That’s an apt analysis of Verhoeven, IMHO. I’ll concede that he’s probably a somewhat limited director, and that he sometimes overestimates himself. Showgirls is utter dreck, I think we can all agree on that.
Soldier of Orange is a work of art, it truly is. Moreso for the story itself than the directing, but he certainly didn’t ruin it. Total Recall is another decent action flick of his. Robocop and Starship Troopers are just plain good.
I certainly wouldn’t call him the worst director of them all.
It’s difficult to nominate someone here, but I’ll go with Mick Jackson. After all, he directed The Bodyguard. I rest my case.
DAMN STRAIGHT! That movie was great, and delivered onto us the immortal line-
"I’ve come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.
Carpenter’s latest stuff has been awful, but They along with The Thing are great, great movies (one for cheese, one for creepiness).
Ah… Coldy, you’re driving a red hot poker into the hearts of us Robert Heinlein fans, you know that? If they’d named that movie, “Space Bugs!” it would have been amusing entertainment. But we fans of the book weren’t looking to watch a satire, we wanted to see Starship Troopers.
How about the ‘best’ Worst director…the guy or gal who makes movies so bad they’re fun. My vote- <a href = “http://us.imdb.com/Name?Corman,+Roger”>Roger Corman </a>
None of these qualifies (except maybe for the guy who made Manos) – all of these films are watchable*. Even Ed Wood, Jr. had a sense of plotting and setting up a scene. Heck – some scenes are even good. The scene of Tor Johnson rising from the grave is pretty damned dramatic and spooky. And Ed Wood had the sense to make his films techincally good, in that the shots are well-lit and crisply printed.
If you are looking for a BAD director, you want someone who can’t set up a shot, makes films where you can’t follow what’s going on, and where the technical aspects are the pits – murky, grainy films with bad registration and bad sound. Films, in short, that are hard to watch, even if you suspend your critical judgment on rationality and good writing.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Larry Buchanan
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Buchanan,%20Larry
His The Eye Creatures alone should win him this honor – crappy remake of a cheap 1950s monster flick (Invasion of the Saucer Men), it cheaped out by only having one complete costume and by having technically awful prints. A poor-quality bad remake of a bad film. It was rightly crucified on MST3K.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he did two more of these. Creature of Destruction is a bad remake of a previous bad 1950s flick, The She-Creature. His Zontar, the Thing from Venus is a bad remake of It Conquered the World. The originals were better (they all had monster suits by the unsunbg – or at least not sufficiently appreciated – Paul Blaisdell), and had up and coming stars and were technically watchable. Buchanan’s remakes were derivative schlock with muddy color and visible cost-cutting.
He also gave us Mars Needs Women and two Marilyn Monroe movies, along with a film suggesting that Jimi and Janis were killed by a US Government conspiracy.
Buchanan wrote, or at least co-wrote, his flicks.
Yeah – it was on MST3K, too, like Eye Creatures. I’ll still take Buchanan. I thought his stuff was muddier than TGSI. And besides, Larry’s made more movies.
Good point. Sort of like the guy who sells each item at a loss, hoping to make it up in volume. Or perhaps the guy with the personality so negative that he walks into a room and people look around and ask, “who left?”
I’m sorry, but *The Attack of the the *[sic] Eye Creatures is infinitely more watchable than, say, The Beast of Yucca Flats or Red Zone Cuba. At least you can tell that Buchanan just didn’t give a crap, to the point that some of the Eye Creatures just wear sneakers and stuff, but Coleman Francis actually seemed to want to make good movies. He was just completely unable to do so. Seriously. Watch The Beast of Yucca Flats and tell me that it’s not the worst movie of all time. “A woman’s purse. A flag on the moon.” Totally nonsensical, random sentences float through the movie in a narrator’s voice. Ugh. I think I have to go take a shower now from just thinking about it.
While not technically during his stint as a film director, in mitigation, I’ll enter his work as a director for British TV during the 1970s and 80s. He did some good stuff. Much of The Ascent of Man stands up as beautifully photographed and I regard the Auschwitz sequence as one of the most powerful bits of TV I’ve ever seen. Connections still seems much loved, to judge by some of the conversations in these parts. Just recently, we’ve had people rightly recommendingLife Story. Meanwhile, Threads still seems to put the shivers up people. And, even if the plotting now looks a bit dated, A Very British Coup is still a class piece of television from its period.
