George Clooney’s First Movie Was A Box Office Disaster: Here’s Why Hollywood Wants You To Forget It!
Before George Clooney became a Hollywood icon, his first film, Return to Horror High, was a critical and commercial failure. Here’s why it’s better left forgotten.
George Clooney First Movie(Photo Credit –Wikimedia)
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Very few people remember George Clooney’s first movie, and honestly, that’s for the best. Before he became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, he made his feature film debut in Return to Horror High (1987) – a movie that was, well, a total disaster.
“Return to Horror High is an early example of meta-horror, and it was completely ahead of its time,” Looper once noted. “That’s not to say the film is good.” And that about sums it up.
Clooney played Oliver, an actor in a low-budget slasher film being shot inside an actual murder site—a high school where grisly killings had taken place. The movie tried to be a mix of horror and comedy, but critics weren’t laughing. According to Rotten Tomatoes reviewer Dustin Putman, it had “only one scene that is actually scary, and it has to do with two actors being locked in a room as the killer tries to break in. But other than that two-minute distraction, Return to Horror High is certainly no great shake.”
Audiences weren’t impressed either. Return to Horror High barely scraped together $1.18 million at the box office, making it a commercial failure. For Clooney, though, it was just a stepping stone.
Even back then, he was all over TV – The Facts of Life, Roseanne, Sisters. But ER changed everything. As Dr. Doug Ross, he became a household name, and Hollywood came calling. Soon, he was headlining Ocean’s Eleven, Up in the Air, Monuments Men – even taking a questionable detour into the superhero world with Batman & Robin. (Yeah, that one’s on the “let’s pretend it never happened” list.)
But unlike Return to Horror High, Clooney didn’t flop. He built a decades-spanning career, starring, producing, and directing in hits like Good Night and Good Luck, The Ides of March, and Catch-22.
His career had staying power. His first film? Not so much. But hey, even Hollywood legends have to start somewhere, even if that somewhere is a horror flick better left in the vault.
