Sylvester Stallone's Only Horror Movie Has To Be Seen To Be Believed

Sylvester Stallone is one of the best action movie stars of all time, rising to fame in the 1970s with "Rocky" and starring in the "Rambo" movies in the '80s. He recently jumped at the chance to star in "Tulsa King," which made him a TV star. But believe it or not, it wasn't long ago that Sylvester Stallone wasn't so popular and seemed to be churning out bombs left and right. And it was during this point that Stallone took his first and only shot at making a horror movie. The result is the bizarre 2002 film "Eye See You," also known by the even weirder title "D-Tox." 

A bad horror movie with a major box office star, "D-Tox" is about a beleaguered cop at the end of his rope who is trapped inside a detox facility during a snowstorm, where he's forced to face off a bloodthirsty killer who wants him and all the other recovering addicts dead. Every bit as dumb as that brief synopsis sounds, the film is a bad idea right from the get-go, but its cast is surprisingly strong: In addition to Stallone, the film also stars Kris Kristofferson, Jeffrey Wright, Charles S. Dutton, and Robert Patrick. But all of its cast is utterly wasted in a story that feels like someone just mashed together a bad teen slasher with an even worse "Se7en" clone.

Is the film worth watching, though? If we're being honest, it kind of is. It's a solid so-bad-it's-good horror movie, while the novelty of seeing some good stars doing bad work is almost worth the price of a movie ticket — but can be seen for free on Tubi, Plex, Roku, and others.

A veteran of Hollywood who's done just about everything a man can do there — writing, directing, acting, producing — Sylvester Stallone knew while making "Eye See You" that it probably wasn't going to be a hit. And he acknowledged it in a 2006 interview with Aint It Cool News, where a fan inquired about the film. According to Stallone, the film's original producer backed out of the film even before it began filming. 

"Right away the film was considered damaged goods," Stallone answered. As he detailed, the film was plagued with problems, with budget issues and creative differences between the producers, director, and writer, and eventually the studio simply shelved the project. Eventually, they decided to dig it out and try to fix it with some reshoots. "We screened it, it tested okay, Ron Howard was involved with overseeing some of the post-production ... but the movie had the smell of death about it." Ultimately, the movie received only a limited release and the name was changed to "D-Tox" to help market it, but it came and went with little fanfare.

Thankfully, Stallone has a good sense of humor about the film, and joked that during production, "If you looked up, you could see celluloid buzzards circling as we lay there dying on the distributor's floor."