Fake Movies Inside Real Movies

The best films ever made were never made.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A Roman centurion helmet and a goblet of drugged wine on a director's chair, a painted backdrop of the Appian Way behind it.

    10. Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ

    Joel and Ethan Coen · 2016

    The Roman epic at the center of Hail, Caesar!, paused when its star is drugged and kidnapped by a cell of Communist screenwriters. The studio fixer vets the script with a panel of clergy. Clooney's big speech goes great until the final word escapes him.

  2. A shoebox-sized alien spaceship model dangling from fishing line over a rainy Los Angeles freeway at night, a handheld camera on the shoulder.

    09. Chubby Rain

    Frank Oz · 1999

    Bowfinger's no-budget alien-invasion epic, in which the aliens arrive in raindrops and the star does not know he is in it. Steve Martin wrote it. Eddie Murphy plays the star and the lookalike sent sprinting across a freeway. Shot guerrilla style, minus the permission.

  3. A courtroom gavel resting on a stack of screenplay pages, a cartoonish happy-ending sunset painted on the wall behind it.

    08. Habeas Corpus

    Robert Altman · 1992

    In The Player, two writers pitch a grim legal drama with no stars and no happy ending. By the finale, Julia Roberts is being pulled from a gas chamber by Bruce Willis. Every principle in the pitch meeting lasted exactly one act. Hollywood remains undefeated.

  4. A pith helmet resting on an empty seat in a 1930s movie palace, the screen behind it showing an Egyptian nightclub set in silver light.

    07. The Purple Rose of Cairo

    Woody Allen · 1985

    A Depression-era waitress watches the same film so often that its archaeologist hero steps off the screen to date her. The actor who played him shows up to sort it out. Jeff Daniels plays both. It won the BAFTA for Best Film, which the fake one did not.

  5. A stack of nitrate film canisters piled behind a velvet cinema curtain, a lit match hovering near the reels, red banners glowing in the dark.

    06. Nation's Pride

    Quentin Tarantino · 2009

    The Nazi propaganda film in Inglourious Basterds, starring a sniper as himself, premiering for Goebbels in a Paris cinema that is about to have a very bad night. Eli Roth directed it, with 300 extras. Worst premiere in film history, in a good way.

  6. A torn golden movie ticket glowing on a sticky cinema floor, a smoking shotgun shell and a tub of popcorn beside it.

    05. Jack Slater IV

    John McTiernan · 1993

    A magic ticket drops a kid into the latest Jack Slater picture, where the T-1000 strolls by and Stallone is on the Terminator 2 poster. Last Action Hero opened a week after Jurassic Park and lost. The fake franchise is still at four. Respect.

  7. A darkened theater aisle littered with popcorn and cardboard ghost masks, the projector beam cutting through haze toward a blank screen.

    04. Stab

    Wes Craven · 1997

    Scream 2 opens at a sneak preview of Stab, the movie of the first film's murders, and the killing starts in the audience. In the first Scream, Sidney joked she'd be played by Tori Spelling. In Stab, she is. Meta before meta was a marketing plan.

  8. A row of red velvet cinema seats with wires running beneath them, a giant plastic ant leg leaning against the screen, Key West palm trees outside the exit door.

    03. Mant!

    Joe Dante · 1993

    Matinee's half-man, half-ant creature feature, premiering in Key West during the Cuban Missile Crisis via John Goodman's William Castle-style showman and his Rumble-Rama seats. The real apocalypse is across the water. The fake one has better sound.

  9. A powdered white wig and a fencing sword resting beside an old carbon microphone hidden in a potted shrub on a 1920s soundstage.

    02. The Dancing Cavalier

    Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen · 1952

    In Singin' in the Rain, The Dueling Cavalier previews with mics hidden in the shrubbery and sound drifting out of sync. The fix: make it a musical and dub the star's grating voice. A movie about rescuing a bad movie became one of the best movies. Ambitious.

  10. A boxy wood-cabinet television glowing with a black-and-white image of a tommy gun, a cheese pizza box on the shag carpet in front of it, Christmas lights in the window.

    01. Angels with Filthy Souls

    Chris Columbus · 1990

    A fake 1940s gangster picture, shot in black and white for Home Alone, that a child uses to scare off a pizza guy and two burglars. Keep the change, ya filthy animal. It got a sequel in Home Alone 2, which is more than most real gangster movies can say.

Honorable mentions

  • A large machete stuck upright in a wooden table beside a plate of tacos, a projector reel smoking in the background.

    Machete

    Robert Rodriguez · 2007

    A fake trailer in Grindhouse that would not stay fake: Danny Trejo got his first lead role in the real Machete in 2010, and a sequel in 2013. A third, Machete Kills Again, was announced. Still waiting.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A dusty straw hat and a pair of overalls hung on a fence post in an empty field, a golden award statuette knocked over in the dirt below.

    Simple Jack

    Ben Stiller · 2008

    Tropic Thunder's fake Oscar-bait flop, aimed at actors who play disability for trophies. The target was right; the execution leaned on slurs, and Special Olympics and the Arc led protests at the premiere. Satire that hits its audience on the way to its target.

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