Book Review: Fantastic Flops edited by Prof. Christopher McGlothlin, M.Ed.
Disclaimer: I contributed to the Kickstarter for this book.
Despite the best efforts of producers, directors, writers, actors and all the varied crew members who work on them, sometimes movies don’t do well enough to be considered successful. Maybe they’re just bad, or had terrible timing, or got savaged by critics, or needed multiple viewings to understand that the audience wasn’t willing to invest, but these films were flops. This book is a collection of essays about some of the more interesting flops and why they flopped, and their more striking elements.
Much like Subversive Sci-Fi, which I reviewed earlier on this blog, the essays are arranged in roughly order of film release. They run from Curse of the Cat People (1944), which gets two essays, to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023). Since the qualifying aspect is financial failure rather than a specific genre, this volume covers films from horror to war (Inchon! (1981) to musical comedy (Ishtar (1987) to fantasy.
Some movies covered as indeed bad, like MST3K favorite Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) which is still fascinating for just how the heck it got made, while others are now beloved cult classics like Big Trouble in Little China (1986) which took off when people saw it on video. (I’ve reviewed that one on this blog too.)
All the essays give basic plot information, discuss production details and talk about themes and characters. Most of them are insightful and you could learn something interesting about movies you half remember or only have heard about from your film fanatic friends. There are also some that play with the format a bit.
My favorite of the essays is the one on The Lone Ranger (2013), which has a dialogue between the essayist as a child with a love of the Lone Ranger TV show, him in 2013 having just seen the movie, and him in 2023 having learned more about what went on behind the scenes and the trajectory of the people since then. My least favorite is the essay for Sucker Punch (2011) which comes across as “film snobbish” (“it’s so deep, you don’t even know”).
Oh, and there’s matching essays on Judge Dredd (1995) and Dredd (2012), talking about how different takes on the comic book adaptation flopped for different reasons.
There’s no illustrations, so you may need to use the Internet to see pictures of what they’re talking about.
Overall, this is an interesting selection of movies to write about, and the essayists have delivered. Most recommended to movie fans (this is a good choice as a gift for that friend or relative who you can never remember which movies are already in their collection.)
