Forget your Fellinis, Godards, Spielbergs and David Leans, this article is dedicated to those directors who have really scraped the cinematic barrel to deliver us some of the worst movies imaginable.
Except they’re not the ones behind Jaws: The Revenge, the 1976 version of King Kong or Flashdance – no, these are ‘name’ directors, the ones who have by now been cemented as the worst of their kind.
The difference is that most of those mentioned below have arguably, at one time or another, had a good movie in them – it was the films that followed that secured their reputations for being among the worst famous directors ever.
Read and weep boys…
7 – Michael Winner
He’s a British national treasure, but for all the wrong reasons. Winner has helmed some of the worst cinematic pieces of crud imaginable, but ironically has also worked with some of the finest acting talent imaginable as well, (Oliver Reed, Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum et al). After the bold, suspenseful vigilante thriller Death Wish (about to be remade by Sylvester Stallone), he churned out an utterly distasteful remake of The Big Sleep and the Michael Caine and Roger Moore buddy stinker Bullseye! only to then thankfully bow out a decade ago (after a 40 year stint) with the truly disastrous crime ensemble Parting Shots. To think he was even once given the opportunity to direct The French Connection – god help us. Stick to Esure advertising, mate. Your film work is certainly not a Winner.
6 – Edward Wood Jr.
Thanks to his cult status as one of the most cherished and cerebrated worst directors of all time, Edward Wood Jr stands head and shoulder above his contemporaries due to his genuine intentions that often turned sour due to paper thin budgets. He may be associated with camp acting, crippling production designs and cringeworthy S/F but this didn’t stop Tim Burton from celebrating his hooky style in the brilliant biographical Ed Wood (Johnny Depp gave kudos to the man behind the moustache), restoring the deceased director with a whole new fan base. Where would we be without the pleasingly disastrous likes of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen and Glenda?
5 – John Glen
Working his way up from clapper boy to sound assistant and inevitable Bond helmer, John Glen was given the responsibility to direct some of the finest Bond ‘Bond gets mad’ novels from the Fleming collection – but ground them into some of the weakest, most redundant, stunt-driven Bond adventures ever. These have included the cringeworthy and pretty laughable likes of Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill (and culminated with the Timothy Dalton snoozefest License To Kill). But he must be given credit for having the utter defiance to make bedfellows out of the oddball likes of Roger Moore and temperamental Jamaican exotic ‘beauty’ Grace Jones.
4 – Michael Bay
The epitome of the brainless action director, Bay is renowned for creating some of the worst piles of cinematic sludge imaginable. After the pretty good guilty pleasures of Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon, Bay’s power went to his dollar-hungry head and the kinetic, strangely unemotional feat of Pearl Harbour happened. After that monumental disaster he nurtured another Bad Boys film which took away any creditability from the original and went haywire with box office stinker The Island (ironically probably his best movie) only to be redeemed with Transformers. But that will surely be undone with the up and coming death-defying sequel that is currently in the works.
3 – Renny Harlin
If Bay has a fellow contemporary then it is this Finnish excuse for a director, who’s so bad he actually makes Bay look brilliant. Again it’s the unfortunate passing of time that hasn’t been kind to him. After a cool stint in the early 90s with a passable Die Hard sequel, and a decent Sylvester Stallone vehicle (Cliffhanger) Harlin completely lost his manhood and directed personal project Cutthroat Island (with then romantic muse Geena Davis) which became a phenomenal globe disaster (he also lost Davis). To add to the mix he helmed Driven – a paltry racing movie with a needy Stallone back in the driving seat and a plastic-faced Burt Reynolds – and put further insult to injury by replacing a fired Paul Schrader to re-work a turgid frightless Exorcist prequel with a demented Izabella Scorupco.
2 – Brett Ratner
…and if Harlin has a contemporary then it has to be sequel scoundrel Ratner who has spent his whole career destroying franchises with the brain cell obliterating likes of the Rush Hour series, and X-Men: The Last Stand. He even had the audacity to attempt to wreck all memory of Manhunter and remake the Michael Mann movie into the detestable Red Dragon.
1 – Guy Ritchie
How the mighty have fallen. But Guy Ritchie was only ever a one hit wonder anyhow. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels appeared to cement him as a British talent to be reckoned with, but then came Snatch and it seemed a suspicious case of a little history repeating. Never mind by the time he married Madonna and her vanity project surfaced with Swept Away, his reputation was tarnished beyond all recognition. Not even a return to the gangster formula with the laughable likes of Revolver could shake the feeling that we have sorely misinterpreted Mr Ritchie – he indeed is a one trick pony.
[story by Oliver Pfeiffer]
Pedro Monscooch says
Great compilation. I would’ve liked the inclusion of Uwe Boll for destroying the reputation of video games in movies and his relentless in continuing to other IPs (e.g. Halo, GTA etc).
Aaron Seltzer (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0783536/) is still allowed to make movies which disgusts me.
David Yates came from nowhere and, if anything, took away from Harry Potter’s last film.
J Bollocks says
Sorry guys, your list is a stinker if it doesn’t include Enzo G. Castellari for his 1982 “effort” 2019: The New Barbarians. Ok so he’s not famous but who cares?
While it does suffer from having some plot it still manages to be very poor.
Even now, the bad “Templar” leaders’ line “You may not have lived a Templar but you’ll die one” as he rips the chaps from our hero and tries to ceremonially bum him to death inspires a few wry smiles around here.
I suggest you watch it, you’ll like it, but not very much.
Mithaearon says
I was going to mention Uwe Boll until I remembered the bit in the story that reads:
“The difference is that most of those mentioned below have arguably, at one time or another, had a good movie in them – it was the films that followed that secured their reputations for being among the worst famous directors ever.”
Uwe Boll has never had a good movie in him, his films have been all been shit even his pre video game movies.
gir says
Paul Verhoeven. Any goodwill remaining from Robocop was destroyed by Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, Hollow Man, and fucking Showgirls.
Ugh.
Pharisee says
Sorry Gir,
Though I mostly agree with you, I think ‘Starship Troopers’ was brilliant. It was cheesy as hell, but it still captured the essence of the novel’s exploration of the themes of propaganda, jingoism, extreme nationalism and hyper-militarism perfectly. It did so in a way that was so easily absorbed by the audience (when I walked out on opening night I saw many, many people who were acting as if they were ready & eager to go join up with the Mobile Infantry and go fight–the film captured the motivational force of propaganada perfectly) and it demonstrated the danger of such rhetoric and politics.
I don’t care if you like the film, if you like the director, or even if you like SciFi in general, but I do care if people dismiss a film that does have a real message within it (no matter how cheesy the acting) just because it is a “SciFi” film. Genre does not ever have anything to do with quality. If a film is well done, don’t dismiss it because it is science fiction.