, and action-fests like POINT BREAK, SPEED and DIE HARD 2 and 3, which function like past friendships I’m now embarrassed to admit I had. As for lucrative tent pole releases like TRUE LIES, THE ROCK and TITANIC, I regard them as precisely what they are: quintessential products of an era that’s now long past.
I have no embarrassment admitting my love for SHOWGIRLS, a movie I admittedly found appalling when I first viewed it in 1995, but which for a full appreciation requires only a slight shift in perception—and venue. As a big screen spectacular it doesn’t work at all, but viewed on the small screen SHOWGIRLS attains its rightful place as the apotheosis of the stripper-themed straight-to-video trash fests (such as NAKED OBSESSION and STRIPTEASER) that proliferated in the nineties.
…viewed on the small screen SHOWGIRLS attains its rightful place as the apotheosis of the stripper-themed straight-to-video trash fests
In a similar category is the 1998 GODZILLA, which on the big screen seemed a shameful waste of time and resources but makes for ideal 3AM viewing—meaning it keeps good company with THE GIANT BEHEMOTH and THE VALLEY OF GWANGI.
One unprecedented nineties phenomenon was that of paired flops. In this category were two action-oriented money-losers turned out by Geena Davis and her then-husband Renny Harlin: CUTTHROAT ISLAND and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT. The first, a noisy and overblown attempt at reviving the pirate movie model, is best forgotten, but the latter is rather fascinating, a vulgar R-rated kill-fest that, as with many a late-nineties actioner, tried to out-Tarantino Quentin Tarantino. It failed, obviously, but stands as an irresistibly rancid example of The Kind of Movie They Just Don’t Make Anymore.
There was also the deadly duo of WATERWORLD and THE POSTMAN. The former, an insanely expensive, mishap-laden production set in a post-apocalyptic future in which the world has been flooded, had its fate adequately foretold by audiences’ response to the trailer, which as I recall inspired a great deal of raucous laughter. Yet the film’s producer and star Kevin Costner was apparently so inspired by the subject matter he followed the pic with another expensive dystopian fantasy, and one that magnified everything wrong with its predecessor. Still, I prefer both films to Costner’s supposedly more prestigious nineties offering DANCES WITH WOLVES, as they, unlike it, can withstand multiple viewings. (Regarding Costner’s other nineties bomb WYATT EARP, it can stay buried.)
MY FATHER THE HERO was a Disney-made, family-oriented jaw-dropper in which Gerard Depardieu helps his 14 year old daughter (Katherine Heigl) win the heart of her dream boy at a scenic resort by pretending she’s an underage prostitute and Depardieu her pimp. It was followed a months later by another “family” film, the John Hughes production BABY’S DAY OUT, that’s so outrageously misconceived a scene in which an infant burns Joe Mantegna’s crotch with a lighter, which would seem out of place in any other movie, somehow fits right in.
Then we had the dueling volcano movies that appeared in ‘97. Both DANTE’S PEAK, about a volcano spewing lava in a Pacific Northwest town, and VOLCANO, about an underground volcano erupting in Los Angeles (specifically the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Boulevard and the streets outside the Beverly Center), are laughably awful, but in the lexicon of 90s disaster movies I’ll take them over the more successful likes of TWISTER or DEEP IMPACT, which are just as ridiculous.
Then we had the dueling volcano movies that appeared in ‘97.
There were of course just as many catastrophic movie flops to be found in the previous decade, but they don’t have the same charm. I’ve tried revisiting 1980s calamities like DEAL OF THE CENTURY, SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE, SHANGHAI SURPRISE and ISHTAR, but they haven’t gotten any better in the ensuing years, and nor have post-2000 bombs like BATTLEFIELD EARTH, TOWN & COUNTRY, POSEIDON or THE SPIRIT.
The problems of those films, and indeed most flops, can generally be put down to excess directorial indulgence or executive interference. With nineties bombs you often got both; movies like THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, ALIEN 3, TOYS, WILD WILD WEST and MYSTERY MEN are nothing if not all-inclusive, functioning as cynical cash-grabs and auteurist follies.
It may be a stretch to call SUPER MARIO BROS. and LAST ACTION HERO “auteurist,” but those pics did represent sincere attempts on the part of the their makers to do something different, with the former offering a pointed tweaking of action movie conventions and the latter a sci-fi netherworld as elaborate and ambitious as (and more expensive than) that of BLADE RUNNER. Such a confluence of warring intents makes for hugely messy movies, but also unique and interesting pieces of cinema whose effects aren’t too dissimilar to those of Andrei Tarkovsky’s STALKER, which took me several viewings to fully appreciate. The same is true of LAST ACTION HERO and SUPER MARIO BROS., which don’t contain much in the way of artistry, but do offer up plenty of dumb fun—and that, I’d argue, is just as valuable.