The movie Sylvester Stallone knew was doomed: “Had the smell of death about it”
That fabled “sinking feeling” is a terrible thing. As the pit of your stomach stretches into a metaphorical abyss and the event, moment or creation you had once seen as a golden opportunity begins to darken and wither, there is nothing that can be done to save you or it from the impending doom. This was the feeling Sylvester Stallone has experienced on a few occasions in his career.
As Stallone tried to find his way into the movie business, he famously struggled to make ends meet, even having to sell his dog before he got Rocky made and began his climb to the top of the Hollywood mountain. One might expect the actor to have endured a similar feeling of upcoming peril during those bleak moments, but he has also endured such assured destruction during his time in the limelight.
D-Tox is remarkable for one sole reason: it is the only Stallone horror movie in his filmography. Though there might be a case for 1986’s Cobra to be considered, largely because the villain is named ‘The Night Slasher’, the Rambo man has only ever put himself in one truly scary movie. However, D-Tox isn’t particularly frightening because the characters are well-formed — Stallone’s Jake is one of his flatter roles — but because it is so entirely mundane.
Based lightly on the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None, Stallone’s first and last foray into horror was a snoozefest. He may have been desperately trying to branch out from his action hero roles, but his portrayal of Jake is about as unremarkable as it gets. A bad screen test seemed to confirm this thought, and the picture remained unreleased by Universal until 2002, when it received a limited release. Sadly, Stallone seemed to know that the movie was dead in the water long before that happened.
“It’s very simple why D-Tox landed in limbo,” Stallone explained. “For some unknown reason, the original producer pulled out, and right away the film was considered damaged goods. The studio let it sit on the shelf for many months and after over a year it was decided to do a re-shoot.”
The re-shoot seemed to have the desired effect for some, but Stallone seemed to recognise that the movie had long been too tainted to gain any sort of traction: “We screened it, it tested OK, but the movie had the smell of death about it. Actually, if you looked up, you could see celluloid buzzards circling as we lay there dying on the distributor’s floor.”
While he knew the project was over pretty quickly, the star did at least enjoy himself making the picture: “When we were met at the airport by the teamsters they’d have a sign in front of them saying DETOX, and all these actors like Kris Kristofferson, Tom Berenger, and myself looked like we were going into rehab rather than a film shoot.”
Considering how difficult he had been with the movie’s release, taking himself off for a few drinks was likely not too far away from his mind.
