TOP 10 BEST DIRECTORS EVER!!!
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David M. Schwartz (born 13 August 1953, Chicago, Illinois) is an American movie producer and writer. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, with his movie Las Vegas Bloodbath (1989) gaining recognition as one of the goriest B-horror movies of all time. Movies Blood Mary, Kindergarten- Director
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Nick Millard was born on 28 May 1941 in the USA. He was a director and writer. He was married to Irmgard Millard. He died on 29 October 2022 in Pacifica, California, USA.- Writer
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Tommy Wiseau is an American actor, director, screenwriter & producer. He trained to be an actor at: American Conservatory Theater, Vince Chase Workshop, Jean Shelton Acting Lab, Laney College and Stella Adler Academy of Acting.
In 2001 he wrote, produced, directed and starred in The Room (2003), a feature film that received the 2003 Audience Award at the New York International Film Festival. In 2004, he produced the documentary Homeless in America (2004), which received the 2004 Social Award.
He is now working on several more projects.- Director
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Chester Novell Turner was born on 30 September 1946 in the USA. He is a director and writer, known for Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984), Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987) and Return to the Quadead Zone (2014).- Producer
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As a youth, he produced a number of short films on Super 8 and video. After short stints as guest auditor at Filmacademy Vienna and Filmhochschule Munich, Boll studied literature and economics in Cologne and Siegen. He graduated from university in 1995 with a doctorate in literature. From 1995-2000, he was a producer and director with Taunus Film-Produktions GmbH. Boll was Chief Executive Officer of Bolu Filmproduction and Distribution GmbH which he founded in 1992. He continued to direct, write and produce feature films until 2016. His main companies are Event Films in Vancouver and Bolu Film in Germany. A longtime resident of Canada, Boll owned the restaurant "Bauhaus" in Vancouver from 2015 to 2020. Returned to Germany and resumed filming in 2020.- Producer
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James Glenn Dudelson is known for Compromising Situations (1994), Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2017) and Morella (1999).- Director
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Self-described schlockmeister Larry Buchanan was born Marcus Larry Seale, Jr. on January 31, 1923. Orphaned at an early age, he was sent to a Baptist orphanage. After graduating from high school in Dallas, the 18-year-old turned down a scholarship to study the ministry at Baylor University to accept an apprenticeship in the props department with 20th Century-Fox Studios. Fox eventually signed Marcus Seale to an acting contract, renaming him Larry Buchanan, the name he would keep for his entire professional life.
Buchanan studied filmmaking in the Army Signal Corps, which made him want to become a director. Back at Fox he played bit parts, most notably in the Gregory Peck western The Gunfighter (1950). However, his creative interests lay elsewhere. In the early 1950s he satisfied his desire to become a director by helming religious documentaries for evangelist Oral Roberts. He also gained experience as an assistant director on The Marrying Kind (1952), directed by the legendary George Cukor.
Buchanan left behind acting for production, taking a job as a writer on The Gabby Hayes Show (1950). In 1951 he directed his first film, )The Cowboy (1951)_, which was nominated for a Peabody Award. Buchanan would never again taste critical praise, as he segued into directing low-budget exploitation fare intended for the grindhouse circuit, the drive-in or straight-to-television. In the late 1950s and 1960s he directed movies for drive-in exploitation specialist American-International Pictures, churning out such celluloid travesties as Attack of the Eye Creatures (1967), In the Year 2889 (1969) and Creature of Destruction (1968). With some of the lowest-rated films to chart on the Internet Movie Database, Buchanan gave legendary Z-movie "shlockmeister" Edward D. Wood Jr. a run for the roses for the title of "Worst Director Ever." In her NY Times obituary of Buchanan, Margalit Fox wrote: "One quality united Mr. Buchanan's diverse output: It was not so much that his films were bad; they were deeply, dazzlingly, unrepentantly bad. His work called to mind a famous line from H.L. Mencken who, describing President Warren G. Harding's prose, said, 'It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it'."
Buchanan directed a series of low-budget films in the early 1960s addressing such topical and taboo issues as sex (Under Age (1964)) and racial relations/miscegenation (Free, White and 21 (1963), High Yellow (1965)), themes that were perennial grindhouse circuit favorites. He also solidified his reputation as a hack with a spate of ultra-low-budgeted remakes of AIP science-fiction potboilers, including Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1967) and Mars Needs Women (1968), a film whose succinct title, at least, is a classic of sorts.
The year after president John F. Kennedy was cut down by sniper bullets in his hometown of Dallas, Buchanan exploited the event by writing and directing a fictionalized account of the "judicial reckoning" of J.F.K.'s alleged assassin, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1964). He had been in Dallas to shoot a striptease-film at The Carousel, Oswald-killer 'Jack Ruby''s Dallas strip joint, which was eventually released as Naughty Dallas (1964). The Oswald picture was the first of what would become a lucrative vein for Buchanan: biopics and docudramas that limned the lives of everyone from Janis Joplin to Jesus, with Pretty Boy Floyd, Jean Harlow, 'Jimi Hendrix', Howard Hughes and Jim Morrison thrown in for good measure.
In the late 1960s Buchanan relocated to Texas to continue his film career, helping to boost the Lone Star State's film industry. His movies were made with budgets under $100,000 (a figure that approximates about 1/30th of Marlon Brando's daily wage on Superman (1978) and 1/20th of Robert Redford's daily haul on A Bridge Too Far (1977), to provide contrast with contemporaneous Hollywood budgets). Due to their low costs and the well-developed drive-in and grind-house circuits of the 1950s through the 1970s, almost all of Buchanan's movies finished financially in the black. His production overhead was minimal, as he typically was a picture's director, producer, screenwriter and editor.
In 1996 he published his memoirs, "It Came from Hunger: Tales of a Cinema Schlockmeister." In his memoir, Buchanan called his style of independent cinema "guerilla filmmaking." Classifying Buchanan as a genius of his genre, Rob Craig said on Horror-Wood.com: "Buchanan wrote or adapted prime pieces of pulp genre fiction on assignment, filmed them as best he could given his resources, and offered the results to the world with no apologies, nor any revisionist strings attached."
Buchanan was completing the editing of his last movie at his home in Phoenix, Arizona when he died on December 2, 2004, two months shy of his 82nd birthday. He considered "The Copper Scroll of Mary Magdalene," a story based on a Gnostic interpretation of Christ, to be his finest film. The man who had turned down the chance to become a minister had been working on the film since 1972. Returning to his roots, the film had became the goal of his career, and was an expression of his artistic as well as religious passion.
Buchanan was survived by wife of 52 years, Jane, by his sons Randy, Barry, and Jeff, and by his daughter Dee.- Writer
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Born in Rome. His father gave him a passion for cinema, taking him to Cinecittà as a child. At the age of ten, the British brother-in-law, director of documentaries for the London BBC, gave him a camera in super 8. He began to shoot many films, involving his friends. He does everything by himself, writes, directs and edits. After completing his classical studies, he worked as an editing assistant and later as an assistant director. At 20 years he made his first feature film in Super 8: "Paure e Realtà". And at 25, "Pasaggi" won the Ischia film festival in 1979. In 1981, the 35 mm debut with the film: "Difendimi dalla Notte" that wins: the San Sebastian Film Festival, the Nice Film Festival and the festival of Annency. It is selected in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. But in Italy without political recommendations, nor previous in the family, does not find work, then "emigrate" turning the world, directing many films for the foreign market. All in English, with American and European actors. So he meets his friend, Bruno Mattei. Together they make all genres: horror, western, science fiction, adventure, thriller, war and detective. Later he divides himself from Bruno Mattei, but continues to travel the world, making other horror movies, science fiction and zombies. In 1984 an American production called him to direct the rock star Alice Cooper, as protagonist of the film: "Monster Dog". In 1985 he directed the cult "After Death" in the Philippines. In 1989 he directed in America, the film phenomenon that has lasted for almost thirty years, "Goblin", later called Troll2 from the American distribution, creating a misunderstanding that became the success of the film, because Troll2 was never the sequel of the first Troll, but a comic horror story for families, without blood, called Goblin. In 1993 he returned to Italy, returning to his first love, the cinema of civil commitment. He created the award-winning "Teste Rasate", sold in many countries around the world. In 1995 he made his most successful work "Palermo Milano Solo Andata" with 20th Century Fox Italy. The film is in competition in Venice, and sold in 83 countries. He has made more than 40 films. He discovered many young actors who are stars today. He supervises young directors in their films and never stops, because cinema is his life. Claudio Fragasso is a versatile director, one of the few in Italy, to try his hand at all genres, always experimenting with new things.- Editor
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Born in 1931, Bruno Mattei grew up in Rome, Italy, where his father owned a small film editing studio. At age 20 Bruno started working odd jobs at his father's company as his assistant, then went on to other small spots. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a film editor, and soon found himself working as an editor for a number of directors, including Roberto Bianchi Montero and Nick Nostro. Mattei claimed to have edited over 100 films in the 1960s and early 1970s. After working with famed Spanish director Jess Franco, Mattei made his debut as a director with the drama Armida, il dramma di una sposa (1970) under the alias "Jordon B. Matthews". He eventually had more pseudonyms than any working director in the world. He returned to editing before making another comeback in 1976 with two low-budget Nazi exploitation films, Women's Camp 119 (1977) (aka "Women's Camp 119") and Casa privata per le SS (1977) (aka "SS Girls"). Mattei followed these taboo-breaking films with excursions into porno films and mondo "shockumentaries", all directed under his many pseudonyms, concentrating on "shock value" with films such as Mondo erotico (1973), "Libiodomania" and "Libidomania 2". Always on the lookout for new exploitation avenues, Mattei followed with "nunsploitation", with the softcore sex film The True Story of the Nun of Monza (1980) and the violent sex thriller The Other Hell (1981). Both films involved a partnership with writer/director Claudio Fragasso, who helped him write and direct the back-to-back productions. Using yet another alias, "Vincent Dawn", Mattei directed Hell of the Living Dead (1980) (aka "Night of the Zombies"), a low-budged zombie picture inspired by other zombie cannibal movies such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979). "Virus" was filmed in Spain and used jungle footage from New Guinea and a patch soundtrack from Goblins "Dawn of the Dead" soundtrack, which was a minor hit in Italy and abroad. After directing two women's prison films starring Laura Gemser, Mattei moved to directing sword-and-sorcery flicks, starting with The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1983). Both Mattei and Fragasso collaborated on the sci-fi/horror flick Rats: Night of Terror (1984), inspired by the futuristic movies of the early 1980s. Mattei considers this his best work, despite his still having to work with a very low budget. He worked relentlessly through the 1980s, directing a pair of "spaghetti westerns", some action flicks and about half of Zombie 3 (1988) after Lucio Fulci was taken off the production, though Mattei was not credited with it. In the early 1990s Mattei directed a series of erotic thrillers and a made-for-TV movie, Cruel Jaws (1995), which was inspired by Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). Mattei continued making films, with more than 50 to his credit by the 200s. In early 2007 his health began to decline rapidly after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Despite his doctor's warnings, he went through with a surgical operation to have the tumor removed in May of that year. After the surgery he fell into a coma from complications, and died a few days later on May 21, 2007 at age 75. Though some people consider his films to be cheap, insipid and technically inept due in large part to their low budgets and poor production values, Bruno Mattei remains an influential cult film director around the world for his radical film making and willingness to direct pretty much anything with a taboo-breaking topic.- Writer
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Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success. Had Edward D. Wood, Jr. been born a decade or two earlier, it's easy to imagine him working for some Poverty Row outfit in Gower Gulch, competing with the likes of no-talent and no-taste producers and directors--such as Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and Dwain Esper--for the title of all-time hack. He would have fit in nicely working at Weiss Brothers-Artclass Pictures in the early 1930s in directing low budget Western-themed serials, or directing low budget film noir crime drama features at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) in the following decade from 1940 to 1946. Ed Wood is the probably the most well known of all the Hollywood hacks because he is imprisoned in his own time, and in the 1950s, Ed Wood simply had no competition. He was ignored throughout his spectacularly unsuccessful film making career and died a penniless alcoholic, only to be "rediscovered" when promoters in the early 1980s tagged him "The Worst Director of All Time" (mostly thanks to the Medveds' hilarious book, "Golden Turkey Awards") and he was given the singular honor of a full-length biopic by Tim Burton (Ed Wood (1994)). This post-mortem celebrity has made him infinitely more famous today than he ever was during his lifetime.
Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born on October 10, 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary marine, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater (a transgender, he claimed to have been wearing a bra and panties under his uniform while storming ashore during the bloody beachhead landing at Tarawa in November 1943). He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe.
After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (1953), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transgender identity (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fondness for angora. On the debit side, though, the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.
Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production. When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.
His previous film with Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (1955), was no better (unbelievably, it somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it; his epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.
After this career "peak," Wood went into, relatively speaking, a decline. Always an "enthusiastic"--for lack of a better word--drinker, his alcohol addiction worsened in the 1960s due to his depression of not achieving the worldwide fame he had always sought. He began to draw away from film directing and focused most of his time on another profession: writing. Beginning in the early 1960s up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex paperback novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers. Thirty-two stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in 'Blood Splatters Quickly', published by OR Books in 2014. Novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973) and Fugitive Girls (1974).
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir 'Hollywood Rat Race', which was eventually published in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.
In the 1970s, Wood directed a number of undistinguished softcore and later hardcore adult porno films under various aliases, one of which is the name "Akdov Telmig" ("vodka gimlet" spelled backwards; it helps to imagine that you're a boozy dyslexic, as Ed Wood was). His final years were spent largely drunk in his apartment and occasionally being rolled stumbling out of a local liquor store. Three days before his death, Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Hollywood apartment due to failure to pay the rent and moved into a friend's apartment shortly before his death on the afternoon of December 10, 1978, at age 54. He had a heart attack and died while drinking in bed.
Due to his recent resurgence in popularity, many of his equally interesting transgender - themed sex novels have been republished. The gravitational pull of Planet Angora remains quite strong.