7 Broadway Musical Flops That Out-Weird "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark."

As we mourn the impending closure of the most infamous and most expensive Broadway show in recent history after 2 1/2 years treading the boards to the tune of $75m, now is the time to reflect on the truly baffling oddities that the home of musical theatre has offered us over the years. Believe it or not, it gets weirder than comic book adaptations by Bono and The Edge.

1. Lestat

Take the most famous non-sparkling living vampire author of our time, Anne Rice, and the multi-million selling musician and genius behind The Lion King, Sir Elton John, and the screenwriter for Beauty & the Beast, Linda Woolverton, and magic is made.

At least, that was the intention. After all, the charismatic vampire Lestat of Rice's most well known series is a rock star (although one more akin to Jim Morrison than Elton John). Unfortunately, the result was one of the most infamous flops of the past 20 years, closing after 33 previews and 39 performances. Critics found the show to be more cringe-worthy than emotional, with excruciating music, a shoddy book and actors all too aware that they were in a turkey. Vampires don't do well on Broadway, as you'll soon see.

2. Into The Light

While the original ideas behind some bad musicals can be justified, musicalizing the scientific authentication of the Turin Shroud is not one of them.

Any musical that contains the lyrics "Science with the data is like Christ without the stigmata" deserves to close after only 13 previews and 6 performances, even if it does contain dancing nuns, lasers and an imaginary friend from outer space.

3. Carrie

The bad musical that all bad musicals are measured against, Carrie has become something of a cult classic, 25 years after it originally opened and closed, after 16 previews and 5 performances. While the reviews were scathing, there's a lot of love for the show and a revamped 2012 off-Broadway production was mounted to a kinder but not particularly glowing response. That production didn't cost its investors $8m either. Not the Royal Shakespeare Company's proudest moment.

4. In My Life

graphics8.nytimes.com / Via New York Times (Sara Krulwich)

Directed and with music, lyrics and book written by Joseph Brooks (the guy behind the song "You Light Up My Life"), In My Life is the kind of bizarre vanity project that just doesn't make it onto Broadway any more (can you blame investors for that when 75% of all Broadway shows, with an average price of $12-15m, fail to break even?)

Featuring a romance between a singer-songwriter with Tourette's Syndrome and an obsessive compulsive woman, a brain tumour, a giant lemon, an angel trying to stage an opera, and God with a backwards baseball cap, In My Life reads like a check-list of what not to do when staging a musical. It's forever a mystery as to how it stayed open past the previews, much less sticking around for 61 performances.

5. Dance of the Vampires

Once again proving that vampires and Broadway don't mix, 2002 musical (based on the 1967 Roman Polanski movie - he also helmed the original production) was heavily re-written during its transfer from Germany. Before it even opened, the show was plagued with creative troubles, a temperamental leading man in Michael Crawford who demanded creative control and a hefty salary, and major delays caused by 9/11.

After missing its original opening date twice, the show opened to horrendous reviews and the vocal disapproval of the show's original writer Jim Steinman (yes, the Bat out of Hell guy). Unable to decide if it wanted to be a lush and serious gothic romance or Rocky Horror style camp parody of the vampire genre, it closed after 61 previews and 56 performances. and a loss of around $12m. Steinman complained that the show suffered from "too many cooks" syndrome, something that's painfully obvious in the bootleg footage available online. Although the reuse of the Bonnie Tyler song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is all Steinman's fault.

6. The Pirate Queen

You'd think that Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, the creators of the musical juggernaut Les Misérables, would be willing to rest on their laurels and extremely welcome royalties cheques, and their follow-up to their equally popular show Miss Saigon, suggests maybe that's the best route to take.

Their first collaboration with an American creative team failed to bring in the sales, even with a potentially fascinating story (based on the 16th century Irish clan leader Gráinne O'Malley) and involvement with the creators of Riverdance (just in case you needed another reminder that The Pirate Queen is Irish.) While Schönberg and Boublil were commended for their ability to condense doorstop sized stories into a manageable and enjoyable 3 hours with Les Miz, most of the criticism for The Pirate Queen centred on how dull it all was (although the cast were praised for doing their best with such dull material). It takes skill to make pirates dull, and the show closed after 85 performances with a loss of at least $16m.

7. Everything by Frank Wildhorn

Frank Wildhorn is nothing if not persistent, and his investors are nothing if not incredibly stupid.

The songwriter behind karaoke classic "Where Do Broken Hearts Go", Wildhorn's speciality is taking public domain stories or historical figures and turning them into musicals. The results have been a mixed bag, from mediocre but not without merit (Jekyll and Hyde) to the spawn of the devil (Wonderland). At one point in 1999, Wildhorn became the first composer in almost 20 years to have 3 shows running on Broadway simultaneously (a feat Alan Menken recently achieved for a brief period). His work has its fans and have attracted some top notch talent.

So why is his back catalogue weirder than vampires, the Turin Shroud and a Bono written Spider-Man musical?

Because Frank Wildhorn's work has yet to break even on Broadway.

Jekyll and Hyde ran for over 3 years and didn't make a penny, even with help from David Hasselhoff (his recount of his Broadway debut in his autobiography is pure comedy gold). Not even on-stage nudity could stop Dracula from flopping (once again, keep vampires off Broadway). His most recent effort Bonnie and Clyde saw him receive some of the best reviews of his career and it still closed after 36 performances. His total refusal to take the hit led to the New York Times calling him "the crab grass of Broadway".

Spending $75m on one misjudged musical is careless but throwing money at Wildhorn time after time is just plain gullibility, and very very weird.