10 Movies That Destroyed Themselves

It is hard to conceive of any film starring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Peter Boyle as being anything but a laugh riot, and yet Ghost In The Noonday Sun seemingly managed the impossible.

Beginning life as a straighter adaptation of Sid Fleischman's pirate novel of the same name, during production it rapidly turned into -- in Sellers' words -- "Goons at Sea" (referencing Sellers and Milligan's legendary comedy show). Unfortunately, everything started going wrong on set from day one, beginning with the crashing of the pirate ship into the Cypriot harbour where they were filming.

Though Sellers had himself brought the project to director Peter Medak, he lost interest after filming began, when the script and performances turned out to be a bit rubbish. After Milligan had rewritten the script, Sellers became deliberately uncooperative with the director and began feigning illness, including a suspected heart attack, which was disproven by newspaper photographs of Sellers dining with Princess Margaret in London. The director shot around him regardless.

But the proof is in the pudding. Nobody came out of Ghost In The Noonday Sun without a scratch, and the distributor Columbia Pictures pulled the film prior to release.