Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
COME ONE, COME ALL..., February 8, 2006
...come and see one of the most fascinating new museums on the planet! Come and see a museum dedicated to some of Hollywood's greatest disappointments! We got the Duke as Genghis Khan, Lord Laurence Olivier as General Douglas MacArthur, and Howard Hughes failing to put his money where his mouth is! We got biblical disasters, sinking ships, and D.W. Griffith!
Come and join the Brothers Medved, Harry and Michael, as they take you on a tour through the greatest turkeys Hollywood has given us up to 1984. Among the museum's many exhibits are: the historicallly-hysterical Moonie Epic "Inchon," the belly-flopping western "Heaven's Gate," "Mohammad: Messenger of God," the disasterous Howard Hughes films "The Conqueror" (An RKO Radioactive Picture) and "Underwater!," and "Raise the Titanic," which raised the famous luxury liner, but truly sank at the box office!
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Seriously, though, this is an entertaining book that belongs in the collections of every film buff. It's sure to make you laugh.
Grade: A+
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bombs Away!, January 29, 2002
Less pungent than their othe satirical works, this takes the Medved brothers into the realm of the hopelessly expensive financial flops of Hollywood. Thus Cleopatra, Heaven's Gate and the Fall of the Roman Empire all feature. Trouble is, few of these films are actually BAD films (I think highly of Cleopatra and FOTRE) so the previous rhythm and flow of the Turkeys is somewhat lost. Still, a fun account of what went wrong.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
History and Photos of Famous Movie Flops (til 1983), June 13, 2009
From back cover:
"Lavishly illustrated in glorious black and white, 'The Hollywood Hall of Shame' celebrates motion pictures that have failed on so grand a scale that they have earned their own sort of immortality.
In addition to such flops as 'Cleopatra,' 'Darling Lili,' and 'Heaven's Gate,' visitors to the Hollywood Hall of Shame will discover bizarre losers alike.
* 'Hello Everybody' - a lavish musical featuring the romantic exploits of the singing, dancing, 212-pound Kate Smith.
* 'Kolberg,' - a 1944 Nazi extravaganza about the Napoleonic Wars starring 187,000 Wehrmacht soldiers as battlefield extras, and personally supervised by Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
* 'Doctor Doolittle,' - the dilemma-ridden Rex Harrison disaster in which even the ducks almost drowned.
* 'Underwater!' - a Howard Hughes-Jane Russell seagoing stinker that premiered at the bottom of a swimming pool to a group of skeptical critics wearing diving equipment.
These and other 'overstuffed' turkeys are displayed in exhibition areas, which include fascinating information on how the films were made, the inside story of what went wrong during production, and explanations of why they failed at the box office.
In the colorful corridors of this museum you will meet such dreamers and schemers as William Randolph Hearst, Marlene Dietrich, D.W. Griffith, Liberace, Elizabeth Taylor, Benito Mussolini, Julie Andrews, Warren Beatty, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, John Wayne, Marlon Brando, and many, many others.
There is also a basement collection describing over 200 bona fide bomberinos for the confirmed connoisseur of cine-mediocrity."
****
CONTENTS:
BOMBS AWAY
SILENT BUT DEADLY
* Intolerance (1916) * Quo Vadis? (1925) * Noah's Ark (1929)
THE TITANS AND THEIR TOYS
* Cain and Mabel (1936) * Underwater! * The Conqueror (1956)
FASCIST FOLLIES
* Scipio Africanus (1937) * Kolberg (1945)
DISASTROUS DEBUTS
* Hello Everybody! (1933) * Sincerely Yours (1955)
STAR-CROSSED LOVERS
* Hotel Imperial (1936-1939) * Darling Lili (1970)
THE ELIZABETH TAYLOR WING
* Cleopatra (1963) * Boom! (1968) * The Only Game in Town (1970)
CHILD ABUSE
* Doctor Dolittle (1967) * The Blue Bird (1976)
PROPHETS AND LOSSES
* The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) * Mohammad: Messenger of God (1977)
MUSICAL EXTRAVAGANZAS
* Paint Your Wagon (1969) * Can't Stop the Music (1980)
DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
* Heaven's Gate (1980-81) * Inchon (1982)
THE BASEMENT COLLECTION: A Compendium of Notable Film Flops
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