1. Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow (1994)
It doesn't have a nipple suit or a jetpack, but my God, didn't the last
Police Academy film suck? The series began with modest successes, with the original film earning $81m against a tiny $4m budget - though netting only a middling 44% on Rotten Tomatoes - and slowly, each subsequent film grossed less than the one before it. The sixth film,
City Under Siege - amusingly and aptly directed by a "Peter Bonerz" - grossed a shocking $11m, and yet, for some reason, Warner Bros. signed off on a seventh, which was to be the guaranteed death knell for the series,
Mission to Moscow. To speak of the plot is difficult since years of therapy wiped the memory away years ago, but Wikipedia tells me that it mostly consists of Ron Perlman laundering money under the guise of a video game business, and a desperate Russian Commandant, played by Christopher Lee, enlists the help of the Police Academy. As with most of these films, the highlight was Michael Winslow's aural mimicry, but even that can provide only temporary relief from the assault on all senses - most of all common - that made this one of the most unbearable and redundant sequels of all time. The film has such a piss poor regard that only 3 Rotten Tomatoes critics have even bothered to review it, all unsurprisingly running it into the ground, but here comes the real kicker... Against a budget of $10m, the film grossed a mere...$126,000, making it the lowest grossing film in the series by about $10m, and demonstrating to Warner Bros. in blinking neon lights that the series now had their permission to die. And so it did. Though an eighth film is in the works for next year, this has been said for at least the last decade or so, so hopefully we're safe for now. Are there any other notable instances you can think of? And were there any of these duds you were actually fond of? Let us know in the talkback below.