You guys, last night I saw a horrifying sight. It all started when the latest episode of Survivor ended. I was next door, and since nothing else was on — and we were out of episodes of Regular Show to catch up on — I walked back to my house. What was awaiting me when I opened the front door? My roommates were watching Sister Act 2.
Let me repeat that: Sister Act 2.
I didn’t even stop to say hello. I did not make eye contact. I walked to my room in silence. After a few minutes spent working on a little project I heard from the living room, “Oh my God. This is so bad. Does it get any better?” What I overheard was cause for investigation. So I stepped out of my room and asked, “Why are you so shocked that this is bad. It’s Sister Act 2. IT’S SISTER ACT 2. Wasn’t the original bad enough?”
“Excuse me, Evan,” came the response from Dave. “How dare you insult the first Sister Act movie.”
“You liked that!?”
“I never knew music could be so…expressive.” That was his response. He had to be fucking with me. Right?
“Wasn’t it bad enough the first time around? Why on earth do you think ten or fifteen years would make this movie better?”
“You’ve seen this!?” Dave asked me. I suddenly found myself turning from accuser to accused.
“Yeah, I saw it when it was in theaters. And I nev–”
“You saw it in theaters!?” Dave wasn’t just laughing. He was howling. I felt like a real asshole. I went back to my room, listening through the walls as he bitched and moaned about what a terrible movie Sister Act 2 is. I didn’t even have the heart to tell him that it wasn’t the worst Whoopi Goldberg movie I saw when it first came out. Hell, I saw Eddie when it was in theaters. You remember that one, right? Where by some stroke of luck Whoopi Goldberg is chosen as the new coach of the New York Knicks? It has to be one of the worst movies to come out during my lifetime.
I got to thinking…what are some of the most unlikely, worst movies I saw the first time around when they were released? I started to research box office numbers from 1992-1998 (the age when I was most frequently taken to or went to the movies) and came up with this list of the ten worst movies I’ve seen in theaters based on worldwide gross. These are the bombs. Not the biggest losses against budgets, you can find that easily enough on Wikipedia. This is my personal list of movies that, were I to acknowledge seeing them in theaters, would probably get me laughed right out of a room.
The Worst “You Saw That When It Was In Theaters!?” Movies I’ve Seen
• Greedy (1994) – For 1994, a $13 million dollar box office haul might sound like a decent showing. But compare that to Forrest Gump (which made $329 million) and you’ll gain some perspective. Hell, the Little Rascals remake — which I also saw in theaters, and it sucked — made $52 million. Oh, and The Air Up There, another terrible film I saw when it first came out, raked in $21 million. Are you beginning to understand how bad Greedy was? I wouldn’t have seen it were it not for my sister’s birthday party. For a few years in the early 90s, movie birthday parties were popular in my town. It was cheaper than renting out a Fun Zone or roller skating rink, and parents didn’t have to worry about rowdiness or lost children. What’s fifteen or twenty kid’s movie tickets plus five or ten adults? These cheap alternatives to real birthday parties made it so that I saw a lot — a lot — of bad movies in the years leading up to my 13th birthday. Hell, I was going to put Andre (the movie about the seal? What, you never saw it?) on this list but it made more than Greedy! $16 million dollars! Also I think the star of that movie, Tina Majorino, might have been at Pornstar Karaoke a few weeks ago. It was either her or her doppleganger. A very, very attractive doppleganger.
• Cops And Robbersons (1994) – And yet, some movies I saw in 1994 actually did worse than Greedy. Like Cops and Robbersons. Which might have been the movie on which my parents centered my birthday party. It was released on April 15th, so it had to be either my birthday or a friend’s birthday. All told, the Chevy Chase/Jack Palance vehicle brought in $11 million dollars worldwide. Shockingly, this is more than Camp Nowhere ($10 million dollars), Surviving The Game ($7.7 million) and Serial Mom ($7.8 million) all of which I also saw in theaters. The difference between those lesser-earning movies and Cops And Robbersons was that, at the time, I liked them. I especially liked Surviving The Game, which went entirely over my head because at 11 years old I had not yet read The Rules Of The Game.
• Clean Slate (1994) – Okay, so this is more likely the movie I saw for my birthday in 1994. Which would mean Cops And Robbersons was somebody else’s birthday party. Why is it more likely to be the film my parents paid for my friends and I to see? Because I distinctly remember — wait for it — seeing this one TWICE in theaters. Which is quite shocking. Because this film only made $7.4 million worldwide. It made less than the Charles Grodin version of Clifford. And my birthday party — if they kept this kind of statistic it’d be so awesome — accounted for about 1/10,000th of the gross.
• Mixed Nuts / Trapped In Paradise (1994) – When you’re a Jew on Christmas, you eat Chinese food and go to the movies. That’s the rule. Everybody knows that. And in 1994, two of the worst Christmas movies — hell, two of the worst movies, period — were released. How do I get through to you how awful these movies performed at the box office? Oh, here’s how: Mixed Nuts played on 1,318 screens across the country. Trapped In Paradise played on 1,286 screens. The former made $6.8 million dollars. The latter made almost exactly $6 million dollars. Now, that same year, Clerks was released. Clerks was shown on 96 screens across the country. That’s almost 1,200 less theaters than Trapped In Paradise. And Clerks made $3.1 million dollars. So with 8% of the exposure of the two major releases I saw on Christmas in 1994, Clerks made half as much money. And since 1994? What do you think the larger grossing film is out of those three options? Geez, those two movies were bad.
• Dracula: Dead And Loving It (1995) – Oh, God. This was awful. But there was a reason I went to see this Leslie Nielsen/Mel Brooks train wreck. Earlier in the day I’d gone to see Grumpier Old Men with my friends Dan and Dan. And during that film, I hooked up with a random girl who was in the theater with us. Right before I left I asked her what she was doing the rest of the day and she said, “hanging around,” which I figured meant she was hanging around the theater all day watching different movies. So I took a shot in the dark and told my friend Matt we should go see Dracula: Dead And Loving It because it was PG-13 so she might be there. We saw it. She wasn’t. I was bummed. This movie made $10.7 million across 1,425 screens. By comparison, Larry Clarke’s Kids made $7.4 million dollars on just 187 screens. Other movies I saw in ’95 that made less than Dracula included Miami Rhapsody ($5.2 million on 180 screens), and Dr. Jekyll And Ms. Hyde, whose haul was a shockingly bad $2.7 million dollars. Yikes.
• Stuart Saves His Family (1995) – When you’re present in a movie theater for a BOMB, a unique feeling washes over you. At some point you stop caring about what’s on the screen and you just start to think about what the hell the film’s producers were thinking when they decided to invest in such a travesty. Yes, at 12 years old, that was what I was thinking as I watched this Lorne Michaels movie based on a Saturday Night Live sketch I never saw because I was 12 years old and usually didn’t stay awake past 10:00pm on weekends. This film’s widest release was 400 screens, and it made $912,000. It’s opening weekend gross was $371,898, which was an average of $929 per screen. Holy shit. Wow. Awful. But somehow not as awful as Canadian Bacon, another movie I saw when it came out. That one made $163,971 and according to Box Office Mojo it only showed in 14 theaters. I’m having a hard time believing that, so I’m not including it on my list.
• The Stupids (1996) – I know. I was 14 years old; I should have known better. But I didn’t. Something compelled me to go see The Stupids, and it was probably the worst film I’d seen in my entire life. I’ve never walked out on a film before, because that would be a waste of money, but I definitely checked out of this one mentally. How badly did this movie perform? It made $2.4 million dollars and was available in 1,300 screens across the country. Trainspotting could be viewed on 350 screens across the country and it made $16 million dollars. I wish I could describe how awful The Stupids was, but I’ve done a really great job of deleting it from my memory over the last sixteen years. All I remember is that it starred Tom Arnold. I remember nothing about the plot. Thank God.
• The Relic (1997) – This is on the WIkipedia list of biggest box office bombs, but I liked it when I first saw it. Sure, I didn’t understand how exactly the guy from the museum turned into a dinosaur or Godzilla or whatever he was supposed to be, but the scenes of people being maimed in the museum were pretty sweet! It cost $40,000,000 to make and earned less than $34,000,000 so it didn’t break even. Ouch. Still, it made more money than these other films I saw in 1997: Metro, Father’s Day (which is also in the list of biggest box office bombs), Event Horizon (which I loved and saw twice), Mimic (which was just like The Relic but with bug-people!), and Lost Highway (which neither my father nor I understood). My favorite story about seeing a movie in 1997 was the next film on this list.
• Wes Craven’s Wishmaster (1997) – Somehow this movie made $15 million dollars. I say somehow because when my father took me to The Colony theater in Livingston to see it, we were the only two people in the room. In fact, right before the previews started an usher walked into the theater and asked us why we were even there. I’m not kidding. He asked us what would compel us to see this movie. I told him my camp friend had a part in it and I wanted to see it. He shook his head in disbelief and walked away. Laugh all you want, but that same camp friend just wrote the story for Tron: Legacy and directed Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Olivia Wilde in The Words. So, there. It was worth it.
• Major League: Back To The Minors (1998) – How bad did this film fair compared to the rest of the pack in ’98? Well, it grossed $3.5 million dollars. That’s a lot more than Suicide Kings, which I saw twice in theaters and made $1.7 million dollars. But it’s also almost half the amount of money a reissue of Gone With The Wind made ($6.7 million). It’s also less than My Giant, the tour de force that paired Billy Crystal with Andre The Giant. It’s way less than Dark City, which I saw twice and still think is an underrated film. And less than Dead Man On Campus which made $15 million and was terrible. It made less than an IMAX movie on African elephants that only played on fifteen screens in America. It made less than a reissue of the Wizard of Oz. Are you getting the hint? This movie…was atrocious. And the box office numbers don’t lie.
• Once Upon A Crime (1992) – This was my friend Matt’s birthday movie. At the Colony theater in Livingston. It made $8 million dollars. By comparison, the biggest grossing film I saw in 1992 was Encino Man ($40 million). Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, which is widely regarded as being a terrible movie, made $28 million dollars. The movie with John Candy as Babe Ruth made $17 million. Ladybugs made $14 million. I liked this movie when it came out, even though I had no idea I’d grow up to have Richard Lewis-ian levels of annoying Jew-y neuroses. And I’ve seen this movie once or twice since then. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t hold up. A reissue of The Great Mouse Detective made five million bucks more than Once Upon A Crime. It was not a successful film.
Now, I ask you, valued reader: What is the worst movie you actually saw the first time around when it was in theaters? What’s the title you like to casually drop in conversation that makes your friends worry about your psychological well-being? Is it Ishtar? Is it Trespass? The Adventures Of Pluto Nash? Let me know. I’m anxious to hear about it.
Odd Future – Forest Green (featuring Mike G.) [MP3]
