10. Sam Peckinpah
Many directors today owe almost everything they have to Sam Peckinpah. Guys like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez instantly come to mind but the list is extensive. Peckinpah is one of the all time greats and specifically in his depiction of violence, an immortal. Operating inside the western genre for much of his career, he has always been enamored with death and heroic sacrifice. Perhaps the greatest example of Peckinpah's obsession with death is his masterpiece, The Wild Bunch. This was one of the early films that cast the villains as the heroes of the story. These were not nice men. These were not decent men yet we were compelled to root for them. Hell, the bounty hunters chasing the band of outlaws were hardly good people. By the end of the film, after all of the blood, all the deception and the thousandth bullet had been fired, nearly every single character was dead. It takes gumption to create a film full of horrible people and by the end kill them all save for two. Peckinpah would go on to cement his status with ultra-violent, death filled films like, Straw Dogs, The Getaway and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia.