It’s not always the cream that rises to the top. Sometimes the worst new release ends up number one at the box office. This was the case for Transformers: Age of Extinction, Ride Along 2, The Dark Tower, The Boss Baby, The Fate of the Furious and the like. And, similarly, sometimes an excellent movie gets lost in the shuffle. It opens low and swiftly is carted out of theaters. What follows are 10 horror films that fell firmly under that category, and for different reasons, all of which we’ll unpack. However, we just focused on straightforward horror for this one, so no horror comedies like The Final Girls, Slither, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, or Grindhouse. They also had to be deserving of the word “great,” so no 2010’s The Wolfman or Gus Van Sant’s Psycho here.
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Furthermore, there is a difference between underperforming and bombing. To bomb or to flop is to generate quite a bit less income than the price tag. To underperform is to be like Stir of Echoes and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which lost a small amount of money and made a small amount of money, respectively. To become profitable, a film typically needs to earn at least twice its production budget, as production budgets do not factor in marketing costs. The following movies fell far short of that bar.
7) Willard
Crispin Glover has had supporting roles in many great and or popular movies, e.g. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Back to the Future, At Close Range, Wild at Heart, The Doors, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Charlie’s Angels, Beowulf, Hot Tob Time Machine, and Alice in Wonderland. But he’s only been the lead in one studio movie, and that’s Willard.
And, like his other leading man gig (well, co-lead) in River’s Edge, Glover is perfect for his role and makes an already excellent movie even better. Like the 1971 movie, which was also loosely based on Stephen Gilbert’s novel Ratman’s Notebooks, 2003’s Willard tells the tale of a social outcast frequently abused by his boss (R. Lee Ermey), who took over the company started by Willard’s father after his premature death. When his boss kills one of his precious pet rats, Willard and his legion of rat pets go on a quest of revenge. With a $20 million budget, Willard only generated $8.6 million in revenue.
Stream Willard on Kanopy.
6) Event Horizon
An under-loved ’90s horror scare-fest and the best film to come from Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat‘s Paul W. S. Anderson, Event Horizon is pretty fantastic for a compromised product. And why is it compromised? Because Paramount edited out over 34 minutes of footage to make it a more conventionally marketable horror adventure. Their effort didn’t pay off, as the movie still netted only $42 million against a sizable $60 million price tag.
Fortunately, Event Horizon has gone on to accrue a pretty expansive cult fanbase, most of whom have long requested a director’s cut. Sadly, in spite of Anderson’s efforts to assemble just that thing, most of the excised footage has been lost or damaged. But, even in its truncated form, this is a spaceship from Hell movie that really works.
Stream Event Horizon on Paramount+.
5) The Burning
While it’s not a slasher that would have led naturally into a franchise, The Burning was more deserving of that honor than other B-tier members of the subgenre like Sleepaway Camp or Prom Night. It’s atmospheric as can be, genuinely scary in a few spots, has an unsettling soundtrack, and Cropsy was an effectively grotesque creation by Tom Savini.
Speaking of Savini, this film is the reason why the makeup legend didn’t come back for Friday the 13th Part 2. And it was Friday the 13th Part 2 that was mostly to blame for no one really noticing The Burning, as there was comfort in familiarity when it came to a slasher sequel. But it wasn’t all Jason’s fault, as The Burning opened (at number 23) the same weekend as fellow original slasher Happy Birthday to Me (at number one). The end result was a movie that couldn’t even make half of its paltry $1.5 million budget.
4) The Blob
There have been a few attempts to make a modernized The Blob over the years. And not necessarily building off the 1958 original either, as Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake has become equally iconic if not more so. Rob Zombie tried it, Con Air‘s Simon West tried it, and now it’s finally gaining some momentum under director David Bruckner (Hulu’s Hellraiser) and producer David S. Goyer.
But who knows if it will be worth, because the 1988 film was fantastic and, like a John Carpenter alien movie remake we’ll cover in a bit, hardly anyone saw it. The Blob only made eight and a quarter million dollars, opening in eighth place. Admittedly, it had some steep competition, with Big, Midnight Run, A Fish Called Wanda, Coming to America, Die Hard, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Cocktail all continuing their runs.
Stream The Blob on Philo.
3) Dead Alive
A hilarious and generally fantastic spin on the zombie subgenre, Peter Jackson’s Braindead (known as Dead Alive here in the States) honestly never really stood a chance when it came to being a massive hit. It’s a gory, grimly humorous movie with no recognizable stars. It also played in very few theaters.
Even still, $242,623 against a $3 million price tag is pretty rough. Perhaps it did better in its home country of New Zealand, but no data is available on that inquiry. However, there were only 140 screens in all of New Zealand back in 1992, so it doesn’t seem likely.
Unfortunately, it’s not available to stream here in the U.S.
2) In the Mouth of Madness
John Carpenter’s The Thing (more on that in a bit) showed that even his best work wasn’t always appreciated in its time. But after that film tanked he had a few more modest successes in Christine, Prince of Darkness, and They Live. Unfortunately, those were more outliers than the norm.
Starman, Big Trouble in Little China, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Village of the Damned, Escape from L.A., Vampires, and Ghosts of Mars all fell short of expectations. And, while they’re not at the level of his earlier efforts, there’s still a ton of charm in later era Carpenter. Allow this entry to serve as an endorsement of the entertainment value of Vampires, the goofiness of Ghosts of Mars, the fantastic first act of Village of the Damned, and the ambition of In the Mouth of Madness.
1) The Thing
Carpenter had a nice winning streak going for him with the box office smash Halloween and the successes of both The Fog and Escape from New York. That went away very quickly with the release of The Thing. This special effects extravaganza was dismissed by both critics and general audiences, both of whom have come around on it in a big way.
The Thing is a movie for any horror fan. Really, any film fan in general. It works perfectly in every way from front to back. The direction is airtight, the performances are note-perfect, the practical effects may very well be the best in horror film history, and the whole “who is a Thing when” plotline is executed so well it benefits from repeat viewings. At the time, though, critics disliked just about everything about it, from the grotesque nature of the special effects to what in their minds were a group of thin characters.
As for audiences not turning out for it, there was a decent excuse, as The Thing debuted in a particularly stuffed June. It opened in eighth place, behind the fourth weekend of Poltergeist and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the sixth weekend of Annie, the fifth weekend of Rocky III, the sophomore weekend of Firefox, the debut weekend of Blade Runner (which also ended up bombing in its own right), and the third weekend of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which ended up playing strongly for a full year straight (to the tune of $359.2 million). The Thing, however, topped out at just over $20 million.
Stream The Thing on Peacock.
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image courtesy of 20th Century Studios
