Dolph Lundgren has no idea why he starred in his worst-ever movie: “Why did I make it? I don’t know”
Just like every other musclebound beefcake that rose to prominence in the 1980s by headlining a string of formulaic shoot ’em ups and beat ’em ups, Dolph Lundgren has starred in some truly woeful movies.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, and Steven Seagal are all guilty of the same crime against cinema, but the difference between the statuesque Swede and his off-puttingly vascular contemporaries is that, on paper, he’s smart enough to know better.
Not content with underlining his future action hero credentials as a two-time European karate champion in the early 1980s, Lundgren also studied chemical engineering, earning a Master’s degree, and was awarded a scholarship to the prestigious and world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology, only to drop out when he became Grace Jones’ bodyguard and lover.
A taste of the celebrity lifestyle convinced him to pursue acting full-time, but he was spoiled. His first two big-screen credits were a small role in the James Bond blockbuster, A View to a Kill, with his first major part proving to be career-defining when he was cast as the formidable Ivan Drago in Stallone’s Rocky IV.
He’s been working solidly since then, but his first two features were as good as things got in terms of mainstream success, with Lundgren largely relegated to the straight-to-video circuit since the mid-1990s, barring the Expendables franchise and his minor contributions to the two Aquaman films.
In his first movie to receive a theatrical release since 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic, Lundgren also notched the worst entry in his entire filmography. The good news is that not many people saw it, with the offending article only screening in United Kingdom cinemas, where it bombed with a measly haul of $105,000.
Still, history, or infamy, to be more accurate, will always remember him as being part of the Fat Slags ensemble cast, the wretched live-action ‘comedy’ based on the comic strip of the same name. Why did he agree to lend his name to something so completely and utterly awful? According to the man himself, he’s not entirely sure.
“Why did I make it? I don’t know,” he admitted to The AV Club. “It was spur of the moment, through a friend of mine. It was a friend of a producer. They were doing a comedy in the UK, and I had an apartment there at the time, and I was spending some time there a couple of years ago. I ended up doing a small role. I think it was a half day’s work. What can I say? I don’t know if anyone has ever seen it. I have never seen it.”
If anything, too many people saw it, even though there weren’t many of them, with Fat Slags in with a strong shout at being named the worst British movie ever made. Lundgren has been in dozens of bargain-basement actioners, but director Ed Bye’s gross-out caper is an entirely different kind of terrible. It did at least allow him to tick slapstick comedy from his to-do list, but the downside is that it’s comfortably the worst thing he’s ever been in.
