It's a fact that, when a film is so dire (or recut by other hands) that its director refuses to be associated with it, the Directors' Guild of America sanctions the use of the alias 'Alan Smithee'.

What's less amusing is this behind-the-scenes 'comedy' in which a director actually called Alan Smithee makes a bad film and ends up in an insane asylum (yes, it's that funny).

Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Chan and Whoopi Goldberg provide curiosity value as the action stars of the film that Hollywood will never see, but Eric Idle is downright embarrassing as Smithee, with Ryan O'Neal only slightly less so as a scheming bigwig.

It should have been the This is Spinal Tap of the film busness, but this bad film about a bad film is so awful that you are hereby challenged to laugh (even once).

Alas, fascinating doesn't necessarily mean watchable, and the final irony about the whole farrago is that director Arthur Hiller took his name off this and credited it to Alan Smithee.