The Sunday Boston Globe piece summarizing summer movies featured this subhed:
Even in the silly season you can learn a lot from what clicked, what stiffed, and what surprised
I thought the expression was “get /got stiffed.”
Paging Jan Freeman, paging Globe Word maven Jan Freeman.
Campaign Outsider 
Hey John,
I didn’t know this intransitive “stiff” either, but the OED does:
stiff, v.
* intr. slang (orig. Music). Of a record, film, etc.: to fail, to flop; to meet with public indifference. Cf. STIFF n. 3. [ref. is to ‘stiff’ as slang for corpse–jf]
1973 Phonograph Record Oct. 23/4 Like the two previous 45s, it stiffed totally. 1983 in T. Hibbert Rockspeak! 149 The..album completely stiffed in the States. 1993 Entertainm. Weekly 31 Dec.-7 Jan. 74/2 The screen version of her Ethan Frome stiffed. 2006 Miami Herald (Nexis) 21 July G16 The series was tarnished as a turkey and naturally it stiffed.
Thanks, Jan. As always, you know what’s what.