Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Why would they? Not only is it a colossal waste of money but it will remain on the permanent record of everyone associated with it. Still, there are factors that no one can control and sometimes an actor makes a movie with the best intentions that the critics hate, audiences avoid like the plague or conflicts during production doom it to failure. Here are 15 well documented examples including Marlon Brando (A Countess from Hong Kong), Shelley Winters (Knickerbocker Holiday), Richard Widmark (Slattery’s Hurricane), Beverly Garland (Swamp Women and Stark Fear), Bruce Dern (The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant), Ava Gardner (The Bible…In the Beginning), Christopher Plummer (The Royal Hunt of the Sun), Ida Lupino (The Hard Way), Tony Curtis (Son of Ali Baba), Sally Kellerman (Reform School Girl), Ernest Borgnine (The Devil’s Rain), Raquel Welch (Myra Breckinridge), Warren Oates (Chandler), Joan Shawlee (Prehistoric Women) and Vincent Price (Green Hell).
Continue readingTag Archives: Andre de Toth
The First Anti-American Spy Film?
That was how director Ken Russell described his production of Billion Dollar Brain (1967). Whether that claim is true or not, Russell maintained it was the main reason the third entry in the Harry Palmer spy series failed at the box office. To be totally honest, none of the competing rivals in the film – Russia, the U.K., Latvia and the U.S. – are preferable over the other and come across as cynical, opportunistic entities that are only focused on their own agendas and self interests. Seen today, Billion Dollar Brain is easily most entertaining film in the five-movie franchise and deserves a reappraisal. Continue reading
Desert Rats
Underrated by critics and ignored by audiences upon its initial release in 1969, Play Dirty, directed by Andre de Toth, has slowly but surely acquired an appreciative fan base over the years thanks to high profile advocates of the film like Martin Scorsese who included it on a long list of guilty pleasures for the May-June 1998 issue of Film Comment. Unfortunately, this World War II drama starring Michael Caine had the misfortune to follow in the wake of Robert Aldrich’s box-office hit, The Dirty Dozen (1967), to which it was often unfairly compared. But, outside of a similar assemble-the-team concept which sends a group of criminals on a suicide mission, the film has very little in common with Aldrich’s blockbuster and there is absolutely no reason to feel any guilt over liking it either. Continue reading

