7. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Even for the fairly shaky box office track record of Terry Gilliam, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was a massive flop, earning just $8m against $46m, making it a sizable bomb, all the more so when you consider its stature as a visually lavish fantasy film, which surely would have been able to bring the auds in with a tasty trailer or two. Coming off the financial failure of his excellent Brazil, he made that film's commercial flopping seem trivial, by topping Brazil's $6m loss with a massive $38 here. A poor release schedule likely didn't help the film's box office at all, nor did Gilliam's casting of several Monty Python actors who weren't that well-known outside of the UK. Still, it's a marvellously inventive film, and though Gilliam is often known for being style-over-substance, that certainly isn't true here; it's a wonderful film about the power of dreams over administration - quite ironic given the film's financial reception - that's superbly acted, and quite unlike anything you've ever seen. Still, this one seems to be more a case of a studio slitting their own throat more than anything.