Hollywood’s trash, our treasure: 17 salvageable flops from the late-winter dumping ground
1. Tremors (1990)
Over the past few decades, the American movie schedule has calcified to the point where movies are automatically pre-judged by release date: Summer is for blockbusters, November and December are for prestige-movie Oscar-bait, and January and February are when studios dump their discards, the movies they have low hopes for and want to disavow. At this point, it’s hard to get enthusiastic about anything coming out in winter that isn’t a foreign import or a prestige pic making its official debut after a few sneaky December Oscar-qualifying screenings. The occasional Silence Of The Lambs or Black Hawk Down does open during dumping-ground season to financial success and universal acclaim, but sometimes, audiences reject a throwaway-season movie without giving it a proper chance, or realizing they’re passing on something better than the release date implies. For instance, it’s no surprise Tremors didn’t make a mint at the box office; it’s a ridiculous-sounding, dumb-looking horror movie about a bunch of Nevada hicks, led by Kevin Bacon, fighting giant, fast-burrowing worms. The concept makes it sound like yet another take on Frogs or Night Of The Lepus, where a desperate horror industry scrambles for something radically new to scarify. While it wasn’t in theaters long, it quickly earned a reputation as unusually fun trash, and became such a cult hit on home video that it spawned two direct-to-DVD sequels, a prequel, and a spin-off TV series. What the logline “Kevin Bacon fights Dune sandworms in a small rural town” doesn’t convey is that Tremors is surprisingly funny and endearing. It doesn’t fully give itself over to comedy or camp, or entirely downplay the creepiness of what are, essentially, land sharks that can appear from beneath the earth’s surface at any moment. Instead, it finds a hearty balance between horror and humor.
2. Army Of Darkness (1993)
The third and last entry in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy wasn’t much like its predecessors. A goofy horror comedy with more laughs than scares, the film had a troubled production as Raimi’s cult instincts squared off against Universal’s desire for a more commercially viable product. The result is an 81-minute compromise, with a tacked-on happy ending and a number of cuts made to avoid the (patently absurd) threat of an NC-17 rating. Yet even with the studio interference, Army Of Darkness is goofy, energetic fun, a mix of broad slapstick and Ray Harryhausen homage featuring Bruce Campbell at his smarmy best. When the studio dumped the movie with little advertising fanfare, it got mixed to positive critical reaction (a C+ from Entertainment Weekly, two out of four stars from Roger Ebert) and fizzled financially, failing to make back its budget at the box office. In the years since, Army has found the cult following it justly deserves through a seemingly endless series of DVD releases.
3. Matinee (1993)
Too slight to be an awards contender and too mild to be a summer blockbuster, Joe Dante’s period piece Matinee probably belonged in the “afterthought” season of January and February; besides, the dump-off fits what Matinee’s about. Both a paean to B-movie showmanship and a memoir of Cold War anxiety, Matinee follows a group of Florida teenagers as they make plans to see the monster movie Mant!—presented by a William Castle-like producer played by John Goodman—while the Cuban Missile Crisis heats up, affecting the families of these Army brats. Charles S. Haas’ script captures what it’s like to be a kid roaming free of adult supervision, in transition from childhood to adulthood in a darkening world; and Dante’s direction strikes the right tone, reveling in the escapism of silly sci-fi while also acknowledging that throwaway entertainments can only keep reality at bay for so long.
4. Cabin Boy (1994)
Poor Cabin Boy. As if the world wasn’t hard enough for fancy lads—and cinematic depictions thereof—Tim Burton, who was still in the can-do-no-wrong years of his career, opted not to direct it. Burton stayed on as producer, however, and the job fell to the Get A Life team of director Adam Resnick and star Chris Elliott, who together spun a delightfully silly seafaring adventure out of a $10 million budget the film didn’t come close to recouping. But despite a Razzie nomination for Elliott and frequent jibes from David Letterman over his (brilliant) cameo in the film, Cabin Boy has emerged as a cult favorite, an endearing, offbeat comedy that doubles as another affectionate nod to the wizardry of Ray Harryhausen.
5. The Quick And The Dead (1995)
For a few years, Sharon Stone ruled Hollywood. Following the success of 1992’s Basic Instinct, Stone had the clout to match her ambition, and she used that clout to, among other things, get The Quick And The Dead made. A tribute to the spaghetti Western that came with its own hyper-realized style, the film stars Stone as the female version of The Man With No Name, a never-miss gunslinger who comes to town to compete in a quick-draw tournament held by bad guy Gene Hackman. Director Sam Raimi brings his usual visual wit to the film, and between the terrific look and cast of character actors and almost-famous leading men (including Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio), it’s a minor classic in a languishing genre. Unfortunately, audiences failed to see the appeal, and in spite of some decent (and some not-so-decent) reviews, the film was a box-office bomb, making back just over half of its $35 million budget.