The Sylvester Stallone movie that had “celluloid buzzards circling as we lay there dying”
Any career that spans decades is destined to experience plenty of highs and lows along the way, and there haven’t been many long-lasting stars to have discovered that more often over a longer period of time than Sylvester Stallone.
The action icon has appeared in a number one box office hit in every decade since the 1970s and lent his talents to a string of critical darlings and commercial sensations, but he’s also been involved in some truly diabolical movies, and only one of them was entirely Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fault.
Among the many misfires of Stallone’s stint in the spotlight was 2002’s D-Tox, which sat on the shelf for three years after shooting while the studio tried to figure out what to do with it. Upon realising that some turds simply cannot be polished under any circumstances, though, it was merely sent out to die.
Stallone’s veteran FBI agent checks himself into a rehabilitation facility for law enforcement officers after failing to shake the lingering trauma of a brutal crime he bore witness to. However, his getaway in the remote wilderness proves less than idyllic when it becomes apparent there’s a serial killer in their midst.
Universal was so displeased with negative reactions from test screenings even after extensive rewrites and reshoots that D-Tox wasn’t given a wide theatrical release in the United States at all, ultimately being rolled out to virtually zero fanfare in seven months after its international premiere under the decidedly sillier title of Eye See You.
For his part, Stallone tried his best to defend the end product, but even then, he couldn’t help but acknowledge the people footing the bill were less than thrilled. “It’s weird, because I guess they just want to see if it works foreign or whatever. It’s a different kind of mentality,” he said to Dark Horizons. “I understand if you hate this movie, it’s a dark, horrible film and that’s OK.”
Comparing it to thrillers that “really get you out of your seats like Memento and Seven,” Universal evidently didn’t share the leading man’s enthusiasm for darkness and violence. “I think what we ended up doing didn’t quite sit right with the studio bosses who had different expectations.” Presumably, they wanted a boilerplate Stallone actioner, but that’s not what they got.
Expanding on the troubled production, Stallone admitted “there was trouble brewing on the set because of overages and creative concerns between the director and the studio,” but letting it sit and gather dust proved to be fatal for D-Tox, even if Ron Howard ended up getting involved in post-production.
“The movie had the smell of death about it,” he conceded. “Actually, if you looked up, you could see celluloid buzzards circling as we lay there dying on the distributor’s floor.”
In the end, D-Tox could only recoup a fraction of its budget at the box office, was battered into submission by critics, and swiftly forgotten in the aftermath to indicate that Universal’s concerns were well-founded after all.
