Flop Night

What makes a film a flop? An easy question to answer for Hollywood moguls: a film is a flop if it makes 1 dollar or more less than the painstakingly calculated desired yield.

The director, however, can be pretty satisfied with such a film if he thinks he's followed his artistic instincts. We can only imagine the ensuing discussions between director (“You’re nothing without me!”) and producer (“You? You’re just a pathetic crumb on the hem of my universe!”).

Schwarzenegger as demi-god

Flop Night puts together an hour-long compilation of scenes and clips from (in)famous flops, provided with commentary by flop experts Martin Koolhoven and Ronald Simons.

Battlefield Earth, for example, and Hercules in New York (Arthur Allan Seidelman, 1970), often shown as a cult film and starring none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger as Greek demi-god Hercules, who has descended from Mount Olympus to New York where he tries to earn a buck as a wrestler… And of course Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997), the film that was intended as a blockbuster, but was really more of a satire on the American culture of military violence – even if this was not necessarily understood at the time.

Cutthroat Island (Renny Harlin, US/FR/IT/DE 1995, 119’)

Geena Davis is a pirate queen fighting with other pirates for a hidden treasure on Cutthroat Island – with lots and lots of clashing swords and booming canon. Director (and her then-husband) Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2) couldn’t get the film off the ground, and first-time production company Carolco immediately went bust; after its release, the picture – made for a budget of 115 million dollars – brought in a measly 18 million pieces of eight (or dollars)… Harlin’s ‘swashbuckling catastrophe’ did pick up a Razzie for worst direction, however.