13 Movies Actually Ghost Directed By A Second Filmmaker

13. Albert Magnoli - Tango & Cash (1989)

This piece of 80s buddy cop cheese - starring superstar duo Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell - is a definitive guilty pleasure of that era. Full of baffling plot mechanics, excessive one-liners, blatant homo-erotism and of course, Harold Faltermeyer music. Yet for a film that reads like a simple checklist of action movie cliches, who knew it was marred by such creative turmoil?

Stallone was infamously hands-on during the 80s (more on that later), and several casualties resulted from a production tug of war between him and producer whackjob Jon Peters.

Cinematographer Barry Sonnefield was the first to suffer, as he was fired at Stallone’s behest. Next, the director Andrey Konchalovskiy - championed for his action/drama Runaway Train - was shown the door by Peters. The supposed reasoning was Konchalovskiy and Stallone wished to make a gritty cop thriller, while the producers wanted a full-blown campy quip-fest. It would seem from the final results the producers blatantly won.

With Konchalovskiy gone and Stallone and Peters at loggerheads, Albert Magnoli of Purple Rain fame was brought in to add spades of neon stylings and flighty pizzazz whilst the creative tone of the movie was constantly pushed and pulled.

Konchalovskiy was given final credit for the movie yet the bizarre tonal shifts and emphasis a music video aesthetic feels much more like something from Magnoli’s repertoire.