10 Movie One-Hit Wonders
In the world of music, one-hit wonders who had one monster smash they could never duplicate are very much a thing. There are compilation albums of one-hit wonders of the ’90s or 2000s, and entire television shows dedicated to counting down the “best” one-hit wonders of all time. (By the way, the best one-hit wonder of all time is New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give.” There can be no argument about this. Not even about “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.)
So that’s music. But in the world of movies, one-hit wonders have never really congealed into a similar cohesive category. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist though. There are many directors who scored with one major work, and then never matched it, whether by fate or by choice. And there are actors who became stars on the basis of a single role who, for whatever reason, ended up leaving Hollywood for other vocations. So why not make movie one-hit wonders its own thing?
Let’s do it right now. (I presume one list on one website will suffice to create a new cultural term within the world of cinema.) There are many more movie one-hit wonders than this (and by all means send us your movie one-hit wonder picks in the comments below), but here are the first ten we picked:
Gallery - Movies You Won’t Believe Were Rated G: