Sylvester Stallone has established himself as an action star, and while he’s best known for playing Rocky Balboa in the critically and commercially successful 1976 movie Rocky, not all his projects have been a hit, and he was actually tricked into making some very bad movies. Sylvester Stallone’s rise to fame wasn’t easy, and he struggled for years to make himself known in the entertainment industry. His first movie roles were as uncredited extra in projects like Downhill Racer and M*A*S*H, with his first credited role being in the 1970 movie The Party at Kitty and Stud’s, a controversial project he later explained he took out of desperation as he was about to be evicted from his apartment.
After some odd jobs and more roles as an extra in various movies, Stallone’s first proper starring role arrived in 1973 in the independent movie No Place to Hide, which was followed by The Lords of Flatbush in 1974. Stallone’s big break happened two years later in the now classic sports drama Rocky, which marked not only the start of a franchise but also of his career as a serious actor. Since then, Stallone has earned a place in the film industry as an action star, in big part thanks to movies like First Blood (and the rest of the Rambo franchise), Cobra, Assassins, and of course, the rest of the movies in the Rocky franchise. However, and as it happens in the careers of most actors, not all his projects have been a hit with critics and/or viewers.
Stallone has also taken part in movies that were heavily criticized for their bad quality, and funny enough, he was tricked into making some of those movies, and his eternal rival Arnold Schwarzenegger had a role in tricking him into some of these. First was the 1992 buddy cop movie Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, where Stallone played a tough cop whose mother (played by Golden Girls’ Estelle Getty) got into trouble after buying him an illegal pistol after ruining his original weapon. Stallone has shared, just like Schwarzenegger has, that the Terminator star was directly responsible for the former’s decision to take the role in that particular movie, as Schwarzenegger was offered the role first but immediately saw it wasn’t going to be a good movie. However, and knowing well what would happen if he did this, he pretended to be interested in the role, so when it was offered to Stallone, he fell for it and moved by the thought of taking it away from his rival, he signed on.
Next was The Specialist, released in 1994. This action thriller is loosely based on the series of novels by John Shirley and follows May Munro (Sharon Stone), who enlists the help of hitman Ray Quick (Stallone) to avenge the death of her parents. The Specialist received terrible reviews but was a box office hit, and the producers reportedly threatened Stallone with replacing him with Warren Beatty if he didn’t commit to the project within a 15-minute deadline, with the actor succumbing to the pressure. Three years later, Stallone took part in the mockumentary An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, which tells the story of a director who steals the negatives to his latest movie and flees as he wants to disown the film but can’t do so due to his name, which was used as a pseudonym in Hollywood when a filmmaker didn’t want to have their name attached to a bad movie. The movie Smithee wants to get rid of is titled Trio and stars Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jackie Chan, but in the script (the real-life one), it was supposed to star Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis. Stallone then signed on believing the other two action stars would be in it but was very surprised when he arrived at the set and learned those roles were filled by Goldberg and Chan.
Just like the previous two movies, Burn Hollywood Burn was a critical and commercial failure (the latter made even worse by the movie getting a very limited release), and even though Stallone’s role was a cameo one, the project is part of his list of flops. Sylvester Stallone continues to be one of the most popular action stars in film history, and while these stories of how he was tricked into making some really bad movies don’t affect his reputation that much, they surely are very entertaining.
