8 sci-fi films so bad they were removed from cinemas
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Sci-fi is a funny old genre at times. On the one hand it’s given us some of the biggest box office hits of the past few decades, from Interstellar and The Matrix through to Mad Max: Fury Road and Dune, with their stunning visuals and compelling storylines keeping audiences gripped. But there’s more to making a successful sci-fi film than sticking on a few extra-terrestrial rubber suits and hoping it works. For every science fiction hit which has cleaned up at the box office there are others which were so poorly received or just plain clunky that they often played to empty cinemas – before being yanked just days or weeks into their run. Read on for some of those sci-fi box office bombs which were considered so terrible they were pulled from theatres. Have you seen any of them? Go on, admit it… (Picture: 20thCentFox/Everett/Shutterstock)
1. Solarbabies (1986)
First up, we have this futuristic flop from the 80s, which actually does feature some well-known names – The Lost Boys stars Jason Patric and Jami Gertz among them. Solarbabies is set in a sun-baked post-apocalyptic future ruled by the military, who have taken control of the world’s water supply until a group of orphaned teenagers set out to take back control via the medium of a mysterious, glowing orb. It was released in the US on November 26, 1986, but collapsed in the face of terrible reviews (it has a 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating) and audiences steering clear, shedding 75% of its screens within a fortnight before being yanked altogether. Its executive producer, comedy legend Mel Brooks, has since revealed how the movie’s budget spiralled by $20m (£15m) amid production delays, leading him to take out a second mortgage to keep it going. Speaking on the How Did This Get Made? podcast he said of the film: ‘Half of it is like pretty good, and half of it is like the worst movie I’ve seen in my whole life.’ (Picture: MGM)
2. Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983)
Sci-fi was big business back in the early 80s thanks to the success of the Star Wars movies and Spielberg’s E.T – while 3D movies also enjoyed something of a resurgence, with folk sticking on those special glasses to watch the likes of Jaws 3D and Friday the 13th Part III leap out at them. On that basis you’d think putting the two together would be a no-brainer. Not when it came to 1983’s Metalstorm it wasn’t. This space-age Western, about a space ranger hunting down a wizard with supernatural powers, sank in the face of a critical drubbing, not to mention unfavourable comparisons to the similar 3D movie Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone. It opened in August 1983, but according to Slashfilm had lost around 91% of its 549 screens within just 19 days. While it ultimately made around $5.3m (£3.9m), the cost of prints and marketing still left this one high and dry – although it has since developed a cult following. (Picture: Universal Pictures)
3. The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002)
You’d think anything Eddie Murphy puts his name to would automatically be a hit, right? Wrong. Consider the case of 2002’s The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, a sci-fi action comedy featuring the Beverly Hills Cop legend in dual roles as the title character and his clone alter-ego. Set in the year 2080 in a colony on the Moon, it follows an ex-con turned businessman who travels looking for answers after his intergalactic nightclub is blown to bits. In theory this should have been fun. In reality? Reshoots, a spiralling budget and terrible reviews when it eventually was released (it has a mere 6% on Rotten Tomatoes) conspired to make this a notorious box office bomb which was released in over 2,000 cinemas in the US, but lasted merely a fortnight in most of them. (Picture: Photo: Bruce McBroom)
4. Jem And The Holograms (2015)
Cinemagoers of a certain age may well remember Jem, the animated 80s combo of music, fashion and sci-fi focusing on a music manager living a double life as a pop star (with a little help from supercomputer Synergy). Given its popularity then and the appetite for nostalgic reboots in the 21st Century, putting it on the big screen seemed like a no-brainer. However, the end result proved disastrous. After the trailer was given a resounding thumbs down from both critics and fans, the movie barely made a ripple when it brought in just $1.4m (£1m) on its opening weekend in the US – the worst opening ever for a film released by a major studio. Just two weeks later, Universal pulled it from cinemas. (Picture: Moviestore/Shutterstock)
5. Howard The Duck (1986)
Marvel films might be box office gold now, but it was a different story back in the 80s when Howard – the cigar-chomping superhero of Duckworld (a planet inhabited by – you guessed it – anthropomorphic ducks) – waddled onto the screen. The story, such as it is, sees our web-footed hero accidentally propelled from his home planet to Cleveland, Ohio, where he tries to adjust to life on earth while getting caught up in a complicated alien invasion plot. A very young Tim Robbins is also on board this one, along with Back To The Future’s Lea Thompson as a pop singer who indulges in a spot of inter-species romance after growing close to our hero (just, no). This one was released in over 1,500 cinemas in the US in August 1986 but had been dumped from 80% of them by the end of that month. Not so much Howard the Duck as a dead duck. (Picture: Allstar/Cinetext/UNIVERSAL)
6. Max Steel (2016)
This one had all the ingedients for a box office hit – superheroes, sci-fi elements and characters already familiar with anybody who’d ever seen either the animated series or bought an action figure from the Mattel toy line. Max Steel follows the adventures of Max McGrath (Ben Winchell), a teenager who develops super powers after joining forces with an extraterrestrial creature, the titular Steel. But while the franchise itself might be popular, the film was not, nabbing the dreaded 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and failing to even make the box office top 10 when it was released on over 2,000 screens in the US in October 2016. In the end it was yanked from cinemas after just three weeks – before being released on home entertainment formats two months later. (Picture: Moviestore/ Shutterstock)
7. Delgo (2008)
You’d think a big-budget animated blockbuster would be summer box office gold, right? Wrong. Consider the case of 2008 sci-fi fantasy Delgo, the story of a teenager who rallies his friends to save his world from a devastating civil war. It had all the right elements, from impressive visuals through to a voice cast that included the likes of Anne Bancroft, Freddie Prinze Jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Val Kilmer. But none of that was enough to save it from box office oblivion, a savage 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and what was said to be the worst opening weekend ever for a wide release movie. According to Yahoo! Movies, it pulled in an average of just two people per screening. Unsurprisingly, it was removed after a week. (Picture: Eye/Fathom/Kobal/Shutterstock)
8. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)
Finally, we have a 1980s phenomenon which proved that just because something might work in one particular form doesn’t mean it’s going to work in another. The Garbage Pail Kids found fame during the decade as a series of sticker trading cards featuring characters who had bad habits, deformities, or who suffered a terrible fate or death. Given their popularity, it’s no surprise that a big-screen adventure – complete with sci-fi element which suggests the characters are in fact from another world – followed, and it might well have seemed like a great idea at the time. Except the finished film, featuring a mix of live actors and animatronics, was anything but great. Critics hated it – hitting out at its gross-out humour, its effects, its acting…well pretty much everything really – and despite opening in around 374 cinemas in the US, it was showing on just 48 screens across the entire country a mere fortnight later. Now that’s – ahem – garbage. (Picture: Gum Prods/Kobal/Shutterstock)
