The Michael Caine movie no one got “pleasure from watching”

Over the years, Caine was often confronted by critics and fans who were baffled about why he’d signed up for certain projects that looked like disasters on paper, and turned out to be just that. For instance, people questioned his judgment after he made The Swarm, a creature feature about killer bees invading Texas.

To their shock, Caine agreed the film “was one of the worst I ever made”, and even claimed it was “doomed” from the start. However, he said he was OK with the picture because it helped him break into the American market, so all’s well that ends well.

Similarly, when Caine didn’t learn his lesson the first time and incomprehensibly chose to make another creature feature in 1987, critics once again lambasted him. That ill-advised monster flick was Jaws: The Revenge, the fourth instalment in a franchise that has only ever boasted one great movie, and Caine had the bad luck of turning up in the worst one of all. Did it bother him? Nope.

“It’s like when people ask me why I made The Swarm,” Caine lamented in the wake of Jaws: The Revenge‘s release, before delivering one of the funniest and most honest explanations any actor has ever given about why they took on a role.

“I made The Swarm because my mother needed a house to live in,” he added. “Then I made Jaws 4 because she was lonely and I needed to buy her a bigger house, which she could live in with all of her friends. It’s that simple.”

Amusingly, Caine was even prone to admitting that he chose to make certain movies because he could hang out with his friends and have fun, all while getting paid for it. Unfortunately, though, that didn’t always lead to good motion pictures emerging on the other side, and one film he made with his best pal ended up being such a dud that, to his knowledge, no one in the world liked it.

By the time 1990 rolled around, Caine’s career had hit a sticky patch. Despite winning a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar only three years earlier for Hannah and Her Sisters, he followed it up with a succession of flops that hurt his standing in the industry. Perhaps the movie that best exemplifies this low point was Bullseye.

To Caine, the film probably sounded like a great idea. It was directed by Michael Winner, with whom he’d been friends for years, and co-starred Roger Moore, legitimately his best friend in the world. The two actors came up together in the British film industry and Hollywood, and stayed close for the rest of their lives. In fact, Moore would often come to Caine’s home for Sunday dinner.

Indeed, the Bond star once told Interview magazine, “Apart from being an extremely talented actor, Michael is an equally talented cook—not many people know that. He is also a very talented raconteur and an extremely generous host. Oh, and he has great taste in his choice of friends. I say this only because he is my best friend!”

Despite being pals for so long, until Bullseye, Caine and Moore had never actually starred together in a film, and the idea of larking around in a movie where they played the dual roles of inept nuclear scientists and low-rent con men sounded like a barrel of laughs. Ultimately, they did indeed have a whale of a time on set, but when they finally watched the resulting film, they were in for a rude awakening.

“Bullseye, which I made with Michael Winner and Roger Moore, could not have been more inappropriately named,” Caine candidly concluded in his memoir Blowing the Bloody Doors Off. “We had a blast making it, but as far as I could tell, no one got any pleasure from watching it, and it never came close to hitting any target.”

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