5. Leonard Part 6 (1987, Dir. Paul Weiland)
What Was the Comedy? A spy spoof starring comedian and sitcom star Bill Cosby as retired secret agent Leonard Parker who embarks on a mission to stop an evil vegetarian from taking over the world.
Why Was It Appalling? Its unfunny, self-indulgent pap thats full of incredibly blatant product placement for Coca Cola and has a ridiculous story, even for a comedy: An evil vegetarian is training animals to kill humans and retired spy Leonard Parker is recruited to stop her. His primary weapon against the vegetarians is magic meat that he receives from a gypsy, and the film ends with him flooding the vegetarians' base using Alka Seltzer and escaping by riding an ostrich off of the roof. God knows what Cosby had taken when he came up with that.
Who Should Have Known Better? Bill Cosby.
Why Should He Have Known Better? Cosby eventually did realise he was at fault and had made a terrible film but it was just a bit too late when the realisation finally came since the film had already been made. So he did his best to kill the film by urging people not to see it in all of his TV appearances promoting it. It worked and Leonard Part 6 was a box office bomb, only grossing a fifth of its budget. But the reason Cosby was at fault is that his success with his sitcom The Cosby Show gave him an insane amount of power. To the extent that he could pretty much do whatever he liked and not take suggestions or constructive criticism from anyone, at one point telling the films director You worry about construction, let me worry about funny. Having been a successful comedy star for so long, he should have realised earlier that no good could come from one person having such a huge degree of control, and that surrounding himself with sycophants and letting his ego reign supreme wasnt a good idea when it came to filmmaking.