Ah, the Steve Martin deal. After the success of The Jerk he signed a multi-picture deal with some studio and made a string of flops and weak performers starting with Pennies from Heaven and ending with Three Amigos, I think. Soon as it was over, he made Roxanne.
Short Cut to Happiness. It’s a remake of The Devil and Daniel Webster. It stars and was directed by Alec Baldwin and it has Anthony Hopkins as Daniel Webster and Jennifer Love Hewitt as the devil. The supporting cast includes Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Jason Patric, Amy Poehler, Darrell Hammond, and John Savage - so the movie had plenty of “names”.
But it couldn’t even get released in theatres for six years after it was made and it vanished when it did. It’s never been released on video in America.
The Two Jakes is, IMHO, quite good. Not Chinatown good, but an example of a film that builds emotionally until the very last line “It never goes away.” And as fun as James Hong is in anything, he never carried a movie on his own, even as David Lo Pan, the villain in Big Trouble In Little China.
How about St. Elmo’s Fire, or pretty much any other Joel Schumacher film? I think I read once that he is personally very well liked in the movie industy, so actors are happy to work with him. (It’s just too bad about how those movies turn out.)
This movie is supposedly a perfect example of what the OP discusses.
Big cast, big budget, big director with script by noted author make awful movie. I have never seen reviews of a major studio film be so brutal. It’s like the critics are personally offended by it.
LC-I don’t think you meant to imply this, but Schumacher didn’t make St Elmo’s Fire.
Whatcha’ mean? I’m confused.
Huh? He directed it and co-wrote it.
I may have to give it another try, but it sure seemed like a stinker the first time around. I have a soft spot for James Hong (and other character actors like Jack Elam). He’s made a great living off of character parts.
Truly, he would’ve been a great Sulu.
Jack Elam?
As for The Two Jakes, the payoff for the whole movie is the closing, which is like the shutting door closing in The Searchers, which would have been a forgettable movie without the end and the door. Nicholson pulls off the same effect in The Two Jakes with the last line “It never goes away” the pain of the murder and his guilt in bringing it about, even two decades later. The movie, like The Searchers, doesn’t really mean a lot without that ending. And that ending would not have been possible without Chinatown. I don’t know a lot of people whose families survived a murder of a member, but I know one and met another, and the pain of such a thing never goes away. It is a scar so deep and defining and damning.
News to me. 
I’m sorry, but *Three Amigos *is awesome.
Agreed! All of Me, The Lonely Guy, and The Man With Two Brains are all pretty good, too, and they all fall between The Jerk and Three Amigos. With a few exceptions, Martin’s made much worse movies in the last 20 years than he did in the 80s.
Checking into it, it appears he made fewer films with that company than planned - The Lonely Guy was the last, after Pennies from Heaven,* Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid*, and The Man With Two Brains. Four disappointing films in a row all they could take, I guess.
I can’t speak to Three Amigos, as it’s got two highly effective types of epbrown01-repellent: Martin Short and Chevy Chase.
Well while it can and should be argued that Martin Short and Chevy Chase are not funny actors, they are famous and well known actors. Would be surprising to see them in low budget cheapie film, even if that’s the sort of film their talents “qaulify” them for.
How about “Mad Dog Time”?
Its budget was $8 million, which wasn’t the bigtime for 1996.
The main cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Jeff Goldblum, Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin and Diane Lane. Smaller and cameo roles include Burt Reynolds, Richard Pryor, Kyle MacLachlan, Gregory Hines and Michael J. Pollard.
It was declared worst movie of the year by both Siskel and Ebert, who memorably called it “the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time.”
Richard Dreyfuss was an executive producer, which explains why he’s in it. What kind of pull he had to get the rest of the cast is beyond me.
The Swarm has an immense cast of big-name stars, and is absolutely and wonderfully awful.
The original Arthur Herzog novel wasn’ bad at all (I read it before the film came out), but the film, which jettisoned most of the book, is amazingly bad. First of all, it was produced and directed by Irwin Allen. He got Sterling Silliphant to write the screenplay, which is more in the Towering Inferno vein of his career than In the Heat of the Night.
Here’s the cast:
Michael Caine as Dr. Bradford Crane
Katharine Ross as Helena Anderson
Richard Widmark as General Thaddeus Slater
Richard Chamberlain as Dr. Hubbard
Olivia de Havilland as Maureen Schuester
Ben Johnson as Felix Austin
Lee Grant as Anne MacGregor
Jose Ferrer as Dr. Andrews
Patty Duke as Rita
Slim Pickens as Jud Hawkins
Bradford Dillman as Major Baker
Fred MacMurray as Clarence Tuttle
Henry Fonda as Dr. Walter Krim
Cameron Mitchell as General Thompson
Christian Juttner as Paul Durant
Morgan Paull as Dr. Newman
Alejandro Rey as Dr. Martinez
Don ‘Red’ Barry as Pete Harris
Elizabeth Rogers as Woman Scientist (extended version only)
Doria Cook-Nelson as Mrs. Durant (as Doria Cook)
Robert Varney as Mr. Durant
Ernie F. Orsatti as Duty Officer (as Ernie Orsatti)
Patrick Culliton as Sheriff Morrison
John Furlong as Cameraman
Chris Petersen as Hal
Jerry Toomey as Eddie
Barbara Costello as Receptionist / Nurse (extended version only)
Jenifer Taurins as Nurse (extended version only)
David Himes as Radioman (extended version only)
Mara Cook as Secretary
Joey Eisnach as Bee Boy
Stephen Powers as Radarman
Chris Capen as Lieutenant
Tony Haig as Officer #2
Bill Snider as Radarman #2
George F. Simmons as Nurse (as George Simmons)
Arell Blanton as Sergeant
Trent Dolan as Radio Sergeant
John Williams as Launching Officer
Steven Marlo as Pilot #1 (as Steve Marlo)
Phil Montgomery as Mechanic
Jim Galante as Doctor (extended version only)
Frank Blair as Himself
Marcia Nicholson as Captain
Arthur Space as Engineer
Chuck Hayward as Standby Engineer
Glenn Charles Lewis as Chemical Warfare Guard
Art Balinger as Radio Announcer
Michael Sheehan as Airman #1
Howard Culver as Airman #2
Porny Stevens as Airman #3
Michael Caine, Richard Widmark, and Henry Fonda are particularly prominent and burdened by unspeakable dialog.
For some reason, people had a love of movies about swarms of bees in the 1960s and 1970s. There are a lot of them, and they generally look awful, because the special effects of the time really weren’t up to it. Today, with CGI, you can do convincing swarms of bees, but back then the effects especially of the low-budget end, were appalling. The New York Times review of The Swarm compared the tituilar swarm to “a cloud of angry nutmeg”.
Another wonderfully awful film with Big Stars was the 1958 film The Story of Mankind. again, the book it’s based on wasn’t that bad, but the film is wonderfully awful. It puts Mankind on a sort of heavenly trial, with Vincent Price as “Mr. Scratch” (the Devil, naturally) and Ronald Colman as “The Spirit of Man”. That’s OK casting right there, but some of the rest is terrible:
Peter Lorre as Nero
Harpo Marx as Sir Isaac Newton
Chico Marx as a monk talking with Columbus
Groucho Marx as Peter Minuit
(I don’t know whose idea it was to separate the Marx brothers, but he deserves to be shot. Chico is completely wasted (and maybe he was); I can understand Groucho as a wheeler-dealer trading for Manhattan, but what kind of sense does it make to have Harpo plaing a silent Newton?)
Agnes Moorehead as Elizabeth I
Cesar Romero as the Spanish Envoy
John Carradine as Khufu
Edward Everett Horton as Sir Walter Raleigh (!!! – this is almost as bad as Harpo as Sir Isaac)
Francis X. Bushman as Moses (It’s like he and JohnCarradine switched sides from their more famous roles)
Dennis Hopper as Napoleon Bonaparte (!)
This was another, earlier film by Irwin Allen, who apperently kept making films with Lots of Big Names, hoping to get it right. He never did.
On second thought, after looking at Rotten Tomatoes and seeing the 37% for audience score and a ‘meh’ for reviews, I’m sticking with my first assessment that it was a waste of talent dealing with a convoluted script.