10 Great Directors Who Made Terrible Debut Films

10. Francis Ford Coppola - The Bellboy And The Playgirls

Coppola may be revered as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, having directed and written The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, but he got his start on German 3-D softcore porn film The Bellboy and the Playgirls.

With a tagline as suggestive as 'this Bellboy is after more than just big tips', it is little surprise that this nudity-heavy exploitation film was widely panned by critics. Even Coppola's classmates at UCLA, where he was still studying, looked down on him filming this low brow filth with many labelling him a 'cop-out' for stooping so low.

In his own words, Coppola acknowledges that this job was essentially filming 50 minutes worth of "nudie sketches in colour for a stupid German movie that had been shot in black-and-white." This may have been an unlikely start for one of cinema's greats but he had the last laugh as he eventually eclipsed his UCLA classmates and teachers.