Screen Legends Who Ended Their Careers With Embarrassing Comedies

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Screen Legends Who Ended Their Careers With Embarrassing Comedies

They dont make movie stars like they used to back in the days when a bowlful of bacon and whiskey-soaked cigarette butts was considered a healthy breakfast. But as much as we may revere these icons of the silver screen, some legendary movie stars filmographies ended with surprisingly goofy projects. Remember how Orson Welles began his career with Citizen Kane and ended it as a talking robot planet in Transformers: The Movie? Yeah, that was nothing compared to... 

Sean Connery Came Out of Retirement for a Bond Parody With a Talking Goat

Connery obviously had a long and illustrious film career, from being our first James Bond, welcoming Nicolas Cage to the Rock and starring in You're the Man Now, Dog!, which is what we assume that movie was called. He famously stopped making movies after 2003's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (wouldnt you?) but returned to the film industry for a voice acting role in the 2012 animated movie Sir Billi, in which he plays an elderly Scottish veterinarian, whose best friend is a talking goat. 

It may sound quaint and whimsical, but with Connery in the lead role, the filmmakers also crammed a bunch of weird Bond gags into the story. This includes an opening credit sequence full of psychedelic, shapely women and an ending involving the titular geezer picking up a buxom young woman and driving away in a silver Aston Martin (presumably in the direction of a CGI Viagra factory). 

Not to mention that the animation looks like a cutscene from the demo copy of a PlayStation 2 game, and Connery sounds like he recorded all of his lines reclined in a BarcaLounger while watching The Price is Right.

Marlon Brando Wore a Blonde Wig to Voice a Cartoon Woman Weeks Before His Death

As his death neared, the great/occasionally not-so-great Brando took a job voicing a cartoon character in the movie Big Bug Man, starring Brendan Fraser as a candy factory worker who gets superpowers after insects bite him until celebrity wealth and fame corrupts him. Brandos part was that of Mrs. Sour, the villains wife, a part Brando seemingly only took because he always wanted to play a woman.

Despite this being a zany cartoon and not, say, A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando was shockingly committed to the role, reportedly wearing a blonde wig and a dress, with full makeup and white gloves while recording his part. This was no small feat, as Brando had to keep taking oxygen hits between lines due to his declining health. Which was a surprising amount of effort for a movie that was ultimately canceled and never completed. At least Brando enjoyed it, reportedly telling the Big Bug Man filmmakers that it was the most fun I've had since playing Julius Caesar.

Gene Hackman Exited the Movie Business With a Ray Romano Comedy

Hackman is unquestionably one of the greatest film actors of all time — from The French Connection to Unforgiven to The Royal Tenenbaums, even his scenes in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace mostly work, while the rest of the movie is a garbage bag full of hot manure and used razor blades.

But what note did Hackman choose to end his career on? Well, whatever note it is that Ray Romanos voice emits. The two-time Oscar-winner packed it in after co-starring with Romano in Welcome to Mooseport, a political comedy about a heated small-town mayoral race. Hackmans character ends up winning, but the real winner was anyone who avoided all 110 minutes of this thing.

Hackman apparently quit making movies after being warned by a doctor about his stress levels, but we also imagine because being the second-billed lead of a 13-percent Tomato-meter Ray Romano dud was less rewarding than starring in Francis Ford CoppolaThe Conversation.

Lauren Bacall s Final Role Was a Horny Old Lady in an Episode of Family Guy

After appearing in classic movies such as The Big SleepTo Have and Have Not and Murder on the Orient Express, Bacalls last performance was in the same TV show that gave us Mayor Adam West and the never-ending chicken-man fight. In the Family Guy episode Moms the Word, Bacall plays a senior citizen who gets the hots for Peter and aggressively tries to get him in the sack — until he accidentally kills her and abandons her in a cemetery. 

Bacall died just a few months after the show aired, thus robbing the world of any future appearances in movies and/or The Cleveland Show.

Dennis Hoppers Last (Completed) Live-Action Film Was a Godawful Spoof of Michael Moore

Hopper was a New Hollywood icon and, as far as we know, the only actor to appear in both Apocalypse Now and Super Mario Bros. Technically, Hoppers final movie was an indie comedy called The Last Film Festival, but he died before the film was completed. Hoppers last live-action performance in a project that was totally finished while he was still alive was a film called An American Carol.

Directed by David Zucker, of The Naked Gun and being a right-wing sadsack fame, An American Carol is a riff on Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, in which a Michael Moore-esque documentary filmmaker is haunted by the ghost of General George S. Patton (played by a post-Sketch Show Kelsey Grammer) and eventually persuaded to change his ways and embrace mindless jingoism. And, yes, it sucks exactly as much as each word of the previous sentence implies.

In one scene, a courtroom is overrun by the ACLU, who are depicted as flesh-eating zombies (*hold for laughter*), and the judge is none other than Dennis Hopper.

At least Hopper was part of a star-studded conservative cast that also included Jon Voight, country singer Trace Adkins and that FBI agent who blows up at the end of Die Hard and just directed that Hunter Biden movie.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this). 

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