Oliver Stone - Best - JFK - Worst - U-Turn
Steven Spielberg - Best - Raiders Of The Lost Ark - Worst - The Lost World
Sam Raimi - Best - Evil Dead 2 - Worst - For Love Of The Game
Francis Ford Coppola - Best - Apocalypse Now - Worst - Jack
Stanley Kubrick - Best - Full Metal Jacket - Worst - Eyes Wide Shut
Peter Jackson - Best - LOTR - Worst - Eh, The Frighteners (not a bad movie, but the least of his films)
Oliver Stone: Best: The Hand (Crawling hand film with Michael Caine)
Francis Ford Coppola: Best: Demetia 13 (Haunted manor film with cool beheading & more nudity than was expected for the time -- early '60's)
Speilberg: Duel
Kubrick: Paths of Glory
peter johnson
These are all just personal faves, so they may not fit strict definitions of Best/Worst....but here goes.....
John Carpenter
Best: Big Trouble in Little China
Worst: Village of the Damned
Brian Yuzna
Best: Tie between Society and Return of the Living Dead III
Worst: Progeny (though I still like it)
Stuart Gordon
Best: Tie for me between Re-Animator and The Pit & The Pendulum
Worst: Robot Jox
Wes Craven
Best: The Hills Have Eyes
Worst: Vampire in Brooklyn
George Romero
Best: The Crazies and Dawn of the Dead
Worst: Season of the Witch, I guess, but I still like it a lot.
Dario Argento
Best: Opera
Worst: The Phantom of the Opera
Lucio Fulci
Best: The Beyond
Worst: Manhatten Baby
David Cronenberg:
Best: Videodrome
Worst: None, they all are fantastic.
Joe Dante
Best: The 'Burbs. Sorry to Piranha and The Howling, but The 'Burbs is awesome.
Worst: Explorers
Brian DePalma
Best: Carrie
Worst: The Bonfire of the Vanities
Abel Ferrara
Best: The Addiction and Ms. 45
Worst: Can't think of the worst off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are plenty.
Frank Hennenlotter
Best: Frankenhooker
Worst: Basket Case III
Tobe Hooper
Best: Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Worst: I'm Dangerous Tonight
John Landis
Best: An American Werewolf in London
Worst: The Stupids
Herschell Gordon Lewis
Best: A Taste of Blood
Worst: That's a tough one. Probably most of his nudie cuties
William Lustig
Best: Maniac
Worst: Uncle Sam
Andy Milligan
Best: ummmm....The Ghastly Ones? Maybe Bloodthirsty Butchers....
Worst: Everything else
Al Adamson
Best: Dracula vs. Frankenstein
Worst: Angels' Wild Women
Martin Scorsese
Best: The King of Comedy (bold choice, I know, but I think it's amazing)
Worst: After Hours
Jim Wynorski
Best: Deathstalker II and Chopping Mall
Worst: The Bare Wench Project
Ted Nicolau
Best: Subspecies
Worst: Anything he did for Moonbeam, his segment in The Dungeonmaster
Don Coscarelli
Best: Phantasm
Worst: I haven't seen him do a bad movie yet
John Carpenter: The fog (best), Ghosts of Mars (worst).
John Woo: Bullet in the head (best), Mission Impossible II (worst)
Albert Pyun: Post Mortem (best, surprisingly), All the rest (worst, unsurprisingly).
Rachel Talalay: Tank Girl (best), Freddy's death, the final nightmare (worst).
Paul Verhoeven: Robocop (best), The hollow man (worst).
Brian DePalma: Carlito's way (best), Snake eyes (worst, despite the great start).
Stuart Gordon: Dagon (best), Space truckers (worst).
Now this sounds like a fun topic:
John Carpenter _____________________________________________________________
Best - I like most everything Carpenter does, but I think his best remains The Thing . Lot’s of fun, with an excellent script and neat acting. Big Trouble in Little China , Halloween , and Prince of Darkness running close behind
Worst - I have no use for Vampires or Ghosts of Mars . Both are ill-conceived and poorly plotted. Especially Ghosts â€" God is that a wasted opportunity!
I almost put In the Mouth of Madness here, but I think I'm going to be reevaluating that one.
Wes Craven _____________________________________________________________
Best - Bear in mind I have yet to see some of his earlier work, but I think his best film was People Under the Stairs . I really identified with the kid hero, although we’re nothing alike. Plus, the villains of the piece were something else.
I also think A Nightmare on Elm Street and A New Nightmare have a lot of value.
Worst - Two words: Deadly Friend . The ending might not be his fault but it insures it that I HATE THIS DAMN MOVIE FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER! And I hope it dies, too.
George Romero ____________________________________________
Best - Dawn of the Dead is without question his best. His scariest, no. (That's Night which, I'm embarrassed to say, I haven't finished yet.) But the whole story holds together so well. Even the tacked on ending.
Worst - I haven't watched everything his done. (Season of the Witch and Knightriders being among the list), but my person least favorite of his works is Martin . I found it dull and depressing
Dario Argento ____________________________________________
Best - Suspira and Tenebre so far. Both are interesting stylistically over substance. If pressed, I’d say Tenebre . It, at least, is coherent.
I will also admit to some fondness for Inferno , but that one isn't so great.
Worst - I have no use for Opera . Haven't seen much more of Argento than I've already listed. Creepers (AKA Phenomena ) goes here, too, but then again, I've only seen the edited version...
David Cronenberg ____________________________________________
Best - Cronenberg is sort of the exception to the rule. I like most everything he's done that I've seen. If forced, I might say either Videodrome or The Dead Zone or even The Fly . So don't ask; it'll take all day. Good stories, good acting.
Worst - eXistenZ is the only film of his I don't like. It plays too many games.
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That's about it for now. If this thread continues, I'll bore y'all with more of my thoughts on the matter.
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George Romero
Best: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
Worst: probably DAY OF THE DEAD, but I haven't seen BRUISER.
Cronenberg:
Best: THE BROOD
Worst: Probably a tie between CRASH and NAKED LUNCH. I disliked CRASH more. I haven't seen M. BUTTERFLY.
Argento:
Best: DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA
Worst: PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
Carpenter:
Best: HALLOWEEN
Worst: Most of his recent films....
Lemme see, this might be repeating stuff, but....
George A. Romero
Best - Day of the Dead
Worst - Season of the Witch (it's dreary, unpleasent, and unfocused - but could make a very good movie, no wonder he wants to remake it)
John Carpenter - this is a hard one, he's my favorite director.
Best - The Thing or Escape from New York (although The Fog is a personal favorite)
Worst - Village of the Damned (needless and rather bland)
Wes Craven
Best - The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The People Under the Stairs are my favorites.
Worst - Deadly Friend, Shocker
David Cronenberg
Best - The Brood
Worst - M Butterfly
Clint Eastwood
Best - White Hunter, Black Heart; Bird; High Plains Drifter; Play Misty for Me; Unforgiven; The Bridges of Madison County
Worst - Sudden Impact (although it's a three slime bad movie)
Tobe Hooper
Best - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Worst - Spontaneous Combustion
Larry Cohen
Best - God Told Me Too (aka Demon), It's Alive
Worst - A Return to Salem's Lot
Don Siegel
Best - Invasion of the Body Snatcher (1956), Dirty Harry
Worst - Telefon, Jinxed
Dario Argento
Best - Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebre
Worst - Trauma, The Phantom of the Opera (SKULL!!!), The Stendahl Syndrome
i'd agree with you on all those, but have you seen any of oliver stone's horror movies. i hear they're pretty awful.
Martin Scorsese: best-Mean Streets, Worst-After Hours
David Cronenberg: best-anything besides Rabid
More as promised! (Threatened, whatever...)
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Tobe Hooper ______________________________________________
Best - Hooper is, out of all the directors listed on this thread, the easiest. his best movie was, is, and probably always will be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . The film's intense and scary, and a cut above A TON of modern horror pictures. A masterpiece.
I prefer, however, Lifeforce. Can't help it. Mathilda May is...I mean the movie is fine.
Worst - Most every other picture he's had a hand in. Cold, ain't it? But true. However, Spontaneous Combustion is the worst of the bunch. Incoherent much? Or...whatever. Does anyone know of a review site that praises this picture. Or at least can explain it?
Larry Cohen ______________________________________________
Best - Q is, in my opinion, his best. It is also one of the last great giant monster movie. "EAT 'EM! EAT 'EM! CRUNCH CRUNCH!" Funny as hell.
Worst - - When he is good, Cohen's the best, but when he isn't... stuff like Return to Salem's Lot happens. Or The Stuff . Large sections of both movies make no sense to me. no sense at all.
Still, even at his worse, Cohen is watchable.
[b ]Francis Ford Coppola [/b] ________________________________________
Best - Apocalypse Now is something else. An intense journey into the darkness of the soul. It’s a miracle this film was made.
Worst - Some would site Jack , but for me, it's his Dracula . Male domination over women (as well as blatant date rape) celebrated as a great "romance.†Bleagh
Steven Spielberg ____________________________________________
Best - This is a toss up between Jaws and Duel Both are killer supense movies about people stalked by an unreasoning monster. I think Duel might edge out Jaws , but that's only because it was written by Richard Matheson. Matheson is the bomb.
I also like A.I , but I think it's poorly thought out ending holds it back.
Worst - It's tempting to just go Lost World and forget it, but there are other, worse movies by Speilberg. I'm thinking about Hook here. Here was a great opertunity to do something interesting with Peter Pan and they let it slip away. Workaholic father learns to apprectate kids (and life). Gag.
Hears a thought, let's see what y'all think. What if Robin William's character wasn't Pan at all? What if there had been some great mistake? Wouldn't that be better? What if, instead of the obvious Relearning-to-enjoy-life bits, we had him searching Neverland desperately for the missing Pan? I know it's not mindnumbingly original, but it's better than what we got shafted with.
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Cullen, who is not having thoughts about creating a time machine and "seeing" a 1985 Mathilda May.
Or a 1963 Hazel Court, or Barbra Steele, or...
(No andriods, either. He isn't thinking about building androids. Nope, nope, nope.)
Oliver Stone's "The Hand" is a terrific picture, much much more popular in its day in its native Canada than in the USA.
The Second City troupe did amazing parodies of it on their TV show: "Are you looking at me because of my bloody hand!?!?".
Really, check this out & try not to bring too many preconceptions to it because it's Oliver Stone. Just a fine, fun, low-budget psycho-horror-slasher flick. And, despite it being a Stone film, free of pretense.
Enjoy.
peter johnson
I liked After Hours. Maybe not as good as much of Scorsese's stuff, but I thought it was a cool little black comedy (though terribly frustrating if you're not in the right mood, I'll admit). Griffin Dunne is great in it. My favorite line, when Dunne is hiding from the lynch mob after him, and sees a man get shot in the apartment across the street: "I'll probably get blamed for that, too!"
Herschell Gordon Lewis' worst has got to be Monster A Go-Go. True, HGL only stepped in to shoot some finishing scenes, but he's responsible for editing in the single worst ending for any movie, ever.
A few of my own:
David Lynch
Best: Twin Peaks as a whole
Worst: Dune
Roger Corman:
Best: A Bucket of Blood
Worst: Gunslinger
Then there are those, like good old Ed Wood, for whom "best" and "worst" simply don't apply...
I like The Hand. The scene where Cain's character loses his appendage is actually quite tense.
Jon carpenter
best- The Thing is eaily the best he has ever done. I still think that Halloween is one of his mst lack luster films. The next would be Escape From New York.
Worst- Ghost of Mars is bad but it's not his worst. Directorial wise I never liked his village of the damned much.
Wes Craven
best- tie between new Nightmare and a nightmare on Elm street, Serpent and the rainbow goes third.
worst- not sure, Chiller was completely wasted and the values of the production sucked.
Peter Jackson
best- the Gross out trilogy comes hand in hand here as the great B-horror that Jackson used to be.
worst-Lord of the rings was good but compared to most of his other stuff it was boring.
I think Coppola wanted to show more of the Fruedian anaylsis of the sexual nature of men Stoker did a lot in his novel, the werewolf, a lot of historians believe, is sort of a metaphor of this sexuallly, out of control beast that exist within all men. Other than that, i don't see the scene in the film as having any real social driven message, be it positive or negative.
I don't think they intended the actual results at all. The problem was, they took what was in essence a demonic figure, made him into a hero, and didn't move him far enough from his demonic roots. Thus creating a film celibrating domination and date rape.
You have to be careful when making any work of art in making your position clear. Not just for the Elite, or your little circle, but for everyone who might view the work.
Stoker was. Which is part of the reason his work's a classic.
You have to be careful when making any work of art in making your position clear. Not just for the Elite, or your little circle, but for everyone who might view the work.
Problem is that many 'elite' don't really care what the average folk think and the fact that they don't 'get it' just proves why the average folk are..well..average and reinforces the eliteness of the elite. It's a rather self-deceptive but self-satisfying viewpoint
On a totally unrelated point is that some people seem to like a director's earlier 'b' stuff and not his later stuff. I see this a lot in musicians where a musician is accused of either selling out or going soft. As a muscian myself, one thing I'm aware of is how my own tastes have changed, both in playing and in listening. I don't enjoy playing some of the stuff I did 15 years ago, and I play stuff I wouldn't have liked to even listen to at that time. I think director's, etc.. are the same way. As you grow in your craft, what you want to do and what you enjoy doing changes, or you stagnate. Maybe your 'true fans' don't mind you churning out the same stuff every year, but if you are really trying to improve and develop, you may end up growing in ways your 'fans' don't like. This doesn't mean you've sold out or anything, it's just means you've changed.
Bold for comments from Fearless Freep. Regular font for me.
Problem is that many 'elite' don't really care what the average folk think and the fact that they don't 'get it' just proves why the average folk are..well..average and reinforces the eliteness of the elite. It's a rather self-deceptive but self-satisfying viewpoint
This is so true. Always has been, always will be.
Depressing, isn't it?
When you have to explain your work, it put you in a position of power, a teacher to student type thing. Giving wisdom from on high sort of thing.
It's bogus. If your work can't speak for itself, if it needs defenders and explinations, then it's a failure. And if it says things you don't intend, well...that's a failure, too.
I know that people bring their own baggage to EVERYTHING. Someone's BOUND to interprit things diffrently than you do. That's unavoidable. What you have to do is keep you're work accessable, and to not cram it with diffrent interpritations.
Unless ambigous is what your trying for. That's a whole nother can of worms.
On a totally unrelated point is that some people seem to like a director's earlier 'b' stuff and not his later stuff.
Never stopped to look at that, but I think you're right.
As you grow in your craft, what you want to do and what you enjoy doing changes, or you stagnate. Maybe your 'true fans' don't mind you churning out the same stuff every year, but if you are really trying to improve and develop, you may end up growing in ways your 'fans' don't like. This doesn't mean you've sold out or anything, it's just means you've changed.
I agree with this statement whole heartedly.
I do think, however, that artist can grow lazy and set in their ways, whihc affects their output. I also think that sometimes a person can get lucky, and never have that luck hit him (or her) again.
Case in point: Tobe Hooper. His first film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a genre masterpiece. A powerful work.
Nothing he's done since has been as good. (And I'm a Lifeforce fan).
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Very valid indeed, I agree across the board. Not much else I can add to it other than that.
Sam Raimi
Best- Evil Dead Trilogy
Worst- Probably For the Love of the Game
Steven Spielberg
Best- Jaws
worst- There are way to many.
Del Toro
Best- Blade 2 and Devil's Backbone are good.
Worst- Mimic, still a good film but lower than the rest.
Tobe Hooper
Best- Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Worst- from what I have seen, Salem's Lot was an over blown and petty waste
since where in the film is the context of date rape mentioned? it's just a f**king wolf screwing some chick, i think you're reading WAY to deep into it.
It's not just some wolf screwing a chick (although, funny enough, that's the scene I was thinking of.) It's when the wolf screwing the chick (Lucy) turns to the chick's friend (Mina) and COMMANDS her to forget (using the Vampire's fabled mind control powers).
It calls into question ever action Mina has after that. Does she go after Dracula at the end of her free will? Does she have a choice? Or has Dracula stripped her off her will (ala all of those date-rape drugs)?
The problem is, is that whole Wolf Scene was a Cool Scene, there soley because some one thought it was cool. They had Mina forget so they could dwell on this supposed romance between her and Dracula without having nasty little questions hang about. Unfortunately, they left nasty little questions they hadn't even considered
It was not well thought out in the context of the film. Epescially since the film was about the "romance" between Mina and Dracula.
Now, if you don't see this, cool beans. No harm no foul, right? There are plenty of people who think Coppola's Dracula is an excellent movie.
However, in my opinion, these things are true. They didn't MEAN it to be there, but they're there nonetheless.
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Cullen, who might have spent too much time thinking about this
Sammo Hung: Best-Eastern Condors, Pedicab Driver, and Prodigal Son are definatley running neck-neck and neck.
Worst-Without a doubt Once Upon A Time In China And America. So bad it's not even funny. Crappy action(most of the time), horrindous acting, and what's up with the camera and editing?!
Robert Clouse: Best-Enter The Dragon(do I really need to explain?).
Worst-Game Of Death. What he did to what was going to be a true bar raiser by the man himself is so criminal I'm wondering if he should have been allowed on a set after this.
Yuen Woo-Ping: Best-it's up for grabs but I'd say it's between Magnificent Butcher and Dreadnaught(with Drunken Master lurking just behind them).
Worst-can't say I've seen a bad movie directed by Woo-Ping.
Dracula has very definitely tried to strip Mina entirely of her will, a point that I hope will be emphasized somewhat when "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is brought to the screen sometime soon. Mina only recovers enough of her determination to fight via the attention and care of the friends and lovers who surround her. What made the scene especially evil and effective for me, is that Lucy was attracted to the carnal in life (Remember the brief scene where she shows the little oriental porno book to Mina?) and love and yearns for a physically exciting relationship with a man. This makes the wolf-rutting scene all the more perverse and demonic, and therefore effective.
peter johnson