A One Mann’s Movies Book review of “Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops” (2025, 4*).
This is a One Mann’s Movies first! I must admit that I seldom read books about movies; I tend to not carve out much time for reading books at all! But here I am on holiday, sat on a deck-lounger in the sunshine with time on my hands and a Kindle to read. So I have just finished (at my ‘very leisurely’ reading speed) the book “Box Office Poison” by Tim Robey. Here’s a brief review.
One Mann’s Movies Book Review Rating:
The Book:
“Box Office Poison” takes an in-depth look at 26 of the most loss-making films of movie history, starting with 1916’s “Intolerance” all the way through to the cat-aclysm (sic) that was “Cats” in 2019.
Talent:
Written by: Tim Robey.
Length: 352 pages.
Published: 7th November 2024.
Purchase Link (Amazon UK): here.
Review:
A straightforward and accessible style.
Robey has an easy and accessible way of writing. Aside from, that is, occasional diversions into Greek references (he read classics at Oxford University). Some of these references – “Ozmandias” is mentioned a couple of times, for example – sent me scrambling for Google!
The book begins with an introductory Preface and ends with an Afterward. But between these bookends are Robey’s write-ups of 26 of his chosen films for analysis.
Robey makes the point that these are not necessarily the WORST movie bombs in history. Looking at this list (which, being Wiki, might need to be taken with a pinch of salt) and sorting it by the “Adjusted for inflation loss”, the first film to appear in Robey’s book is “Cutthroat Island” at number 6. (In order of loss, the ones ahead of it in the list are “John Carter”, “The Lone Ranger”, “The Marvels“, “The 13th Warrior” and “Mortal Engines“).
Instead, the films featured are, basically, loss-makers that particularly piqued Robey’s interest and he wanted to write about! But there’s nothing wrong with that!
Which films are covered?
The following films have dedicated chapters in the book:
- Intolerance (1916)
- Queen Kelly (1929)
- Freaks (1932)
- Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
- The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
- Land of the Pharoahs (1955)
- Doctor Dolittle (1967)
- Sorcerer (1977)
- Dune (1984)
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
- Nothing But Trouble (1991)
- The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
- Cutthroat Island (1995)
- Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
- Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
- Supernova (2000)
- Rollerball (2002)
- The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
- Gigli (2003)
- Catwoman (2004)
- Alexander (2004)
- A Sound of Thunder (2005)
- Speed Racer (2008)
- Synedoche, New York (2008)
- Pan (2015)
- Cats (2019)
Whilst some of the films listed are cast-iron stinkers, there are also those that Robey actually has a lot of time for. He is positively gushing about Synedoche, New York starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
But I’m not a sad geek and I haven’t seen all of those!
I AM a sad geek, and I have seen a lot of movies over the years. But I certainly haven’t seen the vast majority of those featured in this book. (Some, I think I probably have seen at some point in the past, but they made so little impression on me, I’m really not 100% sure.) But that certainly didn’t dilute the pleasure of reading about them and marking those in my mind that I might like to catch up on in the future. (Hallé Berry in a cat suit certainly has a strange appeal!)
Robey writes enough background about each film that you get a feel for the structure and plot of the film such that I was able to form the pictures in my own mind. The pictures included (I would have liked more) also provide some great background to the discussion. The one of Kathryn Hepburn, no less, doing a sort of cross-dressing version of the sexy Jane Russell photo from “The Outlaw” is certainly memorable.
But why?
Through his engaging and well-written narrative, Robey explores the reason why some of these flops actually flopped. For the good films, sometimes they were just too far ahead of their time to find an audience. In other cases, a potential classic was emasculated to the point of insipidness by insecure and nervous studio heads. With time and appreciation, these ‘director’s cuts’ might have become another “Shawshank Redemption“: appreciated as classics long after their initial duff theatrical run. We will never know. In some cases, the studios actually physically dissolved the unused footage.
Many, many cross-references.
I was reading this as a Kindle edition, so this criticism might not apply to hardback or paperback copies. But the text contains many (many!) cross references, sometimes simply to other pages in the book but often to adjacent and (mostly very interesting) facts. I dare say, these appear as footnotes on each individual page in the printed editions. But on a Kindle, each involves clicking on the reference link to go to the set of footnotes at the back of the chapter, with then the requirement to click the return button to go back to the main text. Given the number of these references, this quickly becomes tiresome.
The same can be said of the photos included in the book. These are all bundled together at the back of the book (on the Kindle) and I only actually discovered them when I got to the end of the book. Some better way of indexing them into the Kindle text would have been useful so I could have seen them as I was reading. (Again, this probably doesn’t apply as much to the printed editions, where the photo sections are probably more obvious).
Summary Thoughts:
A really enjoyable walk through over a hundred years of box-office flops, with some of the stories being familiar to me but most being completely new information. A good read for any cinéastes.
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