10 Notorious Box-Office Bombs That Are Actually Good

Movies are not sports. Financial numbers on Box Office Mojo or The Numbers tell one story of winners and losers; our subjective reactions often tell another. Sometimes a movie becomes a hit — even an Oscar winner — only to face a critical reappraisal many years later. Others get swamped with disastrous reviews, then discover an appreciative fanbase on home video. In the end, each and every individual viewer gets the final word.

The pandemic that’s wiped the release calendar clean has left us all with time to think about these matters — and to discover or rewatch movies that were deemed failures by the masses and judge them for ourselves. That’s exactly what I’ve done here, by celebrating 10 movies that were box-office bombs — if not outright disasters — upon their initial release. Most of these movies are available for streaming; the rest can be rented. They all give you the chance to rewrite a tiny piece of history on your own terms.

Ranked, loosely, in order from not-so-great to most unjustly maligned, here are some famous flops that are extremely watchable.

Gallery — Great Movies With Zero Oscar Nominations: