Inside every disaster is a hit film, claims producer Peter Guber, and inside every hit film are the seeds of a disaster. It depends how theyre cultivated whether you get Howard The Duck or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Guber knows all about producing hits and disasters in a career spanning 5 decades, he helped produce Rain Man, Gorillas In The Mist and Tim Burtons Batman, but he was also involved with Whos That Girl, Tango & Cash and The Bonfire Of The Vanities (he drew the line at Batman Forever, though). His career could, of course, have been much worse. It mightve included Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Ishtar or Showgirls, the kind of flops that helped derail the careers of those that made them. Even these arent the bottom of the barrel, however. For those, you have to dig deeper and be prepared to embrace the kind of pictures that Leonard Maltin described as, Not funny enough, or dramatic enough, or sexy enough, or bad enough, to qualify as entertainment in any category. These are films so flat, forced and passionless that not only do you question the motives of the filmmakers, you start wondering how those people were able to find employment in the first place. We are not just talking about box office stiffs, but films that became synonymous with desperation and failure. If you thought Fantastic Four was a punchline, wait until youve sampled some of the following.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
