It should be somewhat who is at least successful enough to have been involved in several films that were distributed fairly widely.
What I’m looking for is someone who, if you see their name anywhere on the DVD case, you would just turn around and run.
I don’t really know enough about bad film-makers; I only pay attention to names for the movies I like. I guess, if I had to pick a starting point, perhaps modern George Lucas, or Michael Bay.
But I still find their moves quite watchable, because OOH pretty graphix and exploshuns, and they often have a lot of unintentional camp value. Ed Wood seems to be a stock answer, but he’s produced way too many charming movies to even be considered.
Uwe Boll would be hard to beat in this category as a well-known, well-distributed, current director/producer. He’s used a German film financing loophole to profit off of bombs. Awful productions of his include Bloodrayne (and its sequel), Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, and Postal. People like the creator of the Metal Gear series of video games and Blizzard, the maker of World of Warcraft, have made statements not only denying that they were going to work with Boll on film adaptations of their creations but doing so in vehement language of the ‘not if he were the last producer on earth’ level.
If anyone answers anything other than Herr Boll, I’ll tie them to a chair and make them watch 10 minutes of Bloodrayne (any more would be cruel and unusual).
Uwe Boll is hard to beat, yes. But in my opinion, Boll is at least equaled by Albert Pyun, who is behind some of the most awful dreck ever to hit theaters. A sampling:
Cyborg
The Nemesis movies Adrenalin: Fear The Rush Alien From L.A. Captain America Kickboxer 2 and 4. Ticker
Sure, Max Torque, there are directors as bad as Boll. But none I can think of who actually get widely-released films. Certainly none who manages to get B-list and even the rare A-list actor to come out and make the movie.
William Castle, a schlockmeister who rarely reached the level of mediocre.
And then there’s William “One-Shot” Beaudine, director of over 350 films, none of which the average filmgoer can name without looking it up. The secret of his success is contained in his nickname: you wouldn’t get good, but you’d get it on time and on (or under) budget.
Which, as I pointed out, he’s now making a sequel to!!!
What, no hate for William “One Shot” Beaudine, who frequemntly refused to reshoot blown takes (hence the nickname) and graced us with Billy the Kid VS> Dracula and Jesse James vs, Frankenstein’s Daughter? He worked cheap (which let him make 350 films) and it showed.
Or how about Larry Buchanan, who gave us even lower-budget remakes of already low-budget, already bad films, like the MST3K gem Invasion of the the Eye Creatures (sic), not to mention Creature of Destruction and Zontar, the Thing from Venus:
I came here to say Uwe Boll, of course. There are certainly worse directors, but he consistently gets jobs on major motion pictures despite his schlockitude…
I’ll stand by my Pyun nomination. Boll gets all the press these days because he’s on a roll of releasing high-profile stinkers and challenging his critics to boxing matches and such. Pyun is much more low-profile, true. But his flicks do get theatrical releases; I remember television commercials for Adrenalin: Fear The Rush, and Cyborg made it to theaters as well. And his films have included the likes of Christopher Lambert, Rutger Hauer, Dennis Hopper, Charlie Sheen, Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds, and Robert Patrick. The Sword and the Sorcerer seems to me to be an odd fluke in his career; it was his first time directing, and it appears he held himself in check, which he has failed to do ever since. And let’s face it, it was popular, but objectively, it’s not a good movie.
And I thought from the title that this was about directors and producers who are still working; if dead people count, Coleman Francis is my pick for the worst director ever, but he only directed three films, so he’s easy to avoid.
As long as we’re talking direction, don’t be. Lucas has one brilliantly-directed film, American Graffiti, and one very popular film that’s good despite his somewhat clunky direction, the original Star Wars. The only other major films he directed were the three prequels, which universally sucked.
I thought that THX1138 was pretty well directed. I think he’s just been too focused on SFX for the last couple of decades and forgot about that whole actor/acting part.
I’m not convinced that the direction was really what sucked in the Prequels. The awful part was the dialog and script. It was epically bad, so bad that it’s almost impossible to tell if the actors were doing a bad job or if they just has crap to work with. Considering the scope of the sFX in those movies and the breadth of the stories being told, I think the movies pacing and the integration of the effects and live action was pretty good. Visually they were impressive and the costuming and art work was first rate, all of which are under the purview of the director.
Lucas did a terrible job of writing those movies and the actors weren’t able to disguise it. All in all the casting was decent, though Anakin was a miss, and the actors are fairly talented, so I’m left to assume that the reason it was so clumsy was the script and Lucas’ unwillingness to change it while shooting.
He did a good job or directing the movie on the whole. Had he given over the screenwriting to someone good these movies might have been great. Lucas has to get credit for how well the effects, costumes and sets worked. And as much grief as these movies get, the narrative was well paced and the story was told clearly and the themes had a simple but evocative tone and meaning.
Nowadays making a Sci Fi/Fantasy film that’s coherent and not distractingly frantic or esoteric seems to be a huge obstacle. The Star Wars movies at least told a story that wasn’t muddled or confused, even if it was somewhat ham fisted and blunt (intentionally to appease the kids I’m sure).
As much as I dislike most of Shyamalan’s films, he is a brilliant director. Where his suckitude comes from is his writing. If he would direct someone else’s script it would probably be a fantastic movie.
