Filled with wild action, fantastic choreography and editing, Duel to the Death (1983) nevertheless has a thoroughly misleading title seeing as the main characters only end up dueling till dismemberment.
Slight hijack, but a related story: decades ago when I lived on a small island in Micronesia, our main form of entertainment was to go down to the local video store and rent movies.
I had a houseguest, and we decided to watch a movie. He offered to go into town and get one. He inquired as to what I felt like, and I said, “Oh, I dunno … something light, I don’t feel like thinking too hard tonight.”
He returned with Das Boot and told me nothing about it before we started watching. It’s an amazing movie, but hardly what I was in the mood for. (Semi-spoiler for those who haven’t seen it: it has an incredibly sad ending.)
A few days later, I got my revenge. We again decided to rent a movie, only it was my turn to go get one. He wanted a comedy and I promised to deliver.
Saying nothing more, I got us Blue Velvet (which I had already seen so I knew exactly what to expect) and let him watch it, completely unprepared. It totally freaked him out. I told him it was exactly what he deserved for showing me Das Boot with no warning when I asked for something light. He agreed.
/
I happened to catch Once Upon A Time In Mexico when I lived in Philadelphia. The theater was pretty packed; everybody was some flavor of Hispanic except for four very-white ladies in the front row. After a few minutes of the movie, one of them turned to the others and said “you know, I don’t think this is a fairy tale”.
Later when we were exiting they were talking with some of the people who’d been sitting closest to them about how the rest of us could have watched the movie without the subtitles (since yes, all of us were bilingual) and other linguistic and cultural background stuff. They agreed that, while very much not a fairy tale, it had been an interesting experience.
With both of those I think I have a cultural-background advantage. “Spanish horror movie” is something that I know is going to go to some nasty, nasty places (Labyrinth is del Toro but made and set in Spain with a Spanish cast, so it definitely qualifies as “Spanish horror movie”).
Two movies that (like Bridge to Teribithia) are famous for deceptive trailers are Kindergarden Cop, which mostly wasn’t in kindergarden, and Kangaroo Jack, which mostly wasn’t about the kangaroo.
Both my wife and I were disappointed by Crazy Rich Asians. We both had the impression that the movie was about rich Asians who were crazy. Actually it’s about Asians who are crazy rich. It’s an important distinction if you’re looking for a comedy.
I think it’s a brilliant title for American viewers. Because it’s hard to tell where the culture ends and the eccentric begins.
That said, had I’d know it was going to be a Princess fairy tale, I probably would have gave it a hard pass.
His A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is often assumed to be a sex comedy. Though there are a few amusing bits, it’s mostly a serious musing about relationships and about they are always going to fail, and that a happy ending is literally a fairy story.
Blake Edwards’ The Man Who Loved Woman was marketed as a comedy, with trailers focusing on what was the only deliberately funny scene in it. It’s really mostly a drama about someone who has an inability to commit. The original ending was so downbeat that the studio asked for reshots to lighten it just a bit. But it was a pretty serious drama.
How about the original Dumbo??!! It was awful, I started watching it with my grandkids and after 15 minutes, shut it off.
The Babadook. I expected a horror movie. What I got was a character study about a grieving widow with a special-needs kid.
One thing I hate is when a studio didn’t know how to make a trailer for a mediocre, independent dramedy. Most of the time there’s little -medy in the drama, so they cram every humorous line into the trailer. It’s deliberately deceptive, and not for a genre-subverting purpose. Memorable examples are The Five Year Engagement, Friends With Kids, and This Is Where I Leave You.
Dark, sad and even pedophilia.
When Cocoon was new, there were two different trailers out at the same time. One was about sad old people like Wilford Brimley and Jessica Tandy nearing death, and one was was about wacky hijinks with Steve Gutenberg having skinless sex with hot alien chicks in a pool. Each was obviously meant to go with a movie targeting a specific audience.
Since the movie was actually about both things, I can’t say the trailers were purely deceptive, but it really made me aware of howa trailer can use only footage from the film and yet completely misrepresent it if it wants to.
I never expected Pennies From Heaven to be a comedy, but for some reason I thought it the fantasy parts were going to be more like Walter Mitty and less like Brazil.
And I liked Stardust Memories, but I figure that was because I saw it before many of his “older, funnier” films. I was expecting Manhattan, not Bananas, so it wasn’t such a shock.
And then the movie tanks after the first weekend, because the trailer lied, and word of mouth kept people away. And all the people that would have wanted to see a movie about addiction never see it. But by god the studio made their first weekend money, and the trailer maker got paid. Ain’t America great?
Starship Troopers…expected mindless sci-fi.
Every year my GF and I pick out a Christmas movie to watch so this year we picked Bad Santa…its got a sequel I thought! So its got to be funny, right? Oh theres a Directors Cut?? Well thats probably even better, right??
Dead Poets Society was advertised as a Robin Williams comedy, with the trailer showing the 5 funny lines Robin has in the whole movie. So I rented it expecting to laugh.
A great movie to be sure, but definitely not a comedy.
But Bad Santa is funny.
So is Starship Troopers.
Although it’s not supposed to be.
“Trainwreck” with Amy Schumer. Absolutely NO trains whatsoever. What a disappointment! 
You don’t think Bad Santa is funny?? 
After watching the previews for The Passenger with Jack Nicholson, I was really looking forward to seeing the movie: “Wow, cool! Stolen identity, Third-World revolution, African dictator, international arms smuggling, threat of exposure! Can’t wait for it to come 'round!”
The movie was one of the greatest disappointments ever. Like Emanuelle, it seemed interminably long because nothing bloody happened! The *only *scene I remember is when Nicholson finds the corpse of the guy whose identity he steals sprawled over the bed in his hotel room, and that’s because you could clearly see his heart was still beating!
If it were 1942, you may have a point with that last. But it isn’t, so you don’t.
And given that a movie which doesn’t have a 40% drop-off rate from 1st weekend to 2nd is, nowadays, a movie with “legs”, the fact of a first-to-second weekend drop off isn’t indicative of anything.
As the film made $93m in the US, and $162m worldwide on a $38m budget, it seems the marketing people successfully did their job.